In addition to the article published on the 6th May relating to the new Premier Inn under construction in Leicester Square, HotelDesigns was invited on a tour of the site and managed to grab some photos to show our readers in an early preview…The building, formerly the Queens House (an hotel which closed in 1936) and then which became offices covering over 24,000 sq ft, is located on one of London’s busiest tourist attractions – Leicester Square. This eventful, vibrant square is currently undergoing an £18 million refurbishment of its paving and is ravaged by development work a few yards from the new W London Leicester Square (which opened in March this year).
The developers behind the new Premier Inn site are working hard to ensure that their customers do not experience a bad night’s sleep with their new bedroom concept. Premier Inns ‘sleep guarantee’ means a great deal to the company.
With an opening date set in February 2012, the 84 bedroom hotel is an innovation in hotel construction design. With the Ruby Blue nightclub on the ground floor of the building open until 4am, the design of the guestrooms needed a unique approach to soundproofing which John Lloyd ACOM has been developing in conjunction with Steve Hammond of Whitbread. Steve commented that they were trying to think outside the box with their solution to the noise problem when they turned their thinking to inside the box.
Whitbread initially looked at the site two to three years earlier but noted how the noise would be a problem when converting the building into an hotel. Noise penetration through the windows wasn’t a major issue, which the group has easily solved by installing quadruple glazed windows, but it was the noise transmission through the building structure that concerned the operator.
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