7/5/2008

Business

Landmark hotel gets £1.5m boost

A new sign completes the Holiday Inn revamp.

ONE of Farnborough’s best-known landmarks has been given a boost with a £1.5million facelift.

The Holiday Inn hotel in Lynchford Road is the first of more than 1,000 hotels across the world in the Holiday Inn chain to be given the overhaul.

The historic hotel, known more commonly by its former name, the Queen’s Hotel, was chosen as the first to receive the cash injection from its owners, the Intercontinental Hotels Group.

The Farnborough hotel was chosen to trial the new brand as hundreds of company employees from across the world descended on Five, the new exhibition centre owned by the organisers of the Farnborough Airshow, earlier this month.

Around £1m has been spent on refurbishing the century-old building’s downstairs reception, lounge and dining rooms, with the cash going on designer furniture as well as clean, bright decor.

Another £300,000 has been spent on new accessories for bathrooms, such as shower curtains and rails, designed to make showering easier in all 142 en-suite bathrooms.

The remainder has gone on updating function rooms and conference facilities.

Max Ball, the hotel’s general manager, said the spur for the update had nothing to do with the new £20m TAG Farnborough Airport-owned Aviator hotel opening just up Farnborough Road later this summer.

“This was planned long before we even knew a competing hotel was going to built,” Mr Ball told the Mail.

“Of course it is good timing for us to be getting a nice refurbishment at the same time the other hotel is opening, but that is not the reason that it happened.”

The changes were proposed after the company studied responses from an international survey of hotel customers, who said they wanted good service, better showers, less clutter from marketing materials in rooms, and clean, simple designs, Mr Ball said.

One unexpected revelation was that hotel customers said they were sick of cheap plastic shower curtains that stick to you when wet. As a result, the chain has pledged to change the hotel’s entire stock of shower curtains for a better design.

Other improvements include a choice of hard or soft pillows in rooms, with a “pillow menu” on hand to order up special requirements if needed.

The revamp is just the latest in a long line of changes to the 1904 Edwardian building, which itself replaced an earlier hotel on the site, dating from 1855, which was burnt down in 1902.

Originally built to house officers of the Army, the hotel was one of the first buildings in the area to be connected to the telephone exchange.

The original telephone number was Farnborough 4.

The hotel frequently played host to military top brass and royalty, with Prince Leopold, Queen Victoria’s fourth son, one of its 19th century guests. The hotel would advertise the names of its high profile patrons in this paper every week.

The original hotel also had a roller skating rink to accommodate the popular craze of the 1870s.

Staying at the hotel has never been cheap, but in 1904 you could get a room, breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner for £3 13s 6d a week — approximately £3.67 in modern money.

In 1940 you could still rent a room from 8s 6d a night (42p), but by 1981 a room with breakfast was £49. Today the same deal will cost you £161 a night during the week.

Farnborough historian Jo Gosney said the latest refurbishment had not detracted from the features of the original Edwardian building.

“They have replaced some windows and they look alright,” Mrs Gosney said.

“The Queen’s is not a listed building but it is an interesting building.

“They have had extensions built all round it over the years so it has lost some of its ambience. But the basic frontage is the same, and as you walk in there is still the same stained glass window, which gives you a feeling of the early 20th century.”

First printed in: Aldershot News and Mail