Photographer: Philip Reed Shangri-La Hotel, At The Shard, London. Photo / Supplied
Earlier this year, a London hotel unveiled a penthouse suite with a nightly rate of $90,000 a night. Tamara Hinson checks into another one of London’s super suites to explore the appeal.
I’m not sure whether to be overjoyed or depressed that the gorgeous suite I’ve just checked into is larger than the two-bedroom house I own in Surrey, an hour’s drive south of London. Or, that at $13,490, the Shangri-La The Shard hotel’s London Suite costs around the same as my annual mortgage payments.
But in an era when a growing number of London hotels are rolling out suites with nightly rates of $10,000 and (much, much) more, it actually ranks as one of the city’s more affordable super suites. Bear with me here. London’s one of Europe’s most expensive cities, with some of the world’s costliest real estate. So is it really that preposterous that a 117sq m suite, in a hotel which is widely regarded as London’s best, comes with such a price tag?
Don’t get me wrong. I can’t imagine being able to spend $13,490 for a night in a hotel, but there are certainly plenty of people who can, and if I were to do so regularly, I’d probably plump for the London Suite. What I struggle to understand is the reasoning behind the truly extortionate costs of London’s newest super suites. Earlier this year, for example, the Mandarin Oriental Mayfair unveiled its Penthouse suite. The cost? $83,000 a night.
I’ve stayed at the Mandarin Oriental Mayfair, and it’s without doubt a lovely property. I didn’t stay in the penthouse suite; I’ve gazed up at it from street level and simply can’t fathom how the owners came up with the nightly rate. It’s not high enough for the views to be mind-blowing (in comparison, the London Suite at the Shangri-La at the Shard is located on the 38th floor), and there don’t appear to be any added extras to justify the price tag – which, given that guests can only check in after 3pm and must check out by midday, works out at around $9222 an hour.
To me, these eye-wateringly high nightly rates smack slightly of greed. Just because you can slap such a price tag on a room or suite doesn’t mean you should, no matter how many headlines result from doing so.
Book Claridge’s Penthouse suite, and your bill will be even higher – $134,000 a night. Yes, there’s a Steinway piano and some artwork by Damian Hirst (items which, judging by their prevalence in obscenely priced hotel suites, are increasingly seen as essential amenities by hoteliers), but the justification for the nightly rate is unclear. On a personal level, a Steinway piano would be wasted on me. But macrons, chocolate-covered strawberries and a chilled bottle of Veuve Clicquot, which arrived shortly after I checked into the Shangri-La The Shard’s London Suite? Sign me up.
But the other aspects that set the London Suite apart are the nods to the location. Without bragging, I’ve stayed in countless insanely-priced suites, including one at the Ritz Paris shortly after it opened. It was ridiculously opulent but still felt somehow identikit. Sure, gold-plated taps might do it for some, and the same might go for the bullet-proof windows (another amenity wasted on me because my name doesn’t, at least to my knowledge, appear on any hit lists), but what about nods to the location? There weren’t any. Not so at the Shangri-La The Shard, where my bedside table was piled with books about the UK’s capital. My favourites turned out to be Simon Phipps’ Brutal London, a photographic tribute to the city’s post-war architecture, Christopher Winn’s I Never Knew That About the River Thames, and Underground: Tales for London, a compendium of stories about London’s metro penned by 12 writers. In the bathroom, a huge bathtub was perfectly positioned to make the most of the views over Tower Bridge and the serpentine River Thames, while a telescope in the living room came in useful for identifying landmarks referenced in the London-themed literature.
The books are a reminder of the growing demand for suites that offer genuine insights into the destination. “In recent years, there’s recently been a real push to offer something that’s not just luxurious, but deeply personal and experiential,” says Kurt Macher, general manager at the Shangri-La The Shard. “Global travellers are no longer satisfied with just a beautiful room – they want something which tells a story, something which feels like it couldn’t exist anywhere else in the world. And London, with its rich history, international energy and world-class design, is the perfect city to bring that to life.”
Kurt’s reluctant to relay anecdotes relating to former guests who’ve graced the hotel’s most expensive suites (hardly surprising, when you consider they include royalty, heads of state and iconic pop stars) but I sense there’s no shortage of tales. “There are always stories,” he admits. “One that stands out is the guest who was attending a wedding in our ballroom. They were so enchanted by the chandeliers that they asked if they could take one of the crystals home as a memento. We couldn’t quite part with the chandelier, of course, but we did find a way to offer a special token that captured the spirit of the night!” As for me? While I’d love a telescope like the one in my suite, it wouldn’t quite fit in my suitcase. So I opted for the next best thing and snaffled something just as lovely – the pen by my bed (sorry, Shangri-La).
The journalist stayed courtesy of Shangri-La The Shard.