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Intercontinental's Next London Hotel: Way Better Than We Thought
When it was announced this weekend that Intercontinental were opening up a second hotel in London, we weren’t too excited.
For one, we’re not the biggest fans of the Park Lane branch - totally lacking in fizz, if you ask us. For another, the location they’ve chosen - Queen Anne’s Chambers in Westminster is a place we used to pass most days on our way to work, and it always seemed like more of a commuter ratrun than somewhere you’d actually want to stay. Also, it’s next door to police HQ New Scotland Yard, and that made us feel a bit queasy too.
But to give it a fair hearing, we popped over to see the building site today – and we take it all back. Intercontinental Westminster has the potential to be a fabulous hotel.
For a start, it’s not as small as it looks from the façade in the picture here. Because that’s just the front façade. The hotel’s actually going to take up four buildings, across three streets. Yup, three: Broadway, where the entrance will be, along a block of Tothill Street and down Dean Farrar Street round the back. Think of it as a triangle shape, with all the space in the middle belonging to the hotel as well. It sounds fantastic.
Tags: O2 Hotels / Hotels-Near-O2 / London Hotels / Luxury Hotels / Paul McCartney / → All Tags
Where to Stay When Paul McCartney Plays in London on December 22
Are you one of the lucky people who bagged tickets to Paul McCartney at the O2 on December 22? We want to wrestle them from your hands are really pleased for you. So pleased that we’ll even help you out with where to stay.
But first, a little tutorial on how to get to and from O2.
If you’ve been to the O2, you’ll know it’s in the back end of beyond - otherwise known as North Greenwich. As such, there aren’t really any hotels on site (and if there were, you probably wouldn’t want to stay there – you want happy memories of Macca, after all). Do not fear though, because the place is linked up extremely well with the rest of London.
What’s crucial is that you don’t go by car. Yes, Macca probably will, but he’ll likely have a police escort or something. You, as a mortal, will find it trickier. We tried to drive to the O2 from central London once and it took two hours and a relationship-testing argument. We could have walked in that time.
Public transport links are excellent, though. The easiest, and most fun way, is to get a boat down the Thames with Thames Clippers. They run a special O2 Express service from Waterloo Pier, in front of the London Eye, to the QEII Pier at the O2, which they lay on for special events – like Macca. A return journey is bookable a month before the event, costs £12, and although it’s pricey, it’s very classy – everyone gets a seat, thanks to safety regs, and you can get champagne with your ticket for £7.50 more.
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'Pay Attention If You're Winning': The Silent Slot Machines at The Ritz London
The Ritz Club inside The Ritz London in Piccadilly Circus is a members-only club that features a swank old-school bar, an award-winning restaurant and get this, a casino that's open daily from 2pm to 6am. 6am!
There's an annual membership fee but if you're a guest of the hotel and you're over the age of 18, you can pop into the Ritz Club to hang out, completely gratis.You can even bring along up to six guests, which is an excellent perk for business travelers. (We're not so sure six of your rowdy 18-year-old friends would be very welcome.)
The dress code is simply "smartly dressed", no topcoat and tails needed but gentlemen guests are asked to wear jackets while dining.
Yet there is nothing casual about the Ritz Club. It is a lavish, gilded space that evokes the grand Edwardian casinos of Europe. Think chandeliers, heavy drapes, elaborate rug patterns, uniformed staffers, more chandeliers and more heavy drapes.
Tags: Checking In On / Hotel Renovations / Hotel Reopenings / Fairmont Hotels / London Hotels / Luxury Hotels / → All Tags
The Savoy Will Finally Reopen In April Or May Next Year
If it seems like years since The Savoy closed its doors for its £100m restoration, that’s because it, um, is. It closed in December 2007, and was supposed to reopen 16 months later, but of course, 16 months in hotel speak is double the length of normal human time.
But, hallelujah, it looks like we’re coming to the end of the process - Fairmont just announced that they expect it to reopen in Spring 2010. And when we quizzed them what counts as spring, they said April or May. Here’s hoping!
We’re not sure what’s taken all the time up, but they’re adding a new two-bedroom Royal Suite, "remodeling" the River Restaurant, "relaunching" the River Suites, and adding a new bar, the Beaufort, and a rooftop swimming pool. Dare we hope it’s an infinity pool overlooking the Thames?
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Lady Gaga Gets Her Game On Underground at Andaz London
Our first thought when we saw these pictures from Lady Gaga’s latest photoshoot: ah, the rapier wit strikes again.
But when we looked beyond the blinding symbolism of a Hello Kitty chastity belt covering her bitsies, we spied something rather familiar. “Why, isn’t that the underground Masonic Temple in the bowels of Andaz London?” we asked ourselves.
So we asked the folk at Andaz. And yes, it is.
Tags: Hotel Cocktails / Hotel Bars / London Hotels / Guoman Hotels / → All Tags
Cocktails Are Cheap If You Make Them Yourself at The Cumberland
We’re liking Guoman Hotels’ "cold weather means booze" approach this winter. Last week they announced the launch of their charity cocktails at their four London hotels; this week, it’s the news that The Cumberland are starting up private mixology classes at their trendy Carbon Bar.
Hoxton Pony founder and BBC mixologist Andy Pearson is the man behind it again – he’s devised the classes and "trained the bar team" (though we hope they wouldn’t need much training, what with being professional cocktail mixers in the first place).
Anyway, sign up and they’ll whip through the history of cocktails over a Bellini, before letting you loose on eight cocktail recipes: four classic, four contemporary, including the gin-filled Park Lane, that’s launching this November in aid of Help for Heroes charity.
