London-based top executives tour new Corinthia development

Senior directors from Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Coutts and Credit Suisse together with invitees from Harrods and the Prince's Regeneration Trust have toured the project site of the £270 million Corinthia Hotel in London.

The hotel is a year away from completion and works are progressing to plan. The 40,000-square-metre site has been entirely stripped down, partially demolished and is now being rebuilt and fitted out in a project being hailed as the first new grand hotel to be built in London for over a century.

The building itself is a landmark, formerly the Ministry of Defence straddling Northumberland Avenue and Whitehall Place, with panoramic views of Trafalgar Square, the river Thames and the major sights of Whitehall.

The Corinthia Hotel will feature a 300-bedroom luxury hotel, having the largest bedrooms in London and including 45 suites, some of which located on duplex floors inside the historic turrets and serviced by private lifts and private terraces. A 3,000-square-metre spa will complement the hotel. Furthermore, 12 ambassadorial apartments, the largest one occupying over 1000 square metres, are being developed at the luxury end of the market for eventual use as prime residences in central London.

The group which toured the project site were shown around by Corinthia Group chairman Alfred Pisani. At the end of the tour, the guests were hosted to a sumptuous lunch prepared on site in a temporary kitchen by Massimo Riccioli, the celebrated chef owner of La Rosetta Restaurant in Rome, who agreed to relocate to London to be the chef patron of the specialty restaurant at the Corinthia Hotel London.

The Corinthia Hotel & Residences in London is scheduled to open in the last quarter of 2010.