Premier Hospitality

Holiday Inn London Heathrow Bath Road

Holiday Inn London
Written by Roma Publications

Holiday Inn London – Heathrow Bath Road

Dual-branded with Staybridge Suites London – Heathrow Bath Road is the Holiday Inn London – Heathrow Bath Road.

Comprised of 433 guestrooms and a range of high-quality amenities, the Holiday Inn is a significantly larger offering than its neighbour. The hotel is more of a traditional airport hospitality offering and boasts tailored park and fly packages to remove the stress of long haul travel.

Rooms at the Holiday Inn offer a flexibility ideal for both business and leisure travellers. The sleek, contemporary rooms have been designed for maximum comfort. Many utilise large bay windows that provide excellent views of the fast-paced airport activity. All rooms have free Wi-Fi, tea & coffee making facilities and triple glazed windows.

What makes this new Heathrow hotel stand out is its soaring six storey natural light filled atrium at its very heart. Whatever the weather, guests are first greeted with an airy fresh piazza space.

Right in centre of this piazza is HI Pizza, the hotel’s destination restaurant arranged in a central pavilion housing the open Theatre Kitchen that places diners at the heart of the action. Customers have the opportunity to watch rustic Italian dishes, including antipasti and stone baked pizzas, come to life before their eyes.

Guests can sit up to the kitchen bar and join in with the hub of the open kitchen and become part of the activity that is always present in the centre of the hotel or choose from a myriad of other seating options around the atrium offering group seating to secluded booths.

Studio Mica, the award winning London based designers of HI FOH, cleverly ‘carved’ up the atrium piazza space creating fitted booths of seating and perimeter bays with different personalities so that diners still appreciate the hub of the atrium without feeling exposed.

Carolynne Shenton, founder of Studio Mica, explained the approach to the design of the atrium was to ensure it looked as good from above to all the guest rooms looking into the space as it does to be in the actual piazza. To this end, Studio Mica created ‘layers’ of interest looking down from above with terraces of green interwoven with a ‘graphic lighting pattern’ that only appears at dusk from the tops of the fitted furniture and street lights. At night the lighting creates intimacy to the diners in the atrium.

The other design challenge was the sheer scale of the space and how to make this interesting to the numbers of guests the hotel caters for. Studio Mica looked to revisit the impact the first Holiday Inn Hotels had in the 1950s with their Memphis Motels. Studio Mica wanted a design that was memorable, but memorable for its experience whilst being fresh and straightforward to navigate in the guest’s brief sojourn.

Studio Mica was conscious of the need to design a variety of FOH lounges, bars and restaurants that would cater for the international variety of transiting passengers. It was important the bars and cafes offered different ambiences but didn’t look out of place next to each other in this large open atrium.

The design team made a few bold moves to keep a consistent colour backdrop, first defined by the big glazed funky green column’s marching around the perimeter of the atrium and furnished the centre of the atrium with ‘street scape’ scale pavilions, furniture and lamp posts. Leading off from the atrium are a variety of booths designed as either small café style seating looking into the ‘piazza’ or larger plusher dining areas.

Complimenting HI Pizza is the 25m long continuous bar that starts off facing into the atrium and curves around into smaller more intimate lounges and terminates in the fun sports bar and round cocktail station where groups can sit up to the bar, watch the sports channels or play pool.

The bar continues the green colours of the atrium but adds an illuminated copper back-drop made from a mosaic of 85 kilos of America dimes.

The bar offers a varied selection of beverages and light snacks throughout day. It’s the ideal spot for meeting an important client, catch up with friends or take a short break in between the mad rush of air travel.

Besides the restaurants and bars the hotel also has a large gym positioned on the first floor looking into the atrium and a purpose built suite of 6 large light filled meeting rooms supported by a breakout kitchen and bays of booth seating for less formal meetings and work spaces. Two of the meeting rooms can sub divide, whilst the largest can host a maximum capacity of 40. The meeting rooms and a dedicated Pilots lounge can both be accessed directly from Reception.

The hotel has extensive onsite parking and regular Heathrow shuttle buses supported by plentiful flight information screens positioned around reception and the lounges.

The complete structure, housing both the hotels, totals six storeys and 623 bedrooms. The significant development was delivered by McAleer & Rushe. Premier Hospitality recently caught up with Steve Morris, McAleer & Rushe Contracts Manager, to find out more about the development:

“The project commenced in October 2016 and finished two years later in October 2018. The scheme began as a brownfield site following completion of the demolition of the original factory premises.   We were fortunate to have a large site with good access surrounding the new building which was a great help with our logistics. The generous amount of access allowed free movement of mobile platforms, negating the need for scaffolding for example.

“The development itself was relatively straightforward. We started from the south elevation and progressed the frame northwards. The length of the building was such that we were able to advance the upper floors to the rear of the site, at the same time as completing the ground floor areas.”

Designed as a linear figure of 8, the building is arranged around internal and external courtyards overlooked by guest bedrooms. The large atrium created by the figure of 8 was one of the build’s most complex elements but the now completed space is the perfect backdrop for the Holiday Inn’s food and beverage offering. Steve continued:

“The site required two tower cranes, one of which was positioned through the glazed section of the atrium roof. This allowed us to build the steel structure and glaze 90% of the atrium before removing the crane. The remainder of the atrium was glazed thereafter. The size of the atrium lent itself to birdcage scaffolding which was used to construct the internal façade and ceiling areas. The scaffold itself took 6 weeks to build and the best part of 3 to 4 weeks to strike. That gives a good idea of the complexity and scale of the build.”

As you would expect with a project of this scale, a significant amount of planning went into the build to ensure it ran as smoothly as possible. Regular meetings were held to make sure everything remained on time and on track.

Both hotel’s benefit from the Heathrow Express, which runs direct to London Paddington Station from the airport in as little as 15 minutes.

 

Bespoke Atelier

Bespoke Atelier is a Glasgow-based design studio established in 2011 by Yvonne Elliott-Kellighan and Marion Parola.

Bespoke Atelier specialises in creating innovative surfaces for interiors, architecture projects and the public realm. Pieces are tailor-made based on hand-drawn designs inspired by pattern, texture and the surrounding environment.

The design studio has established a reputation for designing bespoke patterns for a variety of applications from architectural installations and furnishings, vinyl manifestations and wallcoverings, to bespoke acoustic panels and hand painted murals.

Bespoke Atelier was recently involved with the Holiday Inn Heathrow. The company worked with the interior design team, providing guidance and design advice relating to its wallcoverings range, which was specified for the lobby. The collection features seven interchangeable designs – Stained Glass, Jungle, Foundation, Balance, Rise, Reflections and Half Moon. Each wallpaper design is available in two colourways, Dawn and Dusk, to offer distinct atmospheres to choose from.

Inspired by the relationship between garden greenhouses and urban architecture, these unique modular wallcoverings deliver a bespoke result for every client, on every project.

Yvonne Elliott-Kellighan commented:

“We are delighted to be involved in the project and to have the opportunity to work with Studio Mica. It is a fantastic showcase for Bespoke Atelier and our modular wallcoverings range.”

About the author

Roma Publications