By JIMOH BABATUNDE
THE Langham Hotel, London has
remained focus to the ideal behind its construction as an elegant, glamorous
and grand hotel in 1865. It has also not lost the legendary afternoon tea
served at the dazzling Palm Court that has remained its signature for over 140
years.
Sitting in midst of some
visiting journalists at the dazzling Palm Court , the centre piece
of the property recently, Brian Gore, Director of Communication of the
hotel, was at his best as he tells why the hotel has remained the number
one in terms of services and history. Here is an excerpt.
ON using the history of the hotel to
market the product:
The hotel has a long history. When it was built in 1865, at that time it was
really the first grand hotel to be built, it was a purpose built
hotel. At a time it was the largest building in London, there were other hotels
at the time but were smaller, there were guest houses.
So when it was built, it was the
first hotel to have lift, it was the first hotel to have bath rooms with the
bedrooms; it was the first hotel to have telephones in all the rooms. It was
always in the first in the use of other technology.
We use the history to tell the story
of the hotel and the afternoon tea as a prime example, because when we opened
in 1865, we served afternoon tea on the menu and it cost seven pence at the
time, but the afternoon tea was invented here at the hotel.
It was actually started by Duchess
of Bedford in 1840s, she was a lady of dignity, she was a member of the high
society, she used to get tired in the afternoon and will ask her staff to bring
her some of the left over from lunch to eat in her room where she is in the
afternoon, and then she will invite her friends to come and join her where they
will have tea and pastries and so on. That was where it started.
So, when we opened in 1865 there was
no else like this in London, there was no other dinning experience like this in
London, we had one of the biggest dinning rooms in London and we were serving
afternoon tea. We want to say that the real traditional afternoon tea you have
today in London actually began here, this palm court in this building.
When we tie history to the hotel,
the hotel was built in the Victoria period in London, beautiful Victoria façade
in the front of the hotel, which is not normally the case with hotels in
London. Some of the hotels are newly built; they dont look as stunning as this hotel
is.
Also the location means that we are
right in the heart of London, so when the hotel was built, London was kind of
growing round the hotel and we are still much at the centre, so we have
shopping on our doorsteps, we have parks at our doorsteps, if you want to go
the theaters in the evenings, they are at our doorsteps.
So, we are really in the
centre and that comes from our history, you can’t build a big hotel like
this in a location like this any more , it is never going to happen
again. So we have that advantage to us.
On tourist attractions close to the
hotel:
The museums, British museum is very close by, some of the parks, regent park is
close by here , we have the theaters, the shopping streets of London, we have
Regent street, Bond street, oxford street, that is the main shopping area for
shopping in London is right here in our door steps.
We have places like the
Buckingham palace which is ten minutes walk from here; the London Eye is very
close; the tower bridge is close. So, we are really in the heart of London,
everything is close by.
On the traditional afternoon tea:
Afternoon tea is such a tradition , the experience here is very involved,
so it is a lovely relax atmosphere when you come in and from the room you
can see that it is very calm and you can take your time , take two hours and
just relax. People come here for celebrations like birthday, weddings and come
here to have fun. I think the experience here is probably one of the best in
London.
The experience you get here is
different from any other hotel. Peaceful lounge, it is luxurious and you
can take your time to enjoy live music.
On the restaurant:
The Landau restaurant opened last year, we have father and son Albert and
Michel Roux Jr as the chef, and they have incredible history in London. They
are very famous, the junior is a TV personality, he has a lot of TV shows, he
is very well known in this country. His father opened the first restaurant and
handed down to the son, he went into semi retirement, but came back after
twenty years to work with the son here.
It has been a great
success, I think they wanted to come here because of the
prestige of the hotel, the location, we have a beautiful dinning room, amazing
kitchen set up which is a great asset to have.
We have two main restaurants, the
Landau and the Palm Court as well. We served afternoon tea at Palm Court
and also served break fast here as well as meal. The third option is our bar,
which also serve bar food as well.
On the rooms
We have 380 rooms. One of the unique thing about our rooms are that they
are just refurbished, but because we have large number of rooms, we can do lot
of different things, so we may take a large group of people coming into London,
we have product like inter connecting rooms which are popular with families.
Traditional features
The concept behind the rooms’ interior is that we are traditional hotel and we
have a great
