SIMON THOMAS
I’m on the board of the local BID [Business Improvement Districts - Ed.] and through them we’ve funded private police for the area to make it safer. I’m also on the chair of the Westminster Independent Advisory Group for the Met. And again, that’s community involvement in what they do and how they deliver their product. And we’re a really good neighbour for the whole area; we help corral and lead the area, all of which means that the area is cleaner, safer and better than it would be without us. All of that leads to a better customer experience for not just my customers, but anybody coming to the West End.
Matt: What does being here in the heart of London bring to the venue? Simon: A lot of pressure! I confess that when I started this off, I really was perhaps quite naive as to what it meant to be operating in one of the highest-profile buildings in one of the highest- profile areas of the world. The West End is amazing; it’s a fantastic combination of bars, restaurants, live entertainment, theatre, shopping, hotels and, dare I say, casinos. It’s an aspirational place for people to want to go to. And being possibly the highest profile building in the busiest corner of the West End, it certainly adds a lot of pressure, but that pressure also makes us work harder and deliver more. I suppose in a way the building has always had that role. When it opened in 1900 as an indoor circus, it set a new bar and a new level for entertainment. And then on to the Music
Hall era, Talk of the Town was one of the most famous places to go in London. And then Stringfellows nightclub - the top nightclub in the country - an absolutely brilliant, world-class nightclub. And now we’ve continued that tradition with what is often voted the best casino in the UK, the best casino in Europe, and has aspirations to be the best casino in the world.
Matt: Well the bar is set very high as far as the expectation for the Hippodrome experience goes, so what are you working on right now - because I know you very rarely sit on your laurels! Simon: We never stop. It’s funny because I thought that when they finally got the deregulation through, that that would be a point when we could actually stop and reflect. But it’s been a point when we’ve thought, right… now, where do we go next? And over the last few months we’ve taken a café unit on the front, reversed it, and turned it into a slots room. It’s up and functioning – though it’s not ideal yet. We’re just working through the final design plans to turn it into something really special. We’ve extended our Baccara lounge - that was finished two weeks ago - and we’re still working out how to use that space optimally. We’ve extended our Chinese restaurant because it is just going gangbusters. It’s a tiny little unit doing 2,200 covers a week, and it’s the top-rated Chinese restaurant in London on TripAdvisor. Paddy’s is up and running, but - like all these
things - it’s going to take us a full year to work out what events really work for us and which ones don’t. We had an extraordinary success - much more than we thought we’d have - with the Six Nations. Rugby players are really well behaved, and they drink a lot (and they bet!) which is just fantastic. It’s perfect, but we weren’t expecting to have that sort of impact in Paddy’s so early. We’ve got to work out the right events that we can create fantastic experiences around. Our partners, Paddy Power, are superb. They’ve got some really good talent, and they’re bringing people in, and we’re working out what’s best. Slots is fairly new to us; we have 80 slot machines to play with - lots of work to be done on that. The British market is quite small, and the machines are so complicated with all the different regulations we suffer. So part of it is it’s actually convincing manufacturers to go through the pain of making for the UK, but also we’re going to have a real push back at the regulators because they keep layering on and layering on regulations without actually saying in totality, do we need all of those layers, or can the same thing be achieved in the simple format? If we can actually get them to simplify the regulations, we’ll be able to get more manufacturers interested in converting their machines for the UK market, which clearly means we can give our customers a better experience with a wider range of products to play on.
APRIL 2026 9
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80
