New Mondrian hotel gives boost to London’s tourism industry
Hospitality giants Accor and SBE have delivered a vote of confidence to the beleaguered UK tourism sector, announcing plans to convert Shoreditch’s The Curtain hotel into a stylish new Mondrian.
The 120-room hotel, which will undergo a comprehensive redesign, will open in the spring. It will be the sixth Mondrian globally and the first European property since it vacated its bankside hotel last year.
Accor and SBE have ambitious plans for the Mondrian brand, with nine hotels to open by 2022, including Bordeaux and Cannes – both slated for next year – and proposed sites in Australia, the Dominican Republic, Germany, the Maldives, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, in addition to the recently opened Mondrian Seoul Itaewon.
The new Mondrian Shoreditch London will include a restaurant headed up by Dani García, the Andalusian chef who was awarded three Michelin stars in 2018. It will also house a new version of Rumpus Room, the rooftop bar and lounge that attracted crowds to the old bankside property. The Curtain Members Club will continue to operate under its current name.
London’s hotels were allowed to reopen on 4 July but they have been hit particularly hard by strict new Tier 2 restrictions, which have discouraged both international and domestic travellers and mean their bars must close at 10pm.
Some have already been forced out of business, including The Ace in Shoreditch, while others fear they cannot survive continued restrictions.
There are some positive signs, however, with new openings this autumn including The Mayfair Townhouse, a conversion of 16 Georgian townhouses that describes its design philosophy as “Oscar Wilde meets Alice in Wonderland”.
Many London-based hotels that opened in the lead-up to the coronavirus outbreak are hoping to entice Londoners with a staycation on their own doorstep, such as Treehouse in central London, which we reviewed last week.