Inside $2B Peninsula London Hotel: Rooms at $2K
After a 30-year wait to find the perfect site, the luxurious Peninsula has finally opened right next to Buckingham Palace.
As Lui Chun boarded his Heathrow-bound plane in Hong Kong in September, his fellow business-class passengers probably didn’t pay much attention to the unassuming gent in casual black suit and Nike trainers. How were they to know that the opening of London’s first billion-pound hotel rested on his say-so?
Chun is a seventh-generation feng shui master whose family has been guiding the great and the good for about 900 years. And since the builders broke ground on Hyde Park Corner in 2017, he has visited Britain several times to advise the site’s owner, Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, on the flow of energy through what is now the eight-storey The Peninsula London.
Chun even suggested the opening date (September 12) for the £1.1bn ($2.09bn) property, and the purpose of his trip was to determine the precise minute the reception team should hand over the first room key to ensure good fortune.
Along the way Chun threw in style tips for managing director Sonja Vodusek (an Australian) – she should wear red for luck – and oversaw the contents of the time capsules placed within the marble lions that guard the entrances (they include a copy of The Times).
It is an example of the unmistakably Asian sensibility that filters through every aspect of a Peninsula property. This is one of the oldest hotel groups in the world, and probably the most stubborn – it spent 30 years looking for the perfect location for its London flagship, rejecting many addresses that other five-star hoteliers went on to develop.
It had to be a Belgravia postcode, near Buckingham Palace, the royal parks and the megastores of Knightsbridge. It is this considered approach that the hotelier believes will give it the edge over other super-luxury openings arriving on the London scene over the coming months.
So while the weight given to mysticism sounds more like a Paulo Coelho novel than the business strategy of a global company, it chimes with the Peninsula reputation for perfectionism bordering on obsession, and the London outpost – its 12th – doesn’t disappoint. The lift to Brooklands, its rooftop restaurant and bar, has been fitted out to look like the basket of a hot-air balloon taking you up into the clouds. And among the fleet of customised high-performance cars available to ferry guests about town is a 1935 Rolls-Royce Phantom Sedanca de Ville.
It underwent an eight-year restoration during which improved hydraulics, airconditioning and a champagne fridge were added (though not seat belts, which are not a legal requirement for classic cars). It takes a week to clean and polish after every outing.
Even the microgreens that garnish the lobster thermidor tart served as part of afternoon tea have a tale to tell: they’re carbon-neutral and are grown 33m below the busy streets of Clapham.
Such forensic finessing engenders equally fierce loyalty from a fanbase that includes chief executives, members of royal families and heads of state. There was a waiting list to be the first guest to check in, for example, with the lucky couple whisked to their suite at the Chun-approved, auspicious time of 10.58am.
I trail in four days later, the first journalist to spend a night in one of the 190 rooms, which are lovely; though their rates, not so much. The Peninsula Suite, which opens this year, will have its own screening room and fitness centre, and can interconnect with six other rooms on the same floor to create one super-suite of almost 1490sq m. Management hasn’t settled on a price for it yet, but I imagine it’ll be somewhere between “Who can afford that?” and “Is that a typo?”
Other suites start at £2800 and the cheapest room is £1300 including breakfast, though I can’t imagine paying for a full English would be a deal-breaker for its clientele who, on my visit, are mainly American, Middle Eastern or Asian. There are many families among them, as well as older couples and baseball-capped thirty-somethings who I decide must be tech entrepreneurs.
That £1300 gets you a serenely neutral sanctuary, with flashes of colour in the caramel and coral bayadere-stripe curtains and Barbie-pink leather armchairs. The beds make you feel as though you’re sleeping on a cloud and many rooms have killer floor-to-ceiling views over Wellington Arch and Hyde Park. Room 252 (from £1400) has an unobstructed eyeful of the Angel of Peace on top of the arch that is better than the view from some suites.
OCD touches include nail-dryers for emergency manicure repairs and a spa mode in the onyx-clad bathrooms that automatically switches on your “Do Not Disturb” sign.
Hotels such as this are never really about the bedrooms, though, and in fact a pew downstairs is nowhere near as prohibitively expensive. A £16 bowl of mac and cheese will secure you a table in the Lobby, where London glitters before you more spectacularly than at any of its five-star rivals. This room is bound to become a magnet for locals and visitors – not for its soaring columns, hand-drawn de Gournay murals, triffid-like parlour palms and enormous Murano chandeliers, but because (at the insistence of the chairman, Michael Kadoorie) the ground floor was raised a few feet above street level. This, combined with floor-to-ceiling windows, changes the perspective, giving diners a dramatic view of oncoming traffic.
