Lauriston & Lawton Court Hotel

Three Thousand Reviews, and a Hundred Metres to the Pier

Most hotels are judged on a few hundred opinions. This one has been judged on 3,098 — by some distance the largest body of evidence behind any hotel on our Llandudno pages — and it comes out at 8.5 out of 10. That is worth pausing over. A property can charm a hundred guests by accident; holding a score like that across three thousand of them is not an accident, it is a system that works.

Numbers 11 to 13 North Parade began life as separate Victorian houses and have since been joined into a single four-star hotel, which is why it has more staircases, more corridors and considerably more character than any purpose-built block of the same size. It stands on the beachfront where the promenade begins its long curve towards the Great Orme, and the entrance to Llandudno Pier is a hundred metres away.

The bedrooms

Because this is a conversion of period houses, no two bedrooms are quite alike — a fact worth turning to your advantage. All are en suite, with televisions, desks and free WiFi, and those at the front look out over the sand and the water. If a sea view matters to you, or a particular floor does, say so at the time of booking rather than trusting to luck; the building simply does not have identical rooms to hand out.

Where you will spend the evening

A bar, a shared lounge and a sun terrace with proper outdoor furniture give guests somewhere to settle that is not the bedroom — something a surprising number of seaside hotels neglect. Morning is taken seriously too: the breakfast is rated “superb”, with a continental and buffet spread standing alongside the full cooked option, plus pastries, cheeses, fruit and juice. A concierge, a laundry and an ironing service are all on hand, and there is private parking, which anyone who has circled North Parade on an August afternoon will recognise as a mercy.

What the reviews actually say

Read a sample of the three thousand and a pattern emerges quickly. Guests praise the staff before anything else — the phrase “nothing was too much trouble” recurs with some regularity — followed by the position, the breakfast and the value. The criticisms are the ones you would expect of a converted pair of Victorian houses: rooms vary in size, some are up a flight or two, and the fabric is characterful rather than brand new. Forewarned, most people find it exactly what they hoped for.

Parking, and why it matters here

North Parade sits at the busiest end of the seafront, and in high season the kerbside is a competitive sport. The hotel keeps private parking, which removes the single most tiresome part of a Llandudno arrival. Anyone who has driven the length of the promenade twice on a Saturday in August, looking for a space and watching the meter of their own patience run down, will understand why this is listed here as a feature rather than a footnote.

This end of town

North Parade is the historic quarter of the resort. The pier — 2,295 feet of Grade II listed Victorian ironwork, and the longest in Wales — is on your doorstep, and behind it rises the Great Orme, with its tramway, its cable car and the Bronze Age copper mines near the summit. Happy Valley’s gardens climb the hillside nearby. The shopping streets of Mostyn Street lie directly inland, and Venue Cymru is a little over a kilometre back along the front in the other direction.

The practical details

Four stars, beachfront, private parking, daily housekeeping and security around the clock. Rooms open at about £102 a night. Given the position — a hundred metres from the pier, on the seafront, at that price — this is one of the better-value four-star addresses in the town, and the review count suggests a great many people have already reached the same conclusion.