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A £40 million investment opened for business last week when the new Radisson Edwardian hotel at New Providence Wharf in London’s Docklands opened its doors. Located adjacent to the East India Quay station on the Docklands light rail system, the hotel is barely ten minutes from London’s City Airport, and the railway gives it easy access to the Excel exhibition centre as well as quick transportation to the Docklands business areas to through to the centre of town. Designed by the Radisson Edwardian in-house design team led by Michael Attenborough that recently refurbished the Mayfair hotel in the city centre, with architects Aukett Fitzroy Robinson (designer Jane Johnson), the hotel brings another stylish offering to the range of hotels in Docklands.
Interiors make strong use of natural materials and are kept simple, with clean lines and a marked lack of visual clutter. Basic functionalism has been carefully thought through and every room is kitted out to allow maximum use of the modern gadgetry every traveller carries today, from digital camera through laptops to phones that feed the cat. Sockets are Euro and US as well as UK.
Bathrooms are crisply designed with clean lines, and also curiously contain the wardrobe. Apparently this is a result of guest feedback that suggests that the steam would allow wrinkles to drop from clothing. This oddity apart the bathrooms have illuminated shaving mirrors, separate showers as well as the soaking tub, with plenty of space for toiletries and waterproof TV’s set into the wall. The ‘wardrobe doors’ in the bedroom areas hide the ironing board, trouser press, hairdryer, TCMF and other appurtenances that usually clutter the bedroom. Laptop safes are also provided.
With 162 bedrooms, 16 suites and a luxury penthouse this new luxury hotel also features an ‘East River’ spa with 7 treatment rooms, razul-style mud treatment and relaxation zone and has conferencing for up to 250 delegates. As with all Radisson hotels there is genuinely free wifi connectivity (hooray). As a long time Londoner, to me the hotel confirms the shift in the centre of gravity of the city, away from the West End and into the exciting new city that has been steadily growing downriver for the last twenty years. It is a stylish new addition, and as General Manager Paul Duggan says “We’ve studied the area carefully and we believe that it is now ready for an unstuffy luxury hotel offering the levels of accommodation and service for which Radisson Edwardian is famous. Developments like the smash hit opening of the O2 arena and top end housing like Ontario Tower designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (which is joined to and forms a part of the hotel) and Pan Peninsula prove that there is a new found confidence around here”.
Patrick Goff
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