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.
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