London has become Disneyland for the super-rich
I found myself feeling a bit emotional on Wednesday when I learned that London’s BT Tower had been sold to US-based MCR Hotels. It joins the ever-growing list of historically significant London buildings that have been snapped up by developers to be turned into luxury hotels, several of which have recently flung open their eye-wateringly expensive doors.
Anyone familiar with the London skyline will know the uniquely cylindrical, 581 foot BT Tower – or the Post Office Tower, as it was originally named – just south of Euston Road in Fitzrovia. If you were around in the late 1960s and early 70s, you may even have eaten in its 34th-floor rotating restaurant. But apart from the 360-degree full-colour LED information display installed at the top of it in 2009, initially providing a countdown to the start of the Olympics in 2012, it has become, at least to BT, a white elephant.
As a Londoner, I’m fond of it, so it has got me wondering how the project will pan out and whether ordinary locals, as well as less affluent tourists, will actually get to experience and enjoy it. Sometimes it feels like London has become Disneyland for the super-rich. Are too many heritage buildings becoming hotels for the wealthy elite? Professor Elizabeth McKellar, president of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, who, like the BT Tower itself, has a refreshingly 360-degree overview on the situation.
“In the case of the BT Tower, I think it’s very good news,” says McKellar. “It’s a really unusual building and probably fits hotel use better than it does residential or commercial. The importance of the BT Tower is actually its profile on the London skyline. That’s its most important element of historic interest – the view from Parliament Hill, the way you see it through the streets from a distance. But I also believe they will reopen the revolving restaurant to the public, which would be great.”
There is no denying these transformations breathe new life into buildings that have often been empty or underused for a long time. They also provide some form of public access to buildings that often had none. The Chancery Rosewood, due to open in the Eero Saarinen-designed former US Embassy on Grosvenor Square in 2025, is a prime example of this. Generally speaking, only members of the public renewing their US passports got to go into the building in its previous life, and they certainly didn’t get to see the nice bits. When it reopens with a new look by architect Sir David Chipperfield, it will have hotel rooms, five restaurants, six retail outlets and a spa.
The transformation of the Grade II-listed Edwardian Baroque Old War Office in Whitehall into Raffles London at the OWO has been one of the most scrutinised hotel projects in recent years. Unsurprisingly, given the historical importance of the building and its past inhabitants, which have included Horatio Herbert Kitchener, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and John Profumo. Today, it has 120 rooms (starting at £1,100 per night) and suites, nine restaurants, three bars and a Guerlain spa. It also includes a series of Raffles-serviced private residences. The hotel opens itself up to the public for 10 days each year, via a programme of free-of-charge heritage tours. On other days, mere mortals can expect to fork out £30 for a club sandwich or £80 for afternoon tea (plus 15 per cent service) if they want to experience the hotel.
The project, which cost over £1 billion, was a joint venture between the Hinduja Group, owned by the Hinduja family, which topped the Sunday Times Rich List in 2023, and a private investment group, Onex. The Hindujas consider the OWO a labour of love, in the neighbourhood and city they’ve lived in for the past 40 years and feel passionately about.
“We’ve tried to really ensure we’ve preserved what was there, to add value to it and draw in the local community,” says Shalini Hinduja, who oversaw the project and is the daughter-in-law of billionaire businessman Gopichand Hinduja. “We were very conscious that a new generation really has to feel welcome here, intrigued and interested, [via] great food and interesting art,” she says.
There is no doubt the Hindujas and their collaborators have done a beautiful job on the hotel, but not everyone has been happy. When planning permission was granted back in 2017, Lancaster Gate councillor Susie Burbridge was quick to point out there would be 85 residential flats but (unsurprisingly) no affordable housing, as council auditors said it was not viable for the site. “[...] We have to be able to turn to our consultants and say ‘OK, if it’s not viable, could you please tell us how we do make it viable?’” said Burbridge. The Hindujas did however donate £10 million towards Westminster’s affordable housing fund.
The fleet of heritage buildings-turned-hotels that have opened in the past few years includes the Ned (the former Midland Bank headquarters designed by Edwin Lutyens in 1924), Great Scotland Yard Hotel (once the home of the Metropolitan Police) and NoMad, housed in the Grade II-listed Bow Street Magistrates’ Court and Police Station. Current room rates for all three start at at least £300 a night and can reach a lot more – hardly accessible, especially when these prices often don’t include breakfast.
More are due to launch in the next 18 months, among them Six Senses, scheduled to open towards the end of this year in the fabulously Art Deco former Whiteleys department store in Queensway (the first department store in London, built in 1911). It will also feature private residences, restaurants and shops. Interestingly, the prospect of its arrival has garnered a range of reactions among locals, some of whom are relieved the entire building has not been given over to flats. There is also a sense it will lift the area, which has seen little investment in recent years. But this will inevitably see prices around it rise.
Another is the Admiralty Arch hotel, a project by the Reuben Brothers and Waldorf Astoria, in the extraordinary arched Edwardian landmark building through which you pass to get to Buckingham Palace, due to open in 2025.
“I think London is becoming more socially stratified,” says McKellar. “In a way it’s going back to the way it was in the 18th century, when West End estates were developed for the elite and actually gated. [This return] is not a good thing because cities are about interaction and lots of different things clashing up against each other, whether it’s people or [architecture]. ‘Mono-zones’ are not good for that; they lose their vitality.”
“There’s also the economic multiplier effect,” adds McKellar. “If everything is for the super-rich then prices go up, rents go up, the type of shops change and then the barriers reinforce themselves. So there’s a conflict between what’s good for the built fabric and what’s good for the social fabric.”
There is no question that taking on these historic buildings is not for the faint hearted and there are few individuals with the budget to do it. So unfortunately, perhaps glossy hotel groups with their international investors are the only ones who can even consider it.
“It takes a massive commitment to work on a building on the scale of these heritage London hotel projects,” says RIBA conservation architect Claire Truman. “You have to have serious financial backup to be able to do it. And once you get on site and start doing the work, you’re almost exposing the building to worse effects if the finance falls through or there are further problems. So financial stability to see it through is everything.”
