Not
content with just catering (exhibition and
restaurant), the Lyons management turned
their attention to hotels. In 1909 they
opened the Strand Palace Hotel in London's
Strand thoroughfare. In those days it was
an important road which connected the West
End of fashionable London to the City, the
financial centre of Britain's Empire. The
road ran down Fleet Street, past St Paul's
Cathedral to the Bank of England and the
Mansion House, home to the Lord Mayor.
When the hotel opened it was an immediate
success. With a tariff fixed at an
affordable level the hotel occupancy was
very high. The hotel was managed by Julius
Salmon, the youngest son of Barnett
Salmon. It did not, however, have en suite
bathrooms, they were first provided by the
Mount Vernon Hotel, Cape May, New Jersey,
in 1853. The hotel did, however, have hot
and cold water in every room and that was
a luxury in hotels at this time. Flushed
with success the Regent Palace Hotel
opened in 1915 and with 1,280 rooms it was
the largest in Europe. The war years
intervened before Lyons obtained a
controlling interest, and then ownership
of the Royal Palace Hotel in Kensington
High Street in 1919. The opening of the
Cumberland Hotel at Marble Arch in 1933,
repesented the peak of their hotel
programme to date. Built by Lyons' own
Works Department it represented the latest
in luxury and was opened by the Duke and
Duchess of York (he became King and Queen
Elizabeth the Queen mother would live
until 2002) on 12 December 1933. It
attracted so many reservations that many
potential guests had to be transferred to
the other hotels. After the Second World
War much city reconstruction was
undertaken by town planners and Lyons were
sought out to put bids in for hotel
building. This was the first time they had
strayed from their beloved London but soon
hotels were built at London Airport
(Heathrow), Nottingham, Birmingham and
Glasgow. Small country hotels were built
and acquired with the developing road
systems. A large hotel was built at
Amsterdam Airport to capitalise on the
growing jumbo jet travel. The company were
eager to build a new hotel in Paris but
lost out to Sheraton and so they acquired
an established hotel. Their finest hotel
project must be the acclaimed Tower Hotel
at St Katherine's Dock, London, right next
door to the Tower of London. This was the
first hotel to be built in the City of
London for 100 years and there could have
been no better place to build. |
