McKillen savouring success of Claridge’s, Berkeley & Connaught
PROPERTY investor Paddy McKillen has cause to celebrate this weekend with his beloved Claridge’s, Connaught and Berkeley hotels enjoying a post-Brexit bookings surge. Visitors from the lucrative North American market appear to have been taking advantage of the dip in Sterling and getting more bang for their buck.
Last week, the Connaught Hotel’s RevPAR (revenue per available room), which already tops the super luxury hotel category, eclipsed the record it had set during the London 2012 Olympics. Claridge’s and the Berkeley have enjoyed a similarly impressive run, with the latter especially benefitting from the recent launch of a number of new suites.
Quite apart from the post-referendum jump in visitor numbers, McKillen and his team have been buoyed up by a recent string of awards and accolades for the Maybourne Hotel Group’s world-famous London hotels.
Two weeks ago, Simon Rogan, chef-patron at Fera in Claridge’s was voted by chefs across the UK as 2016 chef of the year at the AA Hospitality Awards. Within four months of its opening in May 2014, Fera earned a Michelin star.
The AA awards saw the Maybourne Hotel Group leave with a veritable brace of honours with celebrated French chef Helene Darroze receiving five AA rosettes to complement her three Michelin stars (two of which were bestowed on her restaurant at the Connaught). Also honoured was the Berkeley Hotel’s Pierre Koffman, who received the AA’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
And last Thursday, McKillen’s Maybourne team resumed its winning ways with the Connaught Hotel’s Connaught Bar climbing five places from its ninth-place finish in 2015 to take the No 4 spot at the World’s 50 Best Bars Awards. The iconic bar had already earned the title of World’s Best Cocktail Bar and Best International Hotel Bar at the 10th annual Spirited Awards in New Orleans last month.