“The DoubleTree by Hilton, London Kensington has been rebranded from The Regency Hotel London, and re-launched as a luxurious four star hotel”
Crimson Hotels – www.crimsonhotels.com/dtkensington/
A Brief History of The Regency Hotel
The existing building is made up of 7No. 5-storey Georgian town houses dating back to the 1850s. The terrace first became a hotel in the 1940s – a perfect business decision considering the potential of the properties and their prominent position within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The original extension and refurbishment works began during the 1970s and 80’s, when additional rooms were built on the back of the property where the original mews stood. During the rebuild of the rear facade, 2 additional floors were also added to the rear of the front houses.
The nature of the Georgian building and the piecemeal extensions over the years, have unfortunately led to inefficiency in design and poor space planning; leaving lots of tall ceilings and small rooms.
Regeneration – A Fresh Mind
Crimson Hotels saw the unique opportunity to buy the property in 2015 and the acquisition was consistent with their focus on hotels in prime locations. They employed Morrison Design as the lead architect, to undertake the complete regeneration, re-modelling and re-branding to turn the existing Rengency Hotel into the DoubleTree by Hilton, London Kensington.
We began with a fast turnaround ‘re-branding phase’ in order meet the brand standards of a functioning breakfast room and bar and to ensure no loss of trading. Once complete, we then began the remodelling process, which started with the refurbishment and rationalisation of the basement and ground floor levels.
We stripped back the floor plans and began with some fundamental zoning. This helped us explore how we intended the spaces to be used and the relationships between zones. Through rationalising and revisiting the space planning of the existing floor plans, we achieved more suitably sized and scaled spaces that were better connected. These included a relocated entrance lobby, reception and bar and a new social space, kitchen and fully functioning gym. The existing internal courtyard was also transformed to house a new staircase link, 2No. terraces, a new front office and a double height Orangery space. All of which was in addition to the achievement of 26No. well planned additional guest bedrooms – all within the existing envelope.
This regeneration strategy and design approach will be applied to achieve the same high quality refurbishment throughout the 7 levels above with a completion date of late 2018. We also hope to finish the scheme with a 20 room roof extension, subject to planning permission.