Doors open on London hotel boom worth billions

LONDON is at the start of an unprecedented "gold rush" of luxury hotel launches that will see thousands of high-end new rooms opening over the next two years.

- Jonathan Prynn

At least 13 high-end hotels are scheduled to open by 2025, many from world-renowned operators that have never before had sites in the capital, while others are getting huge refurbishments.

The starting gun is fired tomorrow when the £1.1 billion Peninsula London near Hyde Park Corner is officially launched at precisely 8.08am - a time chosen as auspicious by a feng shui master - with the first guests checking into rooms priced from £1,300 a night shortly after. It will be the first newly-built five star hotel opening in London since the Bulgari in Knightsbridge in 2012.

The Peninsula is followed at the end of the month by the £1.5 billion Raffles London at The OWO, the vast old War Office building in Whitehall, after an eight-year development funded by the billionaire Hinduja brothers.