The grandeur of Wellington Arch wrapped in an endless stream of cars haring around Hyde Park Corner’s six lanes is mesmerising, and the room’s soundproofing is so good you’re more likely to hear a champagne cork pop than an engine roar. Buses pass by so close that someone on the No 19 to Battersea Bridge could practically lean over and dip a toast soldier in your breakfast egg. Even better, just before 11am every weekday, members of the Household Cavalry and their trusty steeds trot directly past en route to Buckingham Palace. It is a magical, uniquely capital experience.
The floorshow inside is pretty engrossing, too. Hotel lobbies are all about the people-watching, and this one is vast and filled with light, and – crucially – has unobstructed sight lines for nosey parkers like me. My husband has to beg me to stop staring at the fabulous “What first attracted you to the millionaire …?” scenario a few tables down. Equally intriguing are the father and seven-year-old mini-me in matching suits and sunglasses.
Meanwhile, a steady crocodile of curious gawpers bump through the revolving doors and straight onto the main stage. Whether it’s a wild-haired jogger showcasing spaghetti legs in indecently short shorts or ladies who live to lunch, all are greeted by staff whose demeanour never dips below the delight level you’d more normally expect from a 12-year-old Swiftie meeting Taylor herself. Rooting this experience firmly in British eccentricity, a pianist and violinist provide a soundtrack of classical versions of pop songs; the Bee Gees’ How Deep Is Your Love is so bad it’s utterly brilliant. I’m in heaven.
Sadly, the feeling doesn’t last. Those airy dimensions don’t translate well past sunset and at night the Lobby becomes strangely soulless. Never mind. The speakeasy slinkiness of the 20-cover Little Blue cocktail bar and the low-lit exotic evocation of 19th-century Kowloon at the Canton Blue restaurant more than make amends, especially with an a la carte menu featuring excellent dim sum from £10 and fragrant seabass for £38, in a city where £200 tasting menus are now commonplace.
Brooklands, themed around the golden age of motor racing and aviation and fully opened this week, will elevate the evening vibe even further. The bar is inspired by the elegant interiors of Rolls-Royce and Bentley cars (I love the sofa levers to signal when more drinks are required) and has never-seen-before skyline views of the Walkie-Talkie (Fenchurch Building), the Shard, the London Eye and Big Ben. Meanwhile, the modern British restaurant, overseen by Claude Bosi of the Michelin-starred Bibendum, screams glamour. There’s a to-scale Concorde suspended from the ceiling, a huge terrace and an OTT cigar lounge. I didn’t need a puff to feel a little giddy.
All of which is useful, because The Peninsula will be up against intense competition as London enters an unprecedented luxury-hotel boom. The much-loved Mayfair grande dame Claridge’s was first to polish its pearls last northern autumn, revealing a subterranean spa and 72 sophisticated new bedrooms. Up the road from The Peninsula on Park Lane, The Dorchester is sparkling after its first significant renovation in 34 years; it will be completed with the unveiling of a rooftop restaurant and bar by the end of next year.
These storied institutions have unbeatable bragging rights. Claridge’s can gloat about the day Gandhi came to stay with a goat and The Dorchester can drop in how Prince Philip had his stag do there. American travellers in particular adore the heritage behind big hitters such as The Ritz and The Savoy. But owners of new-build hotels such as The Peninsula can rightly counter that spacious bedrooms designed for modern living, with state-of-the-art plumbing and technology, have their own appeal.
Since my stay at The Peninsula, Raffles at the OWO, the restoration of the Old War Office, has joined the battle, hoping to combine heritage and hi-tech. It has been transformed over six money-no-object years into a 120-room hotel by the family-run Hinduja Group. Everybody will want a photograph taken while touching the lions at the foot of its majestic marble staircase (dinky compared with The Peninsula’s grand statues), just like Winston Churchill used to do before walking up to his office. And who wouldn’t get a chill down their spine in its moody Spy Bar knowing that the ministry’s former interrogation rooms are nearby? In the fun stakes, though, its Whitehall location is more Theresa May than Boris Johnson.
While history buffs and old money may gravitate to the OWO, and a more international tribe might prefer the modernity of The Peninsula, many of us will never stay at either. But such high-profile launches keep London buzzing and provide swanky options for birthday drinks and anniversary dinners that are sure to keep the energy flowing, with or without the guidance of a feng shui master.
In the know
The Peninsula London has rooms from £1300 a night, including breakfast. An opening offer on deluxe rooms features flexible check-in and out times, from 6am to 10pm, use of a hotel car including a Rolls-Royce sedan, minibar with complimentary soft drinks, unpacking and packing service, and unlimited wi-fi.
Susan d’Arcy was a guest of The Peninsula London.
THE TIMES
