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‘the lack of advanced guest facilities meant that
the hotel and adjoining conference centre...wasn’t attracting the right corporate crowd’
AukettFitzroyRobinson and GallifordTry to demolish one of these (the Brassey Building) and replace it with banqueting and function facilities, meeting rooms, toilets, lifts and break- out areas at ground floor level, and bedrooms above. The new facilities would be complimented by a refurbished conference auditorium, bars and restaurants, improved bedrooms and an internal courtyard in the neighbouring building. Design Squared were responsible for the interiors. When I looked around, the Crowne Plaza was undergoing
final touches before its first guests – a wedding party - arrived three days later. Dozens of contractors, technicians and house- keeping staff scurried everywhere, hanging light fittings, setting out bedrooms and painting handrails. The hotel was covered head to toe in plastic wrap to keep the dust off.
That right turn takes diners and drinkers up a ramp past the
Snug Bar mostly intended for serving coffees in the day and the Mezz bar (so-called because it’s on a mezzanine) which will serve lunches. Further into the hotel, guests come upon the Brassey Bar,
a larger space and the main hotel bar, which has classic faded burgundy and beige leather sofas and chairs in a modern design. The main restaurant, the Brassey Restaurant, is a theatrical
space with gold pillars and panelling, swollen chequerboard maître d’s desk, high contrast artwork and curved white leather banquettes, and is to be the evening dining area as well as the main lunch and breakfast servery containing a buffet station. Staying guests turning left come upon the auditorium,
Yet there was no escaping the decor: bright reds, purples and pinks and high-contrast black and whites and mauves shone through everywhere. Derek Adams, director at Design Squared said bright colour
was a must due to the less-than-interesting 1970s building. “It’s important that the internal experience is memorable because the exterior isn’t,” he says. The whole of the new hotel’s offering, including service
levels, facilities and aesthetics has been developed to meet the exacting standards of Crowne Plaza, right down to the fact that slippers and bathrobes must be available in the bedrooms and signs must not hang from the ceilings. Circulation through the Crowne Plaza is cleverly separated
at the main reception desk into guests staying at the hotel (who turn left) and those visiting more casually (who are directed to the right).
breakout areas, business centre, and bars and restaurants in the refurbished block; and the ballroom, seminar rooms in the new block. Bedrooms are shared between the two. The new block has created 60 new bedrooms meaning that 197 are now available throughout the hotel. The quality of visitors’ stays in the rooms has also been
improved. Previously the dowdy bedrooms came in for heavy criticism on TripAdvisor and other review sites. Now, earning their four stars, they have been decorated in one of two colours schemes: silver and lilac and gold and warm grey and acces- sorised by crushed silk curtains, colour-matched wallpaper and funky details such as clear-Perspex tables and a starburst mirror above the headboard. The design seems overly feminine for the conference crowd,
I suggest, but Adams tells me that the palette has been chosen for its neutrality and that subdued colours had been chosen on
Left: Pool Right: Clubhouse
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