C1 Capital Partners and Frogmore have secured planning permission to renovate and extend the existing 404-bed Hilton London Olympia hotel on Kensington High Street in London.
The hotel which currently comprises 404 beds will be expanded to a 905-bed hotel, making it the largest hotel to be built in London in a decade. As well as adding more than 500 bedrooms, the new hotel will incorporate a roof garden and a rooftop bar. The existing structure of the hotel will be retained and the development will make use of the 0.86-acre site adjacent to the Olympia Exhibition Centre and tube station.
Studio Moren is the scheme architect and DP9 is planning advisor in partnership with Frogmore.
Frogmore acquired the Hilton London Olympia Hotel in partnership with C1 Capital from HPL in April 2022. C1 Capital Partners and Frogmore are now seeking an equity partner to help complete the hotel.
Why it matters
This ambitious and expensive project indicates a substantial faith and confidence in the London hotel sector despite ongoing global financing challenges. Both C1 Capital and Frogmore are now seeking funding for the project, funding which we suspect won’t be difficult to come by given the huge wall of capital looking for investment opportunities in the hotel sector.
What they said
Gerard Nolan, chairman at C1 Capital said: “With the Olympia London Conference Centre, central London’s latest and largest entertainment venue, reopening in 2025 we envisage enormous customer demand for the new hotel. The existing London Hilton Olympia has had average occupancy levels in excess of 80 per cent in 2023. With an additional 12 million visitors to Olympia, we’re confident the new hotel will be extremely successful when it opens in 2027.”
Jo Allen, chief executive of Frogmore added: “Since Hilton London Olympia hotel re-opened in 2022, we have been delighted by trading figures which have outperformed our expectations. That is testament to both the strength of the location and the popularity of the Hilton brand, and we feel that time is right to breathe new life into the building. We are so excited by the prospect of working with the team at Hilton to provide a larger, sustainable hotel fit for the future and to be enjoyed by visitors to London and, particularly, to Kensington High Street and Olympia.