It’s 11am on a Wednesday and I’m gradually getting into an elusive workflow state on my laptop. The coffee supply is plentiful, the ambient volume is low, the desk set-up is perfect and the air-con is pumping out a consistent, gentle breeze. I’m on a WFH day, you see, but that’s working from hotel, not home.

I’m at Four Seasons Tower Bridge in the palatial Chaucer Suite, which is roughly three times the size of my west London flat — with infinitely better climate control. On my lunch break, I’m planning to check out the hotel’s similarly vast subterranean spa for a swim and sauna session. When the work day is over I’ll surrender to the pull of a martini at the newly opened Cooper’s Cut steakhouse.

This is an epicurean take on a growing trend for Londoners to decamp to the comfort of a hotel room while working remotely. “Demand for flexible places to work is rising as both working habits and weather patterns change,” says Timothy Wright of ATworld, a membership app that offers access to hotels, work-friendly cafes and co-working spaces.

“The demand is being driven by workers, but hotel operators are also recognising the opportunity to turn underused space into a new revenue stream.” Wright says that ATworld’s London network is expanding rapidly as heatwaves “become a more regular feature of modern life”.

Full disclosure: I’m staying at Four Seasons Tower Bridge overnight, but there are plenty of London hotels opening their doors to guests who are checking in and out on the same day. One of the most recent converts is Marriott, which has introduced “day let” bookings at five of its outposts across the city (Waterloo, Marble Arch, Kensington, Regents Park, Maida Vale). A room can be yours from 9am to 5pm, with rates starting from £119.

Yotel London City, meanwhile, is offering a £10-a-day working pass that includes unlimited hot drinks and 20 per cent off other food and drinks in the hotel restaurant. Yotel’s chief executive Phil Andreopoulos says that the most popular days for bookings are Mondays and Fridays, and that it’s especially popular with people working across different time zones.

Booking a hotel for the day isn’t a novel idea, but platforms like Dayuse, which allows users to book rooms by the hour, are enjoying renewed relevance. Most of the London properties on there are cookie-cutter chains and/or vaguely sleazy, but there are some winners, including Treehouse London, the soaring hotel at the end of Regent Street. There are also the London outposts of the ever-reliable Hoxton hotels (in Holborn, Southwark, Shoreditch and Shepherd’s Bush).

Are hotels kicking overnight guests out early to make space for the growing WFH camp? It would explain why check-out times seem to be getting so obnoxiously early. The Hoxton says that its “small allocation of day use rooms”, which are available from 10am to 5pm from £154, can be increased or reduced “according to occupational capacity”. The standard checkout time, meanwhile, is midday, though this can be extended for an extra fee per hour until 4pm, again depending on availability. It must be a logistical nightmare to organise.

Perhaps that’s why they’re keen to direct guests towards the co-working space within their Southwark hotel. This costs £45 per day, which will get you a desk with a wireless phone charger, plus bottomless tea and coffee.

Not bad, but it’s more fun, in my book, to try a different kind of WFH: working from a luxe hotel lobby. You get the comfortable airconned benefits of a hotel but lose the continuous ordering pressure of working from a cafe. I don’t want to be a drain on this city’s fine hotels, but can you blame me for seeking solace from the inferno that’s raging outside? Working from home is becoming untenable and productivity is at stake. These kinds of articles don’t write themselves.

So, a few rules for those looking to join me in the quest to WFL (work from lobby). The first is to dress the part — it’s the respectful thing to do, it will help you blend in with fancy hotel guests, and it could even give you a little productivity boost. The second is to show up with full charge — nobody likes a plug socket w***er and looking for one might be the quickest way to get yourself kicked out.

As for where to head, I’ve worked undisturbed for hours at a time from a quiet corner of The Marylebone hotel, ordering water and a couple of coffees along the way. I even got away with a few hours in the sceney surrounds of the St. Clement, Soho House daddy Nick Jones’s new opening at 180 The Thames. But it’s a bit too intimate to fly under the radar there for long.

Back at Four Seasons Tower Bridge, before I checked into the opulent Chaucer Suite I took up residence in the Rotunda bar and lounge, which served as a pretty spectacular office for a few hours. Ambient jazz tinkles in the background and you can get a coffee and a pastry for £11, which sounds eye-watering but is actually only marginally more than an average Pret breakfast.

More to the point, it buys you a good chunk of uninterrupted work time that will make your overheating flat feel more and more like a distant, sweaty memory.