In the deep recession the travel industry endured after the New York and Washington terrorist attacks in 2001, hotels in general suffered badly and upmarket properties suffered in particular.
This was as true of London as it was of New York or Paris. There was one distinguished London West End hotel which had the misfortune to open in the middle of this slump in business and was said to be charging budget level rates for its smart, spacious rooms. Almost certainly it was not the only one.
It was not, as Mike Mannix, Carlson Wagonlit Travel's director hotels solutions group EMEA, said a good time to own a five star hotel in London.
But times change. Such properties in London are now booming and have been according to hotel experts for well over a year. It has been a remarkable turnaround.
But what is even more remarkable is that while these smart establishments have been attracting growing numbers of guests, the progress of their budget rivals which have enjoyed a rapid and steady rise in the last five years, seems to be faltering.
According to the latest HotelBenchmark survey by Deloitte, hotels in London charging more than £160 a night (i.e. those in the four- and five-star category) have in the past year to April 2006 enjoyed a 7% rise in average room rates, a12% increase in occupancy and what Deloitte calls a "whopping" 20% growth in revenue per available room (revPAR).
It follows a report in February 2005 by the same consultants who found that in 2004, hotels in a similar category, the £160-£200 a night and which catered for the business traveller or conference delegate, had enjoyed a 15% rise in revPAR. They also had 77% occupancy.
In the 2005 report, Marvin Rust, Deloitte's hospitality managing partner, said that to achieve further growth would be "increasingly challenging." They appear to have done much more than this. Over two years this is some going.
PKF, another group of hotel consultants, have made similar findings about London. In March it reported that London hotels had had their best start to a year since 2000 with daily room yield up by nearly 10% in January, one of the quietest months of the year.
Hotels' occupancy levels also rose by 5.2% to 68.4% while average room rates rose by 4.5% from £95.71 in January, 2004 to £100.
Both Deloitte and PKF put much of these strong performances down to a growing number of business travellers or conference attendees.
But if London is enjoying a similar boom to New York, only Paris seems to be matching it in Europe, despite, like London, being seen as one of the world's most expensive cities. Reports from there suggest that its upmarket hotels are doing very good business. But it is not the same story across Europe.
Both Barcelona and Madrid, for example, have seen rates fall in the past year, according to Deloitte, because of over-capacity. The German market is still, as ever, prone to highs and lows.
That upmarket hotels in expensive cities like London and Paris are thriving suggests that these are still the cities that business travellers visit most frequently.
But does it also suggest something else, that despite what we endlessly hear about travel managers being under pressure to cut costs, they are now increasingly using these smarter establishments rather than the more modestly priced ones?
That perhaps the tight grip on travel budgets is being ever so slightly relaxed? Is it that cheaper flights, especially short haul ones in Europe, have given travel managers more latitude? Or that travellers, forced to spend nights away from their families, are having more say in their surroundings?
Hotel spend is often quoted now as being larger for many companies that short haul air spend. Perhaps a preference for five star accommodation is one of the reasons.
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