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Back in the summer, news broke that Marriott would be losing one of its properties in the heart of London this fall and, as of a few days ago, the Le Meridien Picadilly is no longer part of the Marriott network.
The Le Meridien Picadilly was a Starwood property before the Marriott takeover and although it has always had mixed reviews, its location on the doorstep of Picadilly, Regent Street, Mayfair, and St James’ has always been hard to beat if a central London base was what a guest was looking for.
Unlike the situation Marriott has faced with at least one owner of the properties it manages (Marriott lost 122 properties in North America back in October), in this instance it doesn’t appear as if the property is leaving the Marriott portfolio because of unpaid fees. According to the owners, Archer Hotel Capital, the contract with Marriott had expired and they wanted to take the property in a new direction.
The Le Meridien Picadilly is currently closed for renovations which will see the lobby and a number of public areas refurbished, the ongoing bedroom refurbishments completed (these were already in progress before the split with Marriott), and the hotel’s entrance redesigned.
In 2021 the property will rebrand as “The Dilly” and will be managed by Axiom Hospitality. The Dilly already has a new website (here) and assuming the booking calendar is correct, it looks like it will be reopening its doors to guests from 1 February 2021.
As things stand, various travel sites (like Hotels.com) are showing The Dilly in their London listings…
…but only the hotel’s own site appears to have any inventory. Presumably, this will change as we move into next year as without a major brand behind it (The Dilly is moving forward as an independent hotel) the property is going to need as many booking outlets as it can get.
A little interesting side-note to this news is that Axiom Hospitality (the company that will manage The Dilly) doesn’t appear to have any history whatsoever. The listings in Companies House shows that the company was incorporated on 10 August 2020, all the company’s officers show 21 Picadilly as their business address (the same address as the Dilly), and the company only alloted its shares on 6 October.
Essentially, it looks as if Axiom Hospitality has been created specifically to manage The Dilly so it will be interesting to see how well (or badly) the hotel performs going forward.
Bottom Line
The Le Meridien Piccadilly has left the Marriott portfolio and will be rebranded as The Dilly from 1 February 2021. For Marriott and its guests this may be a little disappointing (especially if you were particularly fond of the Le Meridien’s location), but considering how many other properties Marriott has in central London (see here) this shouldn’t cause too many issues for Marriott loyalists.
So Hotels.com has 391 reviews for a hotel that hasn’t opened yet?
I believe those are the reviews for the Le Meridien which should (mostly) still be relevant as, refurbishments and Bonvoy benefits aside, The Dilly is unlikely to be too different to the Le Meridien in the short-term. Long-term is another matter.
How do you pour one out for your homies when it’s a hotel?
Some of my fondest memories:
sitting in the executive lounge with the better half, a glass of wine or two in, watching Christmas’s carolers preform.
Getting the concierge to find an impossible to get advent calendar
Pleasantly surprised by an upgrade to a suite with a four poster bed, roses scattered everywhere and a balcony that we weren’t supposed to go out on overlooking the lights on regent street.
I know the hotel is still there, but it won’t be the same under new management… :/
Let’s hope the new management team feels the need to make the hotel stand out from all the local competition by making sure that service standards are high. It’s possible that the property may get better with its new found independence.
A lot of the perks I got there undoubtedly came from being spg / Marriott ambassador, it would be hard to recreate that level of loyalty with someone new…
Out of interest, did you notice any change in service at this property after Marriott bought out Starwood?
Unless you want to count things like the lower value for MAGC after bonvoy kicked in, no. Not at all. This was the property I burned most of my SNAs at and the only time I didn’t have a SNA clear was when the property comped me the upgrade. The only change I noticed was that the food in the executive lounge went from buffet to service, and the prosecco went from self serve to being served, but as a comparison, the Marriott park lane had buffet / self service the entire time, at least till covid kicked in. So any changes were probably property specific and not system wide.
We had wanted to go one last time before the change, but with the quarantine requirements and my window to travel rarely exceeding 10 or 11 days, it would have been a trip to the inside of a hotel room for me, so we never did. 🙁