Zedwell hotel in Piccadilly to add 84 bedrooms due to demand

An 84-bedroom extension to the Zedwell hotel in the Trocadero building on London's Piccadilly has been approved, after councillors acknowledged the changes would be “better than what we have now”.

Extensions to the fifth, seventh and ninth floors of the hotel, overlooking Shaftesbury Avenue, will include screening off the plant infrastructure that currently dominates rooftop views of the hotel.

Councillors voted unanimously to approve the application despite it being in part retrospective, which the elected members said was “regrettable”.

The additions will take the hotel from 728 bedrooms to 812. Zedwell's proposition is to offer compact, windowless rooms at affordable prices and the rooms will comprise 2,225sqm of additional floorspace.

The existing hotel has a rooftop bar, but no other food and beverage facilities, which the applicant said was to the benefit of the local economy.

Speaking at a meeting of Westminster Council’s planning committee, the agent for the hotel said it was frequently operating at capacity.

He added: “In light of successful trading patterns the applicant wishes to increase the number of hotel rooms.”

Objections had been lodged by community group the Soho Society, who complained about the "over-intensification of use".

Permission was first granted for the Trocadero to be converted into a hotel in 2008. At that time, plans were for a 471-bedroom hotel and later room additions were approved in 2010, 2012, 2018 and 2020.

The Trocadero was originally built as an entertainment venue in the 17th century. In the late 1990s, it was home to the first 3D IMAX cinema in the UK, as well as an arcade game centre called Segaworld, which became Funland in 1999 but closed in 2005, when Criterion Capital bought the building.

Criterion Capital is a real estate management company and the largest landowner between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. Its portfolio includes the Assembly Hotel London, Victory House hotel on Leicester Square and Hotel Indigo – 1 Leicester Square.

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