It costs £75 per head – which sounds like a pretty good for eight cocktails to us – and you’ll need six of you to book it. Available Tuesday to Saturday, day or night – they take place upstairs in the VIP area. To book, call bar manager Ben Martin on +44 207 479 5050.
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Did a Practice Session in the Hotel Ballroom Cause Tampa Bay to Lose the Game?
The weather in London isn’t quite on a par with the weather in Florida, as the poor Tampa Bay Buccaneers found out to their cost this weekend. According to the St Petersburg Times, the Bucs had to practice for their NFL Wembley gig against the New England Patriots in the ballroom at the Intercontinental Park Lane because it was too wet to hit the turf at Wembley itself.
NFL officials did offer them a room at Wembley to practice in, but they stuck to the ballroom – which holds up to 750 people, and, according to the hotel website, features “natural daylight through floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Park Lane and the Royal Parks”. Perhaps they were hoping for a little more grace on the pitch, too.
It didn’t work, unfortunately – the Pats thrashed them 35-7. Still, it’s not every day you get to exercise within spitting distance of Buckingham Palace is it, chaps? That’s something to tell the kids. Maybe.
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The May Fair Was a Hit With the Celebs Last Night
Last night was quite the starfest for the May Fair Hotel last night. 50 Cent was staying there, in between driving round London in a Rolls Royce and racking up £75k bar bills.
Footballers Ashley Cole and Rio Ferdinand were there as well – they produced the film Fiddy was there to promote. And so was Mel B, who was in town for the launch party of British Airways’ direct London-Vegas flights.
Looks like Mel is on the hotel’s ambassador scheme which lets celebs stay at hugely reduced rates in return for plugging it and being photographed at it. And boy does this woman give them their money’s worth. Not only did she step out in two spangly dresses (she hit the film premiere before the BA party), but last time she was there, she was photographed groping her friend in the bar. Nice work lady! Something tells us she’s got a free bed for life there. We like to think it’s the pink Schiaparelli suite.
Tags: Hotels Doing Good / Hotel Bars / Guoman Hotels / London Hotels / Hotel Cocktails / → All Tags
Get Drunk for Charity at London's Guoman Hotels
We’ve had London hotels getting literary, arty, and now it looks like they’re getting a conscience. Guoman Hotels, which owns four in the centre of town – the Royal Horseguards, The Cumberland, Charing Cross and the Tower – have commissioned one of the UK’s top mixologists, Andy Pearson (co-founder of the ever-trendy Hoxton Pony), to create a new list of cocktails for their hotels. And 100% of the profits will go to charity.
The charities in question are The Household Cavalry’s Charitable Fund and Help for Heroes, both of which help injured British servicemen. And the drinks? There’s one for each hotel. The Cavalry Cocktail at The Royal Horseguards has port, cognac, Grand Marnier and burgundy (a recipe for a hangover if ever we heard one), and the Tower Cocktail (at the Tower Hotel, obvs) mixes Beefeater gin (Beefeaters live at the Tower of London next door, see?) with nutmeg and comes served in a jewellery box, like the Crown Jewels.
Tags: Hotel Openings / Eco-Hotels / London Hotels / Luxury Hotels / Geek Hotels / → All Tags
An Eco-Hotel For London's New Left Bank
Watch out Paris! You may be all smug with your Left Bank but you have a pretender to your throne. London is about to get its own Left Bank.
Ok, so maybe the French shouldn’t be doing any boot-quivering yet. Because the London’s Left Bank is currently under construction, and is going to be tucked away in Battersea, in south-west London. And last time we were in Battersea, there wasn’t a whole lot going on. At all.
Still, the new Hotel Rafayel on the Left Bank is hoping to up the vibe, and it sounds pretty nice. Opening in December, it’s going to be a five star hotel complete with bakery, champagne bar and Thameside restaurant. So far, so yawn – except this is going to be an eco hotel with rain-water harvesting system, energy-efficient air con and low energy lighting. Which doesn’t sound that impressive, until they say that the carbon footprint of each hotel room will be a whopping 75% less than the London average.
Tags: Celebrity Scoop / Johnny Depp / London Hotels / Budget Hotels / → All Tags
Johnny Depp is Coming to Hoxton, Will He Stay at the Hoxton Hotel?
Just how great is Johnny Depp? Very great. So great in fact that he is, according to Spoonfed, “negotiating a one-off performance” with indie band Babybird in the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen on November 12.
Where might he be staying? Well there’s only one option round that way: the Hoxton Hotel, so if he wants to make a night of it, he should probably stay here. In fact, we like to think he snapped up one of the £1 rooms in the sale this month and decided to throw in a gig as thanks to the people of Hoxton.
Whatever. Rooms for 12 November are costing £184.98 at the moment, which sounds a bit steep to us (we said when we stayed there that we’d pay up to £120). But then, a potential glimpse of the Deppster in the bar is probably priceless.
[Photo: Blogamole]
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Go Culture! Andaz London's Reader In Residence is Up for an Award
Apologies in advance for the fact that we bang on about Andaz London’s Reader in Residence service a lot but here in a way we’re kind of feeling vindicated.
Not only has it seemed to kickstart a whole load of other artistic endeavours in the capital, but last night it was nominated for a rather big award: the Lloyds Arts & Business Innovation Prize.
The prize rewards “unique projects that expose brands to new markets, deepen audience engagement and develop new audiences”. Well it’s definitely done that – the London social scene doesn’t exactly revolve around hotels but R-in-R Damian Barr definitely pulled in the trendies for his open book sessions. In fact, he’s done so well with that and a Literary Salon that he runs at Soho House that he’s now starting up his own country retreat reading holidays.
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