Sunderland hotel completes £1m refurbishment

Sunderland’s 43-bedroom Roker Hotel has completed the final phase of a £1m refurbishment.

Some £250,000 has been invested in the bedrooms, which have been redesigned to combine contemporary styling with nautical features – inspired by the area’s seafaring heritage.

Guests will now have the option to stay in 12 ‘superior rooms’ with uninterrupted sea views and each featuring a telescope. The rooms will be named after the botanicals used to create the range of bespoke gins – including juniper, cinnamon, cassia and rose – at the hotel’s distillery bar, Poetic License.

Each room contains a glass jar of the botanical from which it takes its name, while other features, such as stacked luggage chests, rope curtain tiebacks and doorknobs and a navy and neutral colour scheme, aim to reflect the hotel’s beachfront position.

The unveiling marks the end of a three-year development programme at the hotel, owned by northeast leisure group Tavistock Hospitality, which owns more than a dozen bars, hotels and restaurants across the region.

Mark Hird, managing director at Tavistock, said: “With more hotels now open in the area we felt it was important to redefine our offering. We are an independent, family-owned business and we wanted this to really shine. We aren’t a big corporate chain and we are proud of that.”