Planning permission granted for Hilton London Olympia expansion

Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s Planning Committee has granted Frogmore and its partner, C1 Capital, planning consent to renovate and extend the existing 404-bed Hilton London Olympia to create a new 905-bedroom hotel. Located at 380 Kensington High Street, situated at a gateway entrance to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the new development will be the largest hotel to be built in London in a decade. It will retain part of the existing hotel’s structure and will regenerate the 0.86-acre site adjacent to the Olympia Exhibition Centre and tube station. As well as adding more than 500 new bedrooms, the new hotel will incorporate a fabulous roof garden and rooftop bar boasting views over the surrounding area. Designed by Elliott Wood, the hotel will be built with sustainability at its core, with carbon retention and energy performance being key, as well as beautiful trees and provisions made for pollinators. Studio Moren is the scheme architect and DP9 is planning advisor to partnership with sustainability experts Frogmore. Frogmore acquired the Hilton London Olympia Hotel, in partnership with C1 Capital, in April 2022 from HPL. At acquisition the hotel was closed following the Covid-19 pandemic lock down restrictions. The completed hotel is expected to have a GDV of circa £450m. The JV will now seek an additional partner to develop and, ultimately, own the resulting investment. Jo Allen, chief executive of Frogmore, said: “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. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard on arriving at an appropriate design.” Gerard Nolan, chairman at C1 Capital, added: “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% 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.”