Striking though it is, it’s easy to think you’ve arrived at the wrong hotel as you make your way up towards the late Georgian townhouse on the picturesque and historical Eccleston Square.
Yet on entering, where you may expect to see staid furnishings and Victorian decorations, you’ll find smooth monochrome tiles, decadent black crystal chandeliers, and the sleek setting for London’s most high-tech hotel.
Thanks to a £6.5m refurbishment the 40-bedroom hotel will feature revolutionary gadgets, under floor water heating, and sleep-inducing technologies.
Each state-of-the-art bedroom includes a 46-inch 3D TVs, 3D Blue Ray, blue tooth iPod docks, free London calls, and VOIP phones. Other nifty gadgets include a fingertip control pad for room lighting, curtains, TV, soundtrack, electronic wake-up, and bedtime settings.
If it all sounds a little too complicated for you when you just wanted to catch up on some sleep, each room is fitted with one of the ‘world’s best beds’. At £12,000 each, these Swedish-made beds are electronically adjustable at a touch and even feature built-in massage programmes.
Indeed, good sleep and wellbeing are central to the design concept devised by Olivia Byrne, who recently completed a four-and-a-half-year course at the esteemed Ecole Hotelière de Lausanne in Switzerland. “The ethos of the Eccleston Square Hotel is quite simple,” she said. “We want our clients to leave the hotel feeling better than they did when they arrived.”
Into the high-spec marble bathrooms, which have a ‘hidden’ TV incorporated into the heated mirror, and the choice of taking a high-pressure massage showers or standing under the rainfall shower. Need a little privacy and the ‘smart glass’ between the bathrooms and the bedrooms turns opaque at the touch of a button.
A veritable tardis of modern design and in-room gadgetry, the Eccleston Square Hotel brings to London a 21st century city boutique hotel in a most unlikely setting. How very James Bond.
The hotel will be open from May 2011. Rates from £250 per room per night, excluding VAT
Eccleston Square Hotel, 37 Eccleston Square, London. SW1V 1PB
Enquiries: 0203 4891001/ Reservations: 0203 4891000
