The Savoy Hotel is a luxury hotel located in the Strand in the City of Westminster in central London, England. It has been called "London's most famous hotel". Built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan opera productions, it opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by Carte's family for over a century.
Carte chose the name "Savoy" to commemorate the history of the property. His investors in the venture were, in addition to his relatives, Carl Rosa, George Grossmith, François Cellier, George Edwardes, Augustus Harris and Fanny Ronalds.
The hotel is managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts and has 267 guest rooms and panoramic views of the River Thames across Savoy Place and the Thames Embankment.
The Savoy was the first hotel in Britain to introduce electric lights throughout the building, electric lifts, bathrooms in most of the lavishly furnished rooms, constant hot and cold running water and many other innovations. The hotel became Carte's most successful venture.
The Savoy's main entrance from Strand:
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Historical Context: From Savoy Palace to Luxury Hotel
The House of Savoy was the ruling family of Savoy, descended from Humbert I, Count of Sabaudia (or "Maurienne"), who became count in 1032. The name Sabaudia evolved into "Savoy" (or "Savoie"). Count Peter (or Piers or Piero) of Savoy (d. King Henry III made Peter Earl of Richmond and, in 1246, gave him the land between the Strand and the River Thames, where Peter built the Savoy Palace in 1263. Peter gave the palace and the manor of the Savoy to the Congregation of Canons of the Great Saint Bernard, and the palace became the "Great Hospital of St Bernard de Monte Jovis in Savoy".
The manor was subsequently purchased by Queen Eleanor, who gave the site to her second son, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. Edmund's great-granddaughter, Blanche, inherited the site. About 1505, Henry VII planned a great hospital for "pouer, nedie people", leaving money and instructions for it in his will. The hospital was built in the palace ruins and licensed in 1512. Drawings show that it was a magnificent building, with a dormitory, dining hall and three chapels. Henry VII's hospital lasted for two centuries but suffered from poor management. The sixteenth-century historian Stow noted that the hospital was being misused by "loiterers, vagabonds and strumpets". In 1702, the hospital was dissolved, and the hospital buildings were used for other purposes. Part of the old palace was used as a military prison in the eighteenth century. In 1864, a fire burned everything except the stone walls and the Savoy Chapel.
The Vision of Richard D'Oyly Carte
Having seen the opulence of American hotels during his many visits to the United States, Carte decided to build a luxury hotel in Britain, to attract a foreign clientele as well as British visitors to London. Opened in 1889, the hotel was designed by architect Thomas Edward Collcutt, who also designed the Wigmore Hall. The hotel was built on a plot of land, next to the Savoy Theatre, that Carte originally purchased to house an electrical generator for the theatre (built in 1881), which was the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity.
At first the Savoy did well, but within six months of opening, the hotel was losing money. The board of directors instructed Carte to replace the management team, headed by W. Hardwicke as manager and M. Charpentier as chef de cuisine. As manager he engaged César Ritz, later the founder of the Ritz Hotel; Ritz brought in the chef Auguste Escoffier and the maître d'hôtel Louis Echenard and put together what he described as "a little army of hotel men for the conquest of London"; Escoffier recruited French cooks and reorganised the kitchens. The Savoy under Ritz and his partners soon attracted distinguished and wealthy clientele, headed by the Prince of Wales. At the same time, Ritz continued to manage his own hotels and businesses in Europe. Nellie Melba, among others, noted that Ritz was less focused on the Savoy.
The Dismissal of Ritz and Partners
In 1897, Ritz and his partners were dismissed from the Savoy. Ritz and Echenard were implicated in the disappearance of over £3,400 (equivalent to £490,000 at 2023), of wine and spirits, and Escoffier had been receiving gifts from the Savoy's suppliers. In a 1938 biography of her husband, Ritz's widow maintained that he resigned and that Escoffier, Echenard, and other senior employees resigned with him. This fiction was perpetuated for many years, with the consent of the Savoy company.
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By a resolution passed this morning you have been dismissed from the service of the Hotel for, among other serious reasons, gross negligence and breaches of duty and mismanagement.
Expansion and Modernization
The Savoy group purchased Simpson's-in-the-Strand in 1898. The next year, Carte engaged M. Joseph, proprietor of the Marivaux Restaurant in Paris, as his new maître d'hôtel and in 1900, appointed George Reeves-Smith as the next managing director of the Savoy hotel group. After Richard D'Oyly Carte died in 1901, his son Rupert D'Oyly Carte became chairman of the Savoy hotel group in 1903 and supervised the expansion of the hotel and the modernisation of the other hotels in the group's ownership, such as Claridge's. The expansion of the hotel in 1903-04 included new east and west wings, and moving the main entrance to Savoy Court off the Strand. The additions pioneered the use of steel frame construction in London. At that time, the hotel added Britain's first serviced apartments, with access to all the hotel's amenities.
For example, in 1905 the American millionaire George A. Kessler hosted a "Gondola Party" where the central courtyard was flooded to a depth of four feet, and scenery was erected around the walls. Costumed staff and guests re-created Venice. The two dozen guests dined in an enormous gondola.
When the hotel was expanded, Rupert D'Oyly Carte decided to develop a luxurious, handcrafted bed unique to the Savoy and his other hotels. His Savoy Bed, also called the No.
Savoy Hotel, A BILLIONAIRES Plaything !! (Reopening)
After the death of Helen Carte in 1913, Rupert D'Oyly Carte became the controlling stockholder of the hotel group. In 1919, he sold the Grand Hotel, Rome, which his father had acquired in 1894 at the urging of Ritz. For the Savoy, he hired a new chef, François Latry, who served from 1919 to 1942. In the 1920s he ensured that the Savoy continued to attract a fashionable clientele by a continuous programme of modernisation and the introduction of dancing in the large restaurants. It also became the first hotel with air conditioning, steam-heating and soundproofed windows in the rooms, 24-hour room service and telephones in every bathroom. It also manufactured its own mattresses.
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One famous incident during Rupert's early years was the 1923 shooting, at the hotel, of a wealthy young Egyptian, Prince Fahmy Bey, by his French wife, Marguerite.
Until the 1930s, the Savoy group had not thought it necessary to advertise, but Carte and Reeves-Smith changed their approach. During World War II, Wontner and his staff had to cope with bomb damage, food rationing, manpower shortage and a serious decline in the number of foreign visitors. The matter was judged so serious that the government set up a court of inquiry. Nevertheless, the hotel continued to attract celebrities.
The Savoy Coronation Ball
To mark Queen Elizabeth II's coronation on 2 June 1953, the hotel hosted the Savoy Coronation Ball, attended by 1,400 people, including Hollywood stars, royalty and other notