Global Hotels

Corinthia London is a five-star West End hotel offering spacious rooms, an ESPA spa and fine dining restaurants, near Trafalgar Square and the River Thames.

Who goes?

Affluent business and leisure travellers. The five-star Corinthia has been a big success since its 2001 opening and draws a lively crowd to its grand bars, restaurants and event spaces.

Like The Hotelegraph on Facebook for the latest hotel news and reviews

Location

Close to the River Thames and Charing Cross railway station, this was once the majestic 600-room Hôtel Métropole, which opened in 1885. Requisitioned by the Ministry of Defence for much of the last century, it is in walking distance of numerous attractions – Trafalgar Square, St James's Park, the South Bank, the Houses of Parliament. Stay here and London really is on your doorstep.

Style/character

Shamelessly opulent. This is a hotel that wants to impress – and it succeeds. Get ready for fabulous chandeliers, intriguing modern art, palatial public rooms, a Daniel Galvin hair salon, a mini-branch of Harrods – oh, and there's also a magnificent four-floor spa with ESPA treatments and dazzlingly indulgent relaxation areas.

Service

Five-star – the staff are clearly motivated by working in a hotel that buzzes, although there can be lapses. A 24-hour check-in policy means rooms are available whatever time you arrive.

Rooms

The 251 rooms, some with river views, are warm and welcoming with restful beige and olive tones backed up with dreamy Hypnos beds, Loewe TVs and Italian marble bathrooms – some face into an inner courtyard. There are also 43 sumptuous suites plus seven penthouses.

Shangri-La at the Shard is a London Bridge hotel offering fabulous views, Asian design influences and excellent dining, close to Borough Market and London Bridge railway station.

Who goes?

First impressions hint that guests will be a mixed bag, partly because the hotel’s identity (a somewhat confused mix of familiar British and modern Asian) is unclear. Asian customers of Shangri-La hotels in China and the Far East, Brits from all walks of life admiring the view and perhaps popping the question. Weekends are particularly busy with guests enjoying a special night in the clouds. I may be wrong, but I doubt the hotel will become one of London’s great names, more a curiosity, but popular, nevertheless, for its extraordinary location.

Location

On floors 34 to 52 of Renzo Piano’s Shard, at 1,016ft the tallest building in Western Europe, made up of 11,000 glass panels (which do not touch, allowing the building to “breathe”) with 44 lifts. It takes just 26 seconds to travel from the hotel’s 35th floor lobby, so places of interest nearby, such as Borough Market and Tate Modern, are only minutes away.

Style/character

The interior of the hotel would be a challenge for anyone, given the nature of the building with its walls of glass and sloping structural pillars, but surely more imagination could have been brought to bear. Shangri-La have opted for the standardized ‘hotel group’ approach and decorated the public areas and bedrooms in formulaic, impersonal style. The result is certainly smart, with plenty of Asian touches, but its unimaginative combination of bland and bling is no match for the building itself and the carpets and chandeliers (especially in the private function rooms) are a particular eyesore.

Service

In general, despite the corporate approach to service, with attendant unctuousness and ushering, it's individual staff who save the day when it comes to creating an atmosphere in the hotel. There are Cockney porters on the door at ground floor level and Asian beauties behind the desk, and characters amongst the waiting staff, whose personalities are allowed to shine. Sommelier Anne Lomas, whose main cellar is kept three floors below ground level to which she sometimes has to nip for a special bottle of wine, orchestrated an excellent evening.

Rooms

All are configured differently, but furnished in the same bland style. Button operated black out blinds effectively keep out the light at night; if you keep them open you are likely to see many reflections, including of the occupants of the room next door, as I did, due to an unexpected design fault that has given the Shard a new name: the eyeful tower. Bathroom floors are heated and loos are of the Japanese variety, but I couldn’t make mine work.

Chiltern Firehouse is a Marylebone hotel offering charmingly retro interiors, polished service, excellent breakfasts and a Nuno Mendes restaurant popular with the likes of Cara Delevingne, Kate Moss, David Beckham and Kylie Minogue.

Who goes?

Media and entertainment, darling. The more ornamental and frivolous types can be seen in the restaurant; guests of the hotel tend to be at the top of their professions, and interesting, many American.

Location

Housed in a fire station dating from 1887, the building has huge charm. The street on which Chiltern Firehouse stands has been recently regenerated street and is now lined with interesting shops. Happily the traditional barber’s shop and the newsagent opposite have not been swept away, thanks to the help of Chiltern Firehouse owner André Balazs, also known for the Mercer and Château Marmont

Style/character

The original façade has been restored and the former ladder shed is now the guest lobby; the engine house holds the restaurant, with bedrooms above; and the newly constructed extension in between holds the horseshoe-shaped bar and a courtyard for outdoor seating. The whole is compact, but it works. The comfort and happiness of the guests have been given impressive thought and you feel it the moment you are ushered in by doormen straight from central casting (head doorman Matt McClure really is also an actor). The interiors, by Paris-based Studio KO, are timeless, homely, stylish, vintage and glamorous. You won't want to leave. Humour is there too: in the Ladies, ‘Cigarettes and Men’ is scrawled lipstick-style on a glass door; open it and you are in a cute smoking area.

