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The £1m-a-room hotel
Mira Bar-Hillel and Jonathan Prynn20 Nov 2007
Celebrated London hotel Blakes is to be sold room by room with prices starting at £1 million.
Buyers will be given the chance to own the bedroom where Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit spent the first night of their honeymoon or suite 007, where Diana Ross stays when she's in the capital.
The sale will allow the owners, interior designer Anouska Hempel and her husband Sir Mark Weinberg, to "remain active" in the business.
It is the second time the couple have offloaded the South Kensington boutique hotel. They sold it to a Malaysian company in 2004 only to buy it back again last year.
This time the buyer is a company called GuestInvest, which pioneered the idea of selling individual hotel rooms to private investors.
Sir Mark will join the firm's board, while his wife, a former Bond girl, will supervise a multi-million-pound refurbishment of the hotel that will reduce the number of bedrooms from 50 to 40.
Since it opened in the early Eighties, Blakes has become one of London's most popular retreats for A-listers, with rooms costing from £210 to £1,000 a night.
Decadent and stylish, it has a reputation for carefully guarding the privacy of stars wanting to escape the paparazzi.
Regular guests have included the Duchess of York, who celebrated her 40th birthday there, Princess Margaret, Kate Moss, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sadie Frost.
The hotel was also the venue for two dates between Paul McCartney and millionairess Nancy Shevell.
Designer Jean Paul Gaultier declared Blakes to be "my London house" and added: "I love the decoration and the atmosphere."
After the makeover, the remodelled rooms will be offered to a selected group of potential investors, all of whom will be regular guests and star names from the film, fashion and music worlds.
GuestInvest founder and chief executive Johnny Sandelson said: "We are delighted to offer Blakes' guests the chance to own a piece of this fabulous hotel.
"We aim to perfect the hotel services under the guidance of Anouska Hempel, ensuring the hotel retains its signature design characteristics." The company's first venture in March 2004 was the sale of 20 rooms at the Guesthouse West hotel in Westbourne Grove, which went for £235,000 each and are now changing hands at more than £300,000.
Each room is sold on a 99-year lease and buyers gain the right to stay in it for 52 days a year and take a share of what it earns the rest of the time.
GuestInvest has also acquired the former Whitbread brewery in Chiswell Street and a building in Paddington where hotel rooms will be sold from next year.
Reader views (1)
Good luck to those who have the money to purchase a room for £1 Million. Although, what if the ambience changes within a few years and one is not happy does this mean that the owner will be able to actually sell their room?
And when we pop our clogs how many classes are there then? Sorry to be so morbid but it has to be said.
- Daniela Pani, Reading, 20/11/2007 16:02
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