Premier Hospitality

Wyboston Lakes Hotel

Wyboston Lakes Hotel
Written by Roma Publications

Overnight success for hotel’s bedroom refurbishment

Wyboston Lakes Hotel

Luxury, comfort and practicality are the keynotes of a ÂŁ1 million bedroom refurbishment project just completed and already being commended by guests at the Wyboston Lakes Hotel in St Neots.

The project, which involved the refurbishment of 64 bedrooms and a suite in the hotel’s Atlantic wing, was designed to provide accommodation for the leisure and independent traveller.

“We have had very good and positive feedback from guests staying in the refurbished rooms,” said Mark Jones, managing director of the Wyboston Lakes Hotel.

Situated midway between Cambridge and Milton Keynes and set in 380 acres of rural countryside, Wyboston Lakes Hotel is a privately owned business and one of the largest leisure destinations in northern Europe. It is home to the award-winning Waterfront Restaurant, 406 bedrooms, an 18 hole, par 70 golf course, a health club featuring the latest equipment, an exercise studio, a spa, and a land and watersports centre.

Main contractors for the bedroom refurbishment project were CLC; architects were Butterscotch Design, whose brief was to create a concept that would offer a luxury feel, as well as comfort and practicality.

Wyboston Lakes Hotel

Earlier in the year sample bedrooms were created in the new designs, and after receiving 138 guest reviews, re-designs were created to ensure the best experience when staying at Wyboston Lakes.

CLC Group were chosen as they were able to demonstrate their capability of working in live hospitality environments whilst providing a condensed program of works. This allows refurbished rooms to be available to guests sooner with less disruption to other hotel guests and visitors.

The project commenced with the complete strip-out of the bedrooms, and included re-plastering, the installation of all new electrics and plumbing, complete new bathrooms and new furniture and fittings throughout.

Wyboston Lakes Hotel
“We decided on a design palette of light, contemporary, soft and welcoming colours including restful light blues and greys with highlights of raspberry and bright blue to promote an air of relaxation and comfort,” said Mark Jones, managing director of the Wyboston Lakes Hotel.
He added: “We considered the things which most guests are looking for, including a good bathroom and a great shower, so we have installed double walk-in showers, with thoughtful touches such as anti-misting mirrors and quiet extraction fans. The bathrooms have also been completely re-tiled.
“In addition, we have ensured excellent connectivity in the bedrooms including lots of sockets – some with USB ports and super-fast Wi-Fi, as well as laptop-sized safes incorporating charging points, plus other features such as pocket sprung beds, blackout lined curtains, new 40 inch TVs and powerful hair driers,” said Mark Jones.

Further facilities include a desk area, a comfortable armchair and side table and tea and coffee making facilities.

The hotel has also invested in Crave; a leading provider of guest-facing hotel tablet and app solutions to the hospitality industry. This new technology helps provide great service via tablets and smartphones to their guests.

Each new bedroom is fully equipped with a tablet with software created exclusively for Wyboston Lakes. This will include the chance to view menus and order room service, local area information, book spa treatments and so much more. These tablets are linked to the reservations team, Y Spa Reception and the main kitchen to ensure the guests requests are dealt with immediately.

Mark Haynes, the hotel’s director of property said: “The new bedroom refurbishment will really benefit our guests overall experience. It was important for us to ensure the hotel bedrooms matched the overall leisure and spa experiences available for guests to enjoy. We wanted to remove the original corporate look and feel and create a bedroom around comfort and relaxation. We selected the best designers and contractors to work with on this project to ensure we achieved the best possible finish and the works have been completed to a very high standard.”

Wyboston Lakes pride themselves on being eco-friendly and therefore recycled a lot of the furnishings. They also donated existing soft furnishings and loose furniture including lamps to the Emmaus Cambridge charity.

The project started on July 20th 2015 and the hotel remained open throughout.

Plans to refurbish a further 40 bedrooms in the hotel’s Oceana wing are also underway, with the sample rooms already completed and a 2nd phase of bedroom refurbishments currently taking place. These bedrooms are geared towards the needs of business and executive guests and are therefore designed to a higher specification.

They will be larger and have a light and airy feel with a different configuration, and will include a formal desk and office style chair, as well as a large leather armchair and a slightly enhanced bathroom specification – as well as all the facilities of the bedrooms completed in the first phase.
The works are scheduled for completion at the end of March 2016.

“These projects will finish off the work we started five years ago, including refurbishing all the hotel’s public areas and subsequently introducing our new spa which has been highly rated in The Good Spa Guide. The whole idea is about positioning the hotel and its facilities as the four star destination in the county of Bedfordshire,” said Mark Jones.

For more information visit the website – www.wybostonlakes.co.uk

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Roma Publications