SHOUT HOTELS · HULL
Hotels in Hull: Where to Stay in Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull, Hull to everyone including its own council, is a port city of 267,100 people on the north bank of the Humber, and it is the most underrated city break in England. The Deep rears out of Sammy's Point where the River Hull meets the estuary. The cobbled Old Town holds a run of free museums around Hull Minster, the largest parish church in England by floor area. West along the estuary the Humber Bridge still stops people mid-sentence. And the whole thing costs less than almost any comparable English city.
Two things have changed the city's 2026 in ways older guides have not caught up with. Hull City won promotion to the Premier League for the 2026/27 season, beating Middlesbrough 1-0 in the play-off final at Wembley on Saturday 23 May 2026 in front of 84,506 people, which is top-flight football in Hull for the first time since 2016/17 and a permanent step up in match day demand. And the Hull Maritime Museum reopens on Saturday 8 August 2026 after a £20.4m restoration, having been closed since January 2020.
Our own Hull cluster is honest rather than flattering. We hold three city properties, two in HU3 within a short walk of the MKM Stadium and one on Beverley Road in HU5, plus a Georgian guest house out at Hedon that is emphatically not in the city. Nothing in the Old Town or the Marina yet, which is the gap we would most like to close. Below: the areas, the transport, what is actually open, and the dates that decide whether you get a room.
Best areas to stay in Hull
Hull is small and flat, but it is not uniformly walkable. The difference between a base you can walk out of into the Old Town bars and one you bus into town from is about twenty minutes, and it changes the shape of the trip. Here is each area straight.
Old Town, the Museums Quarter and Humber Street
The cobbled historic core, running from Hull Minster down High Street and Silver Street to the Fruit Market and Humber Street by the Marina. Free museums, independent galleries, the best bars in the city and the odd little pleasure of Land of Green Ginger, where the George Hotel pub displays what it bills as England's smallest window. Best for: culture-and-bars weekenders who want everything on foot. Skip if: you are here for a stadium day, because you will be commuting west. Getting around: entirely on foot, with The Deep a few minutes' walk along the waterfront. Our stays here: none yet, and that is the single biggest gap in our Hull cluster. We would rather say so than pretend a west Hull address is central.
Hull Marina
The former docks, now a yacht marina ringed with bars and restaurants, a few minutes from the Old Town and quiet once the evening thins out. Best for: couples who want water views and calm without giving up walkability. Skip if: you want nightlife on the doorstep after midnight. Getting around: on foot for the Old Town, The Deep and the Fruit Market.
City centre and Paragon
The zone around Hull Paragon Interchange, St Stephen's and Connexin Live: shops, the station, the arena and Queen Victoria Square with the Ferens Art Gallery and the reopening Maritime Museum on it. Best for: arriving by train, one-nighters and anyone with a gig ticket. Skip if: you want character in the streets outside your door rather than five minutes away. Getting around: the whole city network of buses leaves from Paragon, and the Old Town is a ten minute walk east.
Anlaby Road and HU3
The Victorian corridor running west from the centre past West Park and the MKM Stadium. We will not oversell it: this is plain, residential Hull, terraces and takeaways and pubs, not scenic. What it is instead is unbeatable for match days and the best value in the city, roughly a 20 minute walk or an 8 minute bus from Paragon and about five to ten minutes on foot from the ground. Best for: football and rugby league supporters, ferry stopovers and anyone who would rather spend the money on the trip than the room. Skip if: you want to walk home from Humber Street. Getting around: frequent buses into the centre, quick A63 and M62 access if you are driving. Our stays here: St Georges Hotel on St Georges Road and Vale Apart Hotel on Coltman Street.
Beverley Road and HU5
North of the centre, Victorian villas along a main arterial road with Pearson Park and its wildlife garden just off it. About 1.1 miles into town, so a bus ride or a drive rather than a stroll, and roughly 2.4 miles from the stadium. Best for: drivers who want parking, and anyone who wants a quieter, greener base than the HU3 corridor. Skip if: you have no car and want to walk everywhere. Getting around: a main bus route into Paragon, and easy driving north towards Beverley. Our stay here: The Dorchester Hotel.
Out east: Hedon and Holderness
Beyond the docks the city gives way to Holderness, a flat farming landscape of market towns and villages running out to Spurn Point. Hedon is the nearest of them, about six miles east of the centre. Best for: drivers who want period character, quiet and easy parking, and anyone catching an early ferry from King George Dock. Skip if: you have no car, because this is not a city base and the buses will not carry a sightseeing trip. Getting around: car essential. Our stay here: Lambert House, covered under “Outside the city” below.
