Hotels In London
History
Before the 19th century there were few if any large hotels in London.
British country landowners often lived in London for part of the year
but they usually rented a house, if they did not own one, rather than
staying in a hotel. Numbers of business and foreign visitors were very
small by modern standards. The accommodation available to them included
Gentlemen's club accommodations, lodging houses and
coaching inns.
Lodging houses were more like private homes with rooms to let than
commercial hotels, and were often run by widows. Coaching inns served
passengers from the
stage coaches
which were the main means of long-distance passenger transport before
railways began to develop in the 1830s. The last surviving galleried
coaching inn in London is the
George Inn which now belongs to the
National Trust.
A few hotels of a more modern variety began to be built in the early 19th century. For example Mivart's, the precursor of
Claridge's, opened its doors in 1812 but, up to the mid-19th century, London hotels were generally small. In his travel book
North America (1862), the novelist
Anthony Trollope
remarked on how much larger American hotels were than British ones. But
by this time the railways had already begun to bring far more
short-term visitors to London, and the railway companies themselves took
the lead in accommodating them by building a series of "railway hotels"
near to their London termini. These buildings were seen as status
symbols by the railway companies, the largest businesses in the country
at the time, and some of them were very grand. They included:
Many other large hotels were built in London in the
Victorian period. The
Langham Hotel was the largest in the city when it opened in 1865. The
Savoy,
perhaps London's most famous hotel, opened in 1889, the first London
hotel with en-suite bathrooms to every room. Nine years later
Claridge's was rebuilt in its current form. Another famous hotel, the
Ritz, based on its even more celebrated namesake in Paris, opened in 1906.
The upper end of the London hotel business continued to flourish
between the two World Wars, boosted by the fact that many landowning
families could no longer afford to maintain a London house and therefore
began to stay at hotels instead, and by an increasing number of foreign
visitors, especially Americans. Famous hotels which opened their doors
in this era include the
Grosvenor House Hotel and the
Dorchester.
The rate of hotel construction in London was fairly low in the quarter century after
World War II
and the famous old names retained their dominance of the top end of the
market. The most notable hotel of this era was probably
The London Hilton on Park Lane, a controversial concrete tower overlooking
Hyde Park.
Advances in air travel increased the number of overseas visitors to
London from 1.6 million in 1963 to 6 million in 1974. In order to
provide hotels to meet the extra demand a Hotel Development Incentive
Scheme was introduced and a building boom ensued. This led to
overcapacity in the London hotel market from the late 1970s to the mid
1980s. Construction then picked up again, but it was soon curtailed by
the recession of the early 1990s and the reduction in international
travel caused by the 1991
Gulf War.
The 1980s saw London (along with
New York)
start the trend of smaller boutique-style hotels. In the mid-1990s
there was a major proliferation of new hotels being opened, including
hotels of many different types from country-house-style hotels in
Victorian houses to ultra-trendy minimalist premises. At this time some
of London's grandest early-20th-century office buildings were converted
into hotels because their layouts, with long corridors and numerous
separate offices, were incompatible with the preference for open-plan
working, but their
listed status
made it hard to get permission to demolish them. This period also saw
the opening of the first five-star hotel in London south of the
River Thames,
the Marriott County Hall Hotel, and the first two in East London, the
Four Seasons Canary Wharf and the Marriott West India Quay, which is
also close to the
Canary Wharf development. For many years there were no hotels at all in the
City of London
even though the financial firms of the City were one of the London
hotel sector's most lucrative sources of custom. But in recent years
over a thousand hotel rooms have opened in the City. Budget hotel chains
such as
Travel Inn and
Travelodge have also been expanding rapidly in London since the mid-1990s.
One of the most expensive hotels in London is
The Lanesborough. Originally a private address (Lanesborough House) in 1733 it was converted into
St George's Hospital and began life as a hotel in 1991.
