It is highly unusual for a top hotel in Central London to be a new build, and it is not every day that a new Peninsula opens. This is only the chain's 12th property in its 157-year history, which equates to roughly one every 13 years. The newly built Peninsula London began welcoming guests after a soft opening on 12th September, realising a dream three decades in the making.
Its location is rather special. Sir Michael Kadoorie, whose family opened the original Peninsula Hong Kong back in 1928, spent more than 30 years patiently waiting for the perfect spot. He ultimately found it when the former English building company McAlpine sold him their headquarters overlooking Wellington Arch. Kadoorie secured permission to demolish that old HQ and, in its place, erected a brand-new, cream-coloured, eight-storey building, which now houses 190 hotel rooms, 26 residences and a two-floor subterranean spa.
Designed by the world-renowned architect and interior designer Peter Marino, the hotel boasts an expansive inner courtyard and a triple-height lobby restaurant for all-day dining and afternoon tea. At the top of the building sits a signature restaurant called Brooklands, helmed by the Michelin-starred chef Claude Bosi, alongside Canton Blue, which offers a culinary voyage celebrating the maritime spice-trade routes that once connected Britain and Asia. As at the Peninsula Paris, there is also a choice of cocktail bars, an exclusive cigar lounge and several luxury boutiques.
The rooms and suites range from 53 square metres up to the modular Peninsula Suite on the sixth floor, which includes a private terrace, a cinema and a gym, plus an optional entertaining suite and as many as seven further bedrooms should a guest wish to take over the entire floor. All 190 rooms and suites feature original artwork on a Royal gardens theme, luxurious bathrooms and dressing rooms with built-in wardrobes, raised luggage racks, Dyson hairdryers and futuristic nail dryers.
A particularly thoughtful touch is the special valet box near each door, where guests can leave laundry or anything they want removed from their room, and where staff can deposit newspapers or room-service items without disturbing them. With a 25-metre indoor swimming pool and a reported cost north of 1.2 billion USD, the Peninsula London arrives as a genuinely state-of-the-art addition to the capital's hospitality landscape.
