GOSTELOW REPORT – “I always loved telling stories and hospitality was natural to me – although most of my family was farming in northwest Ireland my great grandfather had started a small pub in 1889,” says James Clarke, GM of the 292-room Hilton London Bankside.
Clarke admits that when he was first contacted in 2014 about this position he asked where Bankside was (it is in fact an area, as known to the Romans two thousand years ago, that is on the south bank of the River Thames, in central London). “Bankside is full of fascinating artists and crafts people, some whom I invite to drinks in the hotel every three months,” he says. “I met a guy making bamboo bicycles in his garden shed. I bought six bikes immediately, for guests’ use, but he said he needed extra labor so I sent over six employees, for three days.” Now hotel guests can pedal free around local sights, on bikes named for the workers who helped make them.
The hotel’s gin bar, The Distillery, commemorates the fact that this intriguing industrial part of London used to include a small perfume distillery. Breakfast coffee is not hotel-standard but from an artisan roaster a few miles away (“this is more like urban New York, everything is done through local history and contacts”).
“On sales calls in Washington D.C., I was talking to a client who asked me why big hotel brands are so boring,” Clarke continues his story-telling. “Why don’t you do something cool like a Vegan Suite? Back in London, I talked to the Vegan Society, to designers Bompas & Parr, and, obviously, to my owners, Splendid Hospitality Group, which belongs to a family who are passionate about community and sustainability.” As GM of a franchised property, he was able to get all permissions through comparatively quickly.
The hotel’s Vegan Suite launched January 2019. The 460sq ft space has bamboo floors, drapes and bed-coverings. The headboard is Piñatex, leather-look pineapple fiber. Unique to this space, the pillow menu offers five vegan filling options. Housekeeping uses cleaning products from Method, the San Francisco-based animal-free company belonging to Belgium’s Ecover (which was itself acquired by U.S. giant S.C. Johnson & Sons in 2017). The suite sells at a premium of £300 (US$382), the uptake is fantastic, says Clarke, and he is thinking of doing another one.
The combination of the Vegan Suite and the bamboo bikes helped catapult Hilton London Bankside into a select group of five Hilton properties included in Netflix’s current ‘Down to Earth with Zac Efron’ series (this particular property’s program aired Friday July 10). Every bit of publicity helps.
The hotel re-opened July 4 and, when travel restrictions allow, it hopes to build back up to its usual tally of 45% of guests from the U.S. Average length of stay, overall, 1.5 nights. “This is Hilton with a twist, in a fun, cool area of London”, Clarke says.