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Hotel is one of the best in the world ... and it hasn't even been opened yet
Last updated at 11:22am on 12.04.07A boutique hotel in London has been named one of the coolest places in the world to stay — a month before it has opened.
The Haymarket Hotel is honoured in Condé Nast Traveller's annual selection of the world's finest new establishments.
It is one of three London hotels on the list. Although they have both been open for only a year, High Road House, the Chiswick outpost of Soho House, and The Rockwell in Earl's Court are also recognised.
A spokesman for Condé Nast Traveller said: “What they all have in common is the style and talent to see off even the toughest competition.”
The Haymarket is the only hotel on the list to be recommended before it is officially open.
Built in three Georgian houses next to the Theatre Royal, it has 50 bedrooms and three suites as well as a fivebedroom villa.
It is the seventh property under Tim and Kit Kemp's boutique Firmdale Hotels banner.
Mrs Kemp said the hotel, which was shrouded in scaffolding until last week, had been carefully restored and decorated in a traditional way with a contemporary edge.
“We want it to be terribly English,” she said. “But England of the present, not of the past.” A double room will cost from £245 a night with a two-bedroom suite priced at £2,250.
It will have a public bar and restaurant on the ground floor serving Italian dishes and cocktails.
High Road House has also invested in its dining rooms. It has a ground-floor brasserie serving modern European food prepared by chef Duncan Impey and a members' bar upstairs where Steve Beadle offers modern English dishes.
The hotel is the latest addition to Nick Jones's Soho House group and rooms cost upward of £140 a night.
The Rockwell, another new boutique hotel, is located in two converted five-storey Victorian houses in Cromwell Road.
It opened in June last year and was taken over by Giorgio Armani's staff for London Fashion Week this year.
The venue counts Jade Jagger and model Jasmine Guinness amongst its clientele. Condé Nast Traveller describes it as tastefully designed with “bespoke Canadian fittings” and “nautically neat bathrooms”.
It adds: “The Rockwell's trump card is its public areas.
“The bar and dining room are light-filled, overlooking the garden, reached by a glass bridge, where noise is absorbed by an acoustic fence and bamboo grove in giant white flower pots.”
Double rooms cost from £150 a night.
Other British hotels in the world's top 65 include the Hilton Deansgate in Manchester, Belfast's Merchant Hotel, and the Tigerlily in Edinburgh.