Service

Superb: friendly, polished, relaxed, swift – just how we like it today. General Manager Guillaume Marly has the Ritz and Claridges behind him and has assembled an impressive team. Simplicity and directness is the key: no directories for ‘housekeeping’, ‘room service’, ‘reception’ etc; instead, a handwritten note by the bedroom telephone: “Dial 0 for everything”. Mind you, I’d still like area information in the room, currently missing. Perhaps a quirky, instructive, amusingly illustrated booklet that guests could keep as a memento of their stay.

Rooms

As is so often the case these days, all the rooms are decorated the same. However, at the Chiltern Firehouse, their decoration is so charmingly retro, sensible and domestic, yet stylish and original, that it matters far less than in other hotels. Looks and comfort wise, rooms are impossible to fault.

The Bulgari, in Knightsbridge, London, is a luxury hotel offering superb beds, charming service and an above average restaurant.

What on earth has happened to luxury? It used to be such fun; now it takes itself so very seriously. Back in the day, I remember adoring my occasional visits to London’s top hotels: drinking cocktails in the American Bar at The Savoy, dancing at The Dorchester, lunching annually with a beneficent godfather in the hushed surroundings of The Connaught, where British sobriety so perfectly met French culinary savoir faire. Even taking tea with disapproving aunts at Brown’s had a sense of occasion.

Now what? For me, only The Goring and The Ritz have retained the time-honed character that makes a prime London hotel more than just luxurious.

Take the  Bulgari, London’s newest enclave for the super rich. It’s bland. It’s humourless. It’s overpriced.

Bland? The lobby, deliberately meant to be more “des res” than “grand hotel” is stern, granite grey. There are acres of glossy sapele mahogany veneer, in public rooms, bedrooms, corridors. All 85 bedrooms are spacious, extremely comfortable and superbly kitted out, but they are all the same, their big excitement being bedheads and curtains based on a 19th-century Bulgari brooch design (the company started as Italian silversmiths) and the clever minibars that look like steamer trunks. The restaurant, down a swirling, gleaming staircase, could be on a cruise ship.

Humourless? Doormen in grey-black; porters in grey-black; robotic security men, pacing up and down, in grey-black; receptionists in grey-black. A group of women, dressed mainly in black, were taking tea, surrounded by designer shopping bags, but they weren’t smiling either. Yes, there are huge jars of children’s sweets in the lobby, and a cabinet of Italian cakes set out like Bulgari jewels, but they don’t help all that much.

But all is not lost. Far from its roots though Bulgari may be (the company is now part of LVMH, the vast luxury goods conglomerate, and its three hotels – in London, Milan, Bali – are operated in conjunction with Marriott) it is humans who steer this sterile ship, and despite their Men-in-Black exteriors, the hotel team, led by a true, old-school professional, Sylvain Ercoli, were natural and friendly and anything but oleaginous.

At dinner (overpriced; the £30 lunch is more affordable) we enjoyed ticking the list of options for our antipasti; my risotto alla Milanese with bone marrow was the business and Sam the sommelier generously extended his selection (mainly Italian) of by-the-glass wines in order to accommodate us. And the spa (see “Fiona’s Choice”) is seriously cool.

The hotel claims to be running at 92 per cent occupancy (14 per cent of its guests are from the UK) so someone must like its sleek and chic design. But as far as I’m concerned, you can keep modern luxury. Put the laughter back in luxury, I say.

Who goes?

Foreigners, including plenty of Italians, naturally. Lots of men in black with designer stubble and sunglasses and women surrounded by designer shopping bags, none seeming to be having much fun.

Location

Knightsbridge, a strange place these days, full of shaven-headed chauffeurs guarding their limos and bemused, footsore tourists plodding along to Harrods. The traffic is terrible and there are no decent views from the Bulgari. Perhaps it’s a fitting part of London in which to corral the super-duper rich who now inhabit the area; it certainly doesn’t feel typically London anymore, which it certainly once did.

Style/Character

Designed by Antonio Citterio and Partners, also responsible for Bulgari Milan and Bulgari Bali, the granite grey lobby is deliberately pared down to resemble a ‘des res’ rather than a grand hotel, but it only succeeds in feeling sombre, and the acres of too glossy sapele wood veneer are repetitive, while the sweeping stainless steel staircase to the restaurant reminds me of a cruise ship.

Service

Not in the least oleaginous, but professional and friendly, with some charming personalities behind the Men in Black exteriors (uniforms are grey-black throughout). The team is run by old school professional Sylvain Ercoli.

Rooms

It’s a shame that all the rooms are the same, their decorative highlight being headboards and curtains whose motif is based on a 19th-century Bulgari brooch, but they are certainly supremely comfortable and well kitted out with excellent marble bathrooms, Bulgari toiletries, and superb beds.