Getting to Hull and around
By train. Everything arrives at Hull Paragon Interchange, a combined rail and bus station in the city centre. Hull Trains, the open-access operator, lists up to seven direct services a day from London King's Cross covering the 155 miles with an average journey time of about 2 hours 36 minutes, and six on weekend days. LNER runs a direct daily service at around 2 hours 47 minutes. Northern and TransPennine Express handle the regional network, with services to Leeds, Manchester and towards York. The structural point: Hull sits off the East Coast Main Line, on a branch via Selby and Brough, which is why through services are limited and most other connections change at Doncaster, Leeds or York.
By ferry. P&O Ferries run a daily overnight crossing from Hull to Rotterdam Europoort, roughly 11 to 12 hours, and it takes foot passengers. Check-in is at Terminal 1, King George Dock, Hedon Road, HU9 5PS, east of the centre, opening at 15:00 with boarding from about 16:00 and check-in closing 90 minutes before departure. A dedicated connecting coach from Paragon is listed at around 17:15, but the operator's consumer pages are vague about it, so confirm it at the point of booking. A taxi from Paragon takes 10 to 15 minutes. Note that there is no public transport at the Europoort terminal at the other end, and optional onward coach transfers to Rotterdam and Amsterdam are sold separately. The Hull to Zeebrugge passenger route ended on 1 January 2021 and does not operate.
If the crossing is the whole reason you are in Hull, treat the night before as part of the trip: check-in closes 90 minutes before departure, and our guide to hotels near the Hull ferry terminal, for the night before you sail picks out the places that make the evening sailing easy.
The Humber Bridge. A 2,220 metre single-span suspension bridge, opened in 1981, crossing to the south bank. It went cashless on 2 February 2026, with number-plate cameras replacing the booths, and the toll rose for the first time since 2012. Cars pay £2 each way without an account or £1.50 with one, vans £5 and £4, HGVs £15 and £12, and motorcycles cross free. Payment is by app, website or PayPoint only, so you cannot turn up with cash. Those are statutory toll charges set by the bridge board, not anything to do with what a room costs.
Buses and parking. Stagecoach in Hull and East Yorkshire Buses run the city and regional network out of Paragon, which is what makes the HU3 and HU5 bases workable without a car. There are several city-centre car parks, and The Deep has its own on-site parking. On match days and through Hull Fair week the Walton Street car park fills early, so if you are driving in HU3 on one of those days, arrive well ahead of yourself.
By air. Humberside Airport is the nearest at about 26 miles, but Leeds Bradford and Manchester are the realistic gateways for most flights, with onward rail from both.
Things to do in Hull
The Deep. The city's headline draw, an award-winning submarium on Sammy's Point holding more than 3,500 animals in 2.5 million litres of water: sharks, rays, Gentoo penguins, the only Green sawfish in the UK, a glass lift running up through the ten metre Endless Ocean tank and an underwater tunnel beneath it. Open daily from around 10:00 to 18:00 with last admission at 17:00, closed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It charges admission, an annual pass gives twelve months of free returns, and pre-booking online is sensible.
Hull Maritime Museum, reopening 8 August 2026. The former Dock Offices on Queen Victoria Square return on Saturday 8 August 2026 after a £20.4m restoration that has doubled the public space and will put roughly 1,300 objects on display, some 50% more than before. The headline pieces are a 40 foot North Atlantic right whale skeleton and the largest scrimshaw collection outside the United States. Free admission, with advance booking advised. It had been shut since January 2020, so if you visited Hull in the last six years, this is genuinely new to you.
The Museums Quarter on High Street. The Streetlife Museum covers transport and social history, and the Hull and East Riding Museum covers archaeology. Both are free. Wilberforce House, the birthplace of William Wilberforce and the city's slavery and abolition museum, has been listed as closed until further notice in recent listings, so treat it as unconfirmed and check before you build a day around it.
The Arctic Corsair. Hull's last sidewinder trawler is being moved to a new dry berth at the North End Shipyard off Dock Office Row, with a Passivhaus visitor centre going up around it. She was due to sail into her final berth in summer 2026 and the attraction opens once the works finish. As of August 2026 it is not open to visitors and no opening date is confirmed, so check before you travel for it.
Ferens Art Gallery. The free civic gallery on Queen Victoria Square, reopened in January 2017 after a £5.2m refurbishment and host to the Turner Prize that December, when Lubaina Himid was announced as winner live from Hull Minster. Permanent collection plus touring shows.
The Old Town on foot. Hull Minster, the largest parish church in England by floor area. Ye Olde White Harte on Silver Street, a pub of about 1550 to 1660 with an upstairs Plotting Parlour and a human skull on display, where the popular story about Charles I in 1642 is a myth and the parlour actually refers to the 1688 plot against Hull's Catholic governor. Ye Olde Black Boy on High Street, long-established but worth checking the hours on. Hotham's Gin School in Hepworth Arcade. And Land of Green Ginger, still the best street name in England.