Hotels in modern London
There is no official registry of hotel rooms in London, but the
estimated number of hotel rooms in Greater London in 2000 was put at
101,269.
[1] According to figures produced in support of
London's 2012 Olympic bid,
there were more than 70,000 three to five star hotel rooms within 10
kilometres of Central London in 2003. Interestingly the main growth was a
huge rise in the number of rooms within the
City of London,
while Kensington and Chelsea actually had a small fall. This is
comparing figures since 1981. The main concentration of luxury hotels is
in the
West End, especially in
Mayfair.
London's five star hotels are quite small on average by international
standards. The largest has only 494 rooms and nine of them have fifty or
fewer. The range is very wide, including:
- Traditional purpose-built grand hotels such as the Ritz, the Savoy and the Dorchester.
- Recent conversions of grand late 19th and early 20th century office
buildings into hotels such as One Aldwych and the Renaissance Chancery
Court.
- Townhouse hotels such as 13 Half Moon Street.
- Modern purpose-built chain hotels such as the Four Seasons London and the London Hilton on Park Lane.
- Modern boutique designer hotels such as the St Martins Lane Hotel.
Currently the most profitable hotels and those with the most
consistently high room occupancies are hotels around the 5 major London
airports.
Heathrow and
Gatwick are performing the best and becoming meeting and conference centres in their own right.
[citation needed]
2006 was the year that environmentally friendly hotels started to
become a marketing tool. Among the first to achieve certified levels
were the Novotel London West and all the Marriott properties in the
capital.
[citation needed]
By the end of 2006 the boom in branded hotels which started around
2002 was well under way, with branded rooms accounting for around 70% of
available accommodation at 71,000 rooms.
[citation needed]
2007 saw the start of a building boom for purpose built hotels in the
lead-up to the 2012 Olympic games in east London. Hotels are planned
throughout London including at the new Wembley Stadium and around
Docklands area. Many of these will be in the 4 and 5 star bracket
supplementing the 2/3 star boom already ongoing with the likes of Ibis
and Premier Travel Inn.
List of Five-Star Hotels in London
There are no official bodies that rate hotels. Most widely accepted bodies are the AA
[2]
(in the past the RAC too) and the English Tourist Board. The ETB have
recently changed their criteria to match that of the AA to provide
consistency. Many hotels remain self rated.
[3]
Other notable hotels
- One of the more unusual hotels was the Sunborn Yacht, a floating
hotel by the Excel centre in East London and constructed specifically
for that purpose (it had no engine). The yacht was sold to the Lagos
government to be replaced with a larger yacht at the same berth.
- The 3 star 1,630 bedroom Royal National Hotel in Bloomsbury is the
largest hotel in the United Kingdom by number of rooms, with 1,271.
- The Hilton London Metropole in Paddington is the largest 4-star hotel in London and the United Kingdom. It has 1,058 bedrooms and extensive conference facilities.
- The Russell Hotel in Russell Square, Bloomsbury, which dates from 1898, has one of the grandest exteriors of any London hotel, but it is rated 4-star.
- The Guoman Tower Hotel (formerly Thistle) near Tower Bridge
is one of the largest hotels in London with over 800 bedrooms, and is
regarded by some as one of the ugliest and most insensitively located brutalist buildings in the city. However others find its location by St Katharine Docks and the Tower of London as quite relaxing and scenic.
- In 2005, planning permission was granted for the creation of a new hotel at St Pancras railway station. This will incorporate parts of the former Midland Grand Hotel, probably the most spectacular hotel building ever constructed in London, which operated from 1873 to 1935.
- The Regent Palace Hotel, which was located on the northern side of
Piccadilly Circus, closed in December 2006. Notable as having been
Europe's largest hotel in terms of rooms numbers (1028) when it opened
on May 16, 1915.
