Virgin Hotels London Shoreditch is officially launched – and I’m impressed so far

Virgin Hotels came to London last year with the opening of Virgin Hotels London Shoreditch on 1st August.

This is not a new hotel. It is a rebrand of Mondrian Shoreditch London, which was part of Accor Live Limitless.

Of course, the Mondrian Shoreditch London hotel was itself a rebrand!

The site opened as private members club The Curtain, which slipped into receivership in September 2020. It survived less than three years, proving that an expensive PR campaign counts for nothing if your underlying product is wrong.

Whilst Virgin Hotels took over nine months ago, it was relatively low key because the hotel was still, effectively, Mondrian inside.

After a lot of work – although there is more to do – we were invited down on Tuesday to chat to Sir Richard Branson and see what has been done to date.

I have a confession to make ….

I’d been to this property a couple of times in the past, before Virgin Hotels took over, and for some reason it hadn’t gelled with me.

I’ve changed my mind. Sitting outside at their rooftop bar and restaurant, with its rooftop pool, in the glorious sunshine on Tuesday morning can do that to you.

I didn’t think Virgin Hotels would change as much as they have, given that Mondrian only operated the site for a couple of years. It has been busy though.

All of the furniture in the rooms has been replaced. The red SMEG fridges and the Virgin Hotels beds have appeared. Rooms doors have turned red and, importantly, the noisy wooden floors in the corridors have been carpeted.

Here’s a standard room (or ‘chamber’ as Virgin Hotels calls them). It’s not huge at 22 sq m, especially with the large bed, but it looks good:

All of the 6th floor rooms come with balconies. Room 601, which we saw, is a stunner. The room itself (a Grand Chamber Junior Suite Terrace) isn’t much larger than a standard one but has a h-u-g-e wrap-around terrace:

What really impressed me was  ’Hidden Grooves’ – a 38-seat hi-fi bar inspired by Japanese listening lounges. The walls are stacked with rare records in a retro 70s-style setting, filled with vintage furniture and music memorabilia. A PR picture is below.

There is more work to be done:

• the wallpaper in the rooms will be changed over time – the existing grey is still in good condition but the hotel feels it doesn’t fit the vibe, and it has already gone from the suites

• a new restaurant will appear on the mezzanine floor later in the year – the space is now empty

• changes will be made to the basement and rooftop restaurant, although these are externally operated under a contract which the hotel cannot break. Even the rooftop pool is not under the direct control of the hotel.

Don’t let any of this put you off though. The hotel looks fantastic – it’s about as near as you get in London to a New York Meatpacking District-style property, even if the pool is only 10% of the size of the one at Soho House New York!

A full review will follow soon. What I wrote above is based on a guided tour so we need to see how the hotel performs in practice.

How do you redeem Virgin Points for Virgin Hotels?

You can spend Virgin Points here, but it is generally poor value. A special 45,000 Virgin Points deal for weekend stays in May is potentially an exception.

It’s initially a bit fiddly, but when you’ve set it up once it will work automatically in the future.

You need to register for ‘The Know’ (click here), the Virgin Hotels membership programme. Once registered, you can link your Virgin Red account to your ‘The Know’ account.

(If you only have a Virgin Flying Club account, not a Virgin Red account, you will have to download the Virgin Red app and register there first. Link your Virgin Flying Club account so your points balance is shared. You can then register with ‘The Know’.)

Once your Virgin Red account is linked, you get a simple button on the Virgin Hotels booking page allowing you to toggle between cash and points.

As far as I could tell, if a Chambers Room (entry level) is bookable for cash, it is bookable for points.

No other room categories are bookable. Upgrades are not available.

The bad news is that you will generally get under 0.5p per Virgin Point compared to paying cash, which I can’t recommend. Oddly, other Virgin Hotels properties are far better value on a ‘pence per point’ basis as I wrote here.

You can find out more, and book for cash, on the Virgin Hotels website here.