The Fruit Market and the Marina. Humber Street Gallery shows contemporary work and is run by Absolutely Cultured, the visual-arts legacy body that grew out of the City of Culture company in 2018 and is now an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation. Social at 63 Humber Street is the bar and venue at the centre of the quarter, and the Marina itself is bars, restaurants and masts.
Out to the bridge. The Humber Bridge Country Park and Hessle Foreshore give you the walks and the views from underneath, which is the angle that does the structure justice.
Stages. Connexin Live on Myton Street, formerly Bonus Arena and still called that by half the city, holds around 3,500 for touring music and comedy. Hull New Theatre on Kingston Square, refurbished and reopened in 2017, seats 1,351 and takes the big touring musicals.
Day trips. Beverley and its Minster about eight miles north, Spurn Point at the tip of Holderness, Bempton Cliffs for seabirds and puffins, and York in about an hour.
The City of Culture legacy, honestly
Hull was UK City of Culture in 2017 and the physical legacy has largely held. Queen Victoria Square, Trinity Square and the streets around them were re-paved and re-lit. The Ferens reopened after its refurbishment and drew more than 519,000 people in 2017, up 309% on 2014 and its best year in ninety, including over 116,000 Turner Prize visits. Hull New Theatre was refurbished and is fully operating. And a new city-centre arena, now Connexin Live, opened in 2018 as a direct legacy project.
Programmatically it is thinner but real. Freedom Festival, the city's flagship arts festival, has run annually since 2007 and is confirmed for 2026. Absolutely Cultured is still active and running Humber Street Gallery. Humber Street Sesh, the grassroots music festival, came close to folding and survived by restructuring as a community interest company, returning on 1 August 2026.
Where it is thin: the 2017 footfall boom has normalised, Wilberforce House has been closed to visitors, and the promised city-centre regeneration has been slow. The Albion Square scheme, budgeted above £96m with a further £17m approved, is running years behind, with the old BHS building due for demolition by the end of 2026 and a lead development partner expected to take it on from 2027. The Grade II listed Three Ships mural is being preserved and a community diagnostic centre has opened on the site. Whitefriargate, the historic shopping street, is a £12.5m regeneration target after heavy vacancy and is still recovering. Strong on public realm and festivals, weaker on year-round cultural pull: that is the fair verdict.
When to visit Hull
The sweet spot is late spring to early autumn, roughly May to September, when the festivals run, the estuary walks are at their best and the Marina earns its bars.
Weather, plainly. Hull is one of the drier English cities, which surprises people, but the Humber estuary is wide open and wind is the defining feature. The waterfront, the foreshore and the bridge can be raw even in July. Pack a windproof layer whatever the forecast says.
The honest quiet window is January to March, concert nights and match days excepted. Rooms are there, the museums are free and the Old Town is yours.
Dates that decide availability. Where a date is not settled we have said so rather than pick one.
- Freedom Festival 2026 — 3 to 6 September 2026 across the city centre, on the theme of Peace, and mostly free. One source lists 4 to 6 September, but the festival, its director and Visit Hull all confirm the fuller Thursday to Sunday run.
- Hull Fair 2026 — one of Europe's largest travelling funfairs, charter dating to 1279, on the Walton Street site right next to the MKM Stadium. Free entry, pay per ride, closed on the middle Sunday. Confirmed as 9 to 17 October 2026, closed Sunday 11 October, in Hull City Council's own 2026 licensee document. Be aware that the council's public page and most listings still show last year's 10 to 18 October dates. The roads close three days before the first ride opens, which our guide to the Hull Fair road closures and how to get there sets out in full. This is the single biggest squeeze on HU3 rooms in the year.
- Hull New Theatre autumn season — Waitress 1 to 5 September 2026, Annie 8 to 13 September 2026, Jersey Boys 28 September to 3 October 2026 and Legally Blonde 27 to 31 October 2026.
- Connexin Live — CBeebies House Party LIVE! on 5 September 2026 and Jonathan Pie on 6 November 2026, with further dates running into 2027. Big arena nights tighten central rooms.
- Hull Jazz Festival — not yet announced. The festival is mid-transition after its founder stepped back at the end of 2025, with Hull Music Service and Hull Music Hub now leading it, and no 2026 dates have been confirmed.
- Christmas market — the city-centre market runs annually, but the 2026 dates have not yet been announced. Check Visit Hull nearer the time.
- Already gone in 2026 — Pride in Hull marked its 25th anniversary on 25 July 2026 and Humber Street Sesh returned to the Marina on 1 August 2026. Both are annual, so factor them into a summer 2027 trip.
