Guoman Hotels, Thistle Kensington Gardens

Murray & Willis were appointed main contractor on this five million pound transformation of Guoman Hotels, Thistle Kensington Gardens.

The nine storey hotel is situated on the Bayswater Road in London overlooking Hyde Park and has 175 bedrooms, various conference rooms and a public area. This includes the newly refurbished restaurant, bar, reception area and main entrance, including new canopy and facade.

One of the most complex aspects of this project was the fact that the building had to remain fully occupied and operational during the twelve month refurbishment process.

To enable the hotel to remain fully functional we installed an external hoist to the rear elevation of the building from the ground floor to the ninth floor level allowing materials to be transported to each floor during the refurbishment and ensuring that both the guests and daily operations of the hotel remained undisturbed. Good programming was essential and it was decided that the most efficient way to minimise disruption to the guests and staff was initially to refurbish the first floor bedrooms, which is the second floor of the hotel. There was good reason for this as the bedroom refurbishment was progressing in conjunction with the first two phases of the restaurant immediately below, which were completed within an eight week period. This allowed the hotel to dispense with the use of temporary dining facilities quickly and enabled the guests to enjoy dining in the newly refurbished areas therefore keeping the disruption to a bare minimum.

On each floor of the bedroom refurbishment we totally stripped them back to the bare shell within a one week period. We then installed complete new electrics and air conditioning to all twenty two bedrooms and the corridor. All of the twenty two rooms received a complete new bathroom, some of which were DDA compliant using the latest disabled equipment. All were finished with feature tiling and granite vanity tops, some of which have a combined bath and shower and others with a walk in shower facility.

On completion of the above, the rooms were completely re-decorated to a high standard by our in-house decorating division which included one papered feature wall in each room. In addition each corridor also had one papered feature wall.

The rooms were fitted out with new walnut furniture supplied by the client and installed by our own joiners.

The soft furnishings, carpets and curtains were supplied and installed by a client direct contractor but the installation was supervised and co-ordinated by Murray & Willis.