Lulu Group International, led by Indian origin billionaire MA Yusuff Ali is all set to unveil its ‘Great Scotland Yard Hotel’ once the headquarters of London’s metropolitan police force.
The seven-storey iconic luxury hotel, located in Whitehall in central London, was bought by LuLu Group in July 2015 from developer Galliard Homes for an astonishing sum of 110 million pounds.
Redesigned reportedly at a cost of 75 million pounds by Galliard Homes, the luxury hotel features over 150 bedrooms and 11 suits. The hotel will be launched later in 2019 and will be operated by Hyatt. To spend a night at the hotel, one may have to pay out about Rs 75 lakh.
It brags of a signature restaurant supervised by chef Robin Gill along with cocktail and whiskey bars, library, gymnasium, and an extensive meeting room for corporate events. Some of the bedrooms have allegedly been converted from cells where criminals have been held in the past.
It will have a signature restaurant headed by Chef Robin Gill. Some of the rooms have a view of the Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey.
The luxury hotel is also an example of heightened Indian investments in the United Kingdom’s real estate market in the aftermath of a declining pound. It is being seen as one of the most elegant hotels to be ever built in the United Kingdom.
“Galliard has delivered one of London’s most outstanding five-star hotels. With its iconic address and famous history, the hotel’s interior design cleverly references the building’s police and military past through the use of shields, emblems and historic details etched into glass and metalwork,” Stephen Conway, executive chairman of Galliard Group, had said about the hotel.
“The future growth markets for us in the hospitality sector includes Britain, Middle East, India, and South East Asia,” a Lulu spokesman had told The National news service back in 2015 when it bought the central London property. “Since we are now firmly established in the retail sector, we want to diversify into the hospitality sector as these two are complementary.”
LuLu Group, an Abu Dhabi-based retail conglomerate company with massive investments in India and across the Middle East, operates India’s biggest mall situated in Kochi, the financial nerve-center of Kerala. It also runs more than 130 retail grocery stores named ‘Lulu Hypermarket’ across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and India.
By Sowmya Sangam