- worlds largest floating hotel will arrive in London in 2012.[4]
Events
After the
2006 transatlantic aircraft plot
London hotels showed a drop in average room rate growth and occupancy
growth. However this was not as steep as might have been expected since
figures were compared to the previous years figures which were
themselves affected by the
July 7th London bombings
of 2005. It is thought without those circumstances the real drop would
have been something in the region of 20-30%. Strangely while figures
showed a drop in bookings some major chains such as Intercontinental
reported strong demand for hotel rooms in London as passengers became
stranded in London unable to get a flight.
[5]
In November 2006, several hotels were subject to checks for radiation after former Russian spy
Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned with
Polonium-210.
Most seriously affected was the Millennium Mayfair where 7 members of
staff were found to be contaminated with low level radiation.
November 2006 was also the month Dhiren Barot was sentenced by a
British court to serve at least 40 years in prison for planning to cause
explosions in London Hotels amongst a list of targets which also
included the New York Stock Exchange and the World Bank.
January 2007 saw the first use anywhere in the world of Cryonite technology
[6] to kill bed bugs (freezes pests using a patented carbon dioxide snow) at a top London Hotel (unnamed).
In February 2010, a murder took place in the Landmark Hotel, one of the most expensive hotels in London.
[7]
Facts
In March 2007 some of Londons' best known hotels were considered a
“serious danger to health” by environmental inspectors. The hotels were
the Savoy, the Halkin, the Langham and the Dorchester.
[8]
In March 2011, London Hotels were the 8th most expensive in the world.
[9]
References
- ^ A report on London's hotel industry prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Mayor of London in 2001
- ^ 5 star hotels ratings
- ^ 5 star hotels list
- ^ floating hotel
- ^ benchmark figures
- ^ "bedbugs"
- ^ murder in hotel
- ^ Top London hotels pose health hazard - 26 March 2007 - CatererSearch
- ^ http://www.bighospitality.co.uk/Trends-Reports/London-hotels-rank-8th-most-expensive-in-the-world
Five Star Hotels
Common standards for hotel and guest accommodation
Hotels or guest accommodation assessed by the AA are rated under a
set of common quality standards agreed by the AA and the UK tourist
authorities (VisitBritain, VisitScotland and VisitWales).
The common standards make types of accommodation easy to understand
and give you confidence that establishments can meet the standards you
require.
Accommodation is assessed under three broad categories: Hotel, Guest Accommodation and Budget
Hotel.
Hotel categories
| Category | Description |
| Hotel |
A formal accommodation offering full hotel service |
| Country House Hotel |
A hotel with ample grounds or gardens set in a rural or semi-rural situation; the property has an emphasis on peace and quiet.
|
| Small Hotel |
Smaller establishments having a maximum of 20 bedrooms, and personally run by the proprietor |
| Town House Hotel |
A high-quality property of distinctive style with a maximum of 50
bedrooms, set in a town or city centre; possibly no dinner but room
service is available instead. |
| Metro Hotel |
A town or city property providing full hotel services except dinner, close to a range of places to eat. |
Guest accommodation categories
| Category | Description |
| B&B |
Accommodation provided in a private house by the owner for up to six paying guests. |
| Guest House |
Accommodation for more than six paying guests, with the owner and staff providing more services, eg dinner. |
| Farmhouse |
B&B or Guest House accommodation provided on a working farm. |
| Inn |
Accommodation provided in a fully licensed establishment. The bar
will be open to non-residents and provide food in the evenings. |
| Restaurant with Rooms |
A restaurant offering a maximum of 12 bedrooms |
| Guest Accommodation |
Any establishment that meets the minimum entry requirements can choose to use this general category. |
Self catering
Self catering accommodation is the provision of living accommodation
for fixed term rental for holiday and business purposes. The normal
letting term is one week; however shorter and longer periods may be
arranged.
To be appointed by the AA, properties are required to undergo a
quality based assessment and must achieve the minimum entry requirements
as detailed in the AA's self catering quality standards. Appointed self
catering properties are awarded classification on a scale to one to
five stars.
