This September (2021), London’s Leicester Square will welcome the world’s first super boutique hotel, The Londoner. The much anticipated opening of this hotel is a monumental movement, not only for England’s capital but also global hospitality. The Londoner, part of the hotel group Edwardian Hotels London which is one of the UK’s largest family-owned hotel groups, boasts an impressive 350 rooms over 16 storeys. Within the hotel there will be a unique members club-style private area, numerous meeting and event spaces, a dedicated wellness centre and six different dining concepts making it a desirable hangout for both business and leisure clientele.
The Londoner is designed to capture the character of London itself, with winks and nods at every turn to British humour – flourishes ironically expected to appeal to both Londoners as well as international guests. Whilst super in scale, The Londoner’s boutique approach and commitment to hospitality offers an experience designed to make guests feel at home. From the opulent 200sqm Tower Penthouse duplex suite to the expansive Trafalgar Suites – covering 119 square metres and offering impressive living areas, kitchenette, and foyer – The Londoner offers the highest levels of luxury for those looking to entertain and impress. Stylistically focussed on traditional British sensibility and a minimal neutral palette, guestrooms at The Londoner seamlessly blend pleasure, style and business with floor to ceiling windows, fastidious detailing and the latest technology.
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Both the guestrooms and public areas of the hotel are home to an expertly curated roster of art pieces, breathing life and character into the hotel. The art collection throughout is a mixture of price points, mediums and genres and includes classic and contemporary pieces and those from emerging designers. A collaboration between Yabu Pushelberg, James Robertson Art Consultants and Edwardian Hotel London’s Krishma Singh Dear has resulted in this inclusive and varied collection that reflects the multifaceted and diverse character of London as a city. Heading up Edwardian Hotels London’s design team and having previously worked at Yabu Pushelberg, Krishma Singh Dear’s background provides the perfect bridge between the hotel group and its external partners across art, design and curation.
Prioritising guest experience above all else, The Londoner uniquely offers its guests round the clock access to its own private members club style space, The Residence. The 24-hour club, strictly for guests only, is hidden from the happenings of the wider hotel and features an exclusive collection of discrete spaces for relaxing, working and indulging. For intimate dining, The Residence’s Y Bar and The Drawing Room offers an à la carte menu and a curated reserve wine list, complemented by signature house cocktails. Guests will also be able to experience The Whisky Room, where a secret passage reveals an intimate 14-cover parlour, for guests to explore the world of whisky including the rare, renowned and the yet-to-be-discovered. Guests can also enjoy complimentary items from the moving Residence Cart – offering fresh breakfast delicacies in the morning and followed by Mediterranean antipasti.
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As well as offerings exclusively for hotel guests, The Londoner features several F&B concepts open to the public that honour and re-shape the legacy of the West End, all created by Amir Jati, Creative Director of Food & Beverage Service Excellence at Edwardian Hotels London. With over ten years’ experience leading Nobu’s global private dining and events team, Amir oversees all of the creative direction and operations across The Londoner’s food and beverage outlets. Located on the ground floor, The Londoner’s signature restaurant, Whitcomb’s, offers an escape to the Mediterranean and a morning-to-night destination where diners can experience a petit déjeuner, prix fixe lunch, a pre-theatre and an all-day dining menu featuring small plates and mains evoking the essence of contemporary French cooking, with influences from surrounding Mediterranean cuisines.
Radiating from the lobby of The Londoner is The Stage, featuring an all-day programme of food and beverage menus centred around the luxury, glamour, elegance and sophistication of its headliner, Champagne. The Stage’s offering brings about a fusion of classicism through coveted vintages, prestige cuvées and the finest ingredients with a cosmopolitan and modern attitude, fitting of The Londoner’s central London location and state of the art design.
Located on the corner of St Martin’s Street and Orange Street, is a neighbourhood drinking spot Joshua’s Tavern, specialising in terroir-led gintonicas. Joshua’s Tavern will be a new hub for the creative communities around Leicester Square and a watering hole for like-minded professionals. The drinks menu at Joshua’s Tavern will feature over 50 regionally sourced gins, with each going through a five-stage matching process. Led by The Londoner’s Head Mixologist, Pierpaolo Schirru, each match includes a unique combination of garnish, house-infused bitters and tonic, to harmonise, elevate and compliment the botanicals, led by the nuance of the spirits’ terroir.
Located atop The Londoner with a breath-taking view of the city is its decadent rooftop izakaya lounge, 8 at The Londoner. Presenting a palette of world-class modern Japanese cuisine, innovative mixology, and dramatic design, 8 at The Londoner is timeless yet contemporary, and will showcase a blend of the finest ingredients and expert traditional techniques, creating a sophisticated experience above the capital’s most iconic neighbourhood.
A convergence of wellness, physical fitness, and results-driven therapies, The Retreat will be The Londoner’s complete ecosystem for wellness. The Retreat merges best-in-class fitness, nutrition and nourishing therapies with other wellness practices, bringing a completely new style of holistic retreat and wellness destination to the West End. Conceived as a place where individuals can integrate health, wellbeing and the enjoyment of a luxury experience, The Retreat gives hotel guests and members a curated edit of tools so that they can look and feel their best: a private training gym, fitness classrooms for innovative weekly programming, 25m pool, barber, blow dry bar, nail bar and other modalities to offer a holistic approach to wellbeing.
Nestled within The Retreat is Refuel, a sanctuary offering a food and beverage programme designed to refresh, recharge and rejuvenate. Available to-go post-workout, perched at the bar or in a secluded cabana, the offering at Refuel will include detoxifying smoothies, beauty juices, nourishing body wraps, and Ayurvedic morning ritual bowls, among other delicious and vibrant options.
For larger scale events, The Londoner continues to lead amongst global hotels, offering a plethora of options to suit meetings and events of any size. The jewel in the crown of The Londoner’s events offer is the hotel’s Ballroom, a pillarless marvel in excess of 6,000 sq ft with capacity to host over 800 guests. Physically and technologically designed to adapt to any endless range of events from weddings to award dinners to conferences. The hotel is also home to a more intimate but equally versatile space, the Green Room, which is as suited to a corporate mixer as it is to a late night dance party. For more formal meeting spaces, The Londoner also is home to The Gallery – a network of seven private meeting rooms equipped with the latest technology, and each room named after London galleries with whom The Londoner has a personal relationship – including the National Gallery, Royal Academy and Somerset House.
As a brand-new build in the heart of London, The Londoner will employ pioneering methods of sustainable luxury and secured a £175 million Green Loan from HSBC UK, a first for the hospitality sector. The funding will be used to ensure the new hotel doesn’t just meet but exceeds the BREEAM Excellent category in building environmental and sustainable performance.
Rates start from £400 and can be book via www.thelondoner.com
