The Ritz Luxury Hotel London

London is full - visitors hunt all night for luxury hotel rooms - a French invasion - "leading luxury hotels crowded" ran the breathless headline in the Daily Mail on the 3rd of June 1905. " it is the height of the luxury hotel season in London and it is Derby week" said the report, continuing, " this year the Entente Cordiale has caused a vast influx of French visitors, the Americans in London are more numerous than usual at this time of year, and Germany, Austria and Belgium are for some reason more numerously represented in town than usual."

The coming visit of the King of Spain was due to bring 2500 Spanish delegates to the Royal Albert Hall. The Savoy was reported as " Full up - Wiring to stop intending visitors." The Cecil next door was "refusing scores". The Grand on Trafalgar Square had "never had such a busy week since the opening night". Buckingham palace hotel was so desperate "that we are now fitting up beds in the offices". The board of the Ritz had chosen had their moments well. This was the very time that photographs show the exterior of the Ritz as it neared completion. On the 2nd of February, the Daily Express published a report by Francis Stopford, its society editor, headed "London city of luxury hotels - metropolis becoming the luxury pleasure resort of the world-demand for luxury hotels." The article continued " at the moment there are six five star hotels either being built or about to be built in London. Each of them will be a palace of luxury. The new Ritz is rising on the site of the old Walsingham house. The Piccadilly will occupy the site of the St control and James' hotel and restaurant. A new and enlarged gaiety hotel has risen from the ashes of the old one, and will soon be opened; and close by there will be a London Waldorf Astoria luxury hotel."

The article pointed out that even 10 years earlier more than 30 then a well known luxury hotels, including the Carlton, the Russell, the Cecil, the Hyde Park and Claridge's, were not yet in existence. The Ritz's efforts with the press paid handsome dividends. The new Ritz, reported The Graphic on 9th of June, "seems to touch the high watermark of convenience, beauty and comfort". An approving professional eye was cast on the Ritz by The Caterer and Hotel Keeper's Gazette after its opening. "Luxury is generally the word which comes to mind in describing a modern luxury hotel palace, but at the Ritz it is the feeling of cool refinement which at once impresses the visitor... as soon as one comes inside... One finds everywhere that light, aesthetic colouring and delicate artistic form which is peculiarly French."

The years leading up to the opening of the Ritz saw a series of technical innovations that were to transform life in grand luxury hotels. First there was an electric light, replacing gas and candles, next came running hot water and private bathrooms, and then the telephone. In all these developments the Ritz was intended to surpass everything that had gone before in luxury hotels in London. The dramatic increase in the number of bathrooms required the provision of a vast volume of water. This had to gush in abundant quantities through both hot and cold taps at all times of day. To provide this, two huge lead lined tanks were installed in the roof. The first held 34 tons of water; the second tank weighing five tons, contained 73 tons of water, the combined equivalent of three fully heavy laden lorries sitting in the roof space.

The Savoy, another luxury hotel in London, had been an important pioneer. A report in The Home Journal of 26 November, 1890 stresses the extent of the change: "in all Parisian Hotels candles are a separate charge: in nearly all European hotels attendance is a separate item (since clients usually travelled with their own staff), and in most luxury hotels in the civilised world you must pay extra for baths. Not so at the Savoy. When you are told the rate for an apartment everything is included, everything of course but the meals - included is the bedroom, light, attendants and baths."

The Ritz Monthly provides an illustration of one of the bathrooms in the London Ritz, showing a freestanding white porcelain bath, pedestal washbasin standing on a short fluted column, and a heated towel rail. The walls and floors in the illustration have as much marble as the plushest of modern luxury hotel bathrooms, pale white marble with bands of richer coloured marble on the walls and a border of tiles around the edge of the floor.

This is an excerpt from the book
The Ritz Hotel London: Centenary Edition
by Marcus Binney