Match days at the MKM Stadium
This is the fact that reshapes accommodation in west Hull. Hull City AFC won promotion to the Premier League for 2026/27, beating Middlesbrough 1-0 in the EFL Championship play-off final at Wembley on Saturday 23 May 2026, Oli McBurnie scoring in the 95th minute in front of 84,506 people. It is top-flight football in Hull for the first time since relegation in 2016/17, after four seasons in the Championship.
The ground is the MKM Stadium, named under a sponsorship agreed in 2021 and referred to as Hull City Stadium for UEFA purposes, in West Park on the Anlaby Road side in HU3 6HU. Capacity is usually given as 25,586, though some ground guides cite 25,504 for the football configuration. It is about a five minute walk from St Georges and Vale Apart, and roughly twenty minutes on foot or a short bus from Paragon.
What promotion changes for you. Fuller houses, far higher away support and materially tighter room availability than in the Championship years, concentrated on the HU3 corridor. The Walton Street car park fills early and the Anlaby Road pubs get busy from lunchtime. If your dates land on a home fixture and you want to be near the ground, book weeks out rather than days.
The bit most guides miss. The MKM is shared with Hull FC rugby league, who play in the 2026 Betfred Super League and stage roughly thirteen to fourteen home league games a season at the same ground, the Hull derby against Hull KR on 23 July 2026 among them. That effectively doubles the number of match days compressing HU3 availability. Check both fixture lists, not just the football one.
Food and drink in Hull
The drinking is concentrated in two places and they are very different. The Old Town gives you the historic pubs: Ye Olde White Harte down its alley off Silver Street, with the Plotting Parlour upstairs and four and a half centuries of building around you, and Ye Olde Black Boy on High Street, long-established and best checked for hours before you set out. The George Hotel on Land of Green Ginger is worth a look for the smallest-window curiosity alone. For something made rather than poured, Hotham's Gin School in Hepworth Arcade runs distilling sessions in the Old Town's Victorian arcade.
Humber Street and the Fruit Market are the modern half: a former wholesale fruit market turned into a strip of independent bars, galleries and kitchens by the Marina, with Social at number 63 as the anchor venue. It is where the city's music scene lives outside festival weekends. Both quarters are within a few minutes' walk of each other, which is the argument for basing yourself in the Old Town if you can, and the reason our HU3 and HU5 guests should budget for a taxi home.
Our Hull stays
Three properties in the city and one outside it. Each is hand-picked and we do not take payment from properties to be featured. We have set out the trade-offs plainly, because all three city stays are west or north rather than central and you should know that before you book.
In the city
- St Georges Hotel — 120 St Georges Road, HU3. The cheapest credible bed within a five minute walk of the MKM Stadium, which makes it the obvious pick for match days and for one-night ferry stopovers. It is an independent budget guest house on the upper floors of a Victorian corner building, so go in with your eyes open: most rooms share a bathroom, with only one single en suite, and there is no parking, no restaurant, no bar and no lift. Reception is by arrangement, roughly 16:00 to 21:00, so confirm your arrival time.
- Vale Apart Hotel — 6 Coltman Street, HU3. Free on-site parking and an owner-hosted, aparthotel-style stay a short walk from the stadium with quick access to the M62. Owners John and Sandra live on site and the welcome is hands-on. The trade-off is location: this is west Hull residential, about a mile from Paragon and two miles from the Old Town, so you are basing yourself for the stadium, the ferry or a festival rather than for stepping out into the bars.
- The Dorchester Hotel — Beverley Road, HU5. Free parking and free WiFi on a main bus route into the centre, with Francesca's Italian restaurant on site offering a guest discount and a pool and gym a minute away. Pearson Park is around the corner. The trade-off is that Beverley Road sits about 1.1 miles north of the centre, so the Old Town is a bus ride or a drive rather than a walk, and the stadium is about 2.4 miles off.
Outside the city
- Lambert House — 48 Sheriff Highway, Hedon, HU12 8HD. Not in Hull. It sits in the market town of Hedon, about six miles east of the city centre, and a car is essential: it is roughly 7.4 miles from Hull Paragon and about 8.5 miles from the MKM Stadium. What you get for that is a Grade II listed Georgian guest house with free parking, period character and big beds, in a quiet town rather than a city. There is no breakfast and no restaurant, check-in runs 15:00 to 18:00, and the house is unstaffed later in the evening. Choose it for the character and the parking, or for an early sailing from King George Dock, not as a sightseeing base.
The gap we would most like to fill is the Old Town, the Marina and the Paragon quarter, where we currently hold nothing. When that changes it will appear in the grid at the foot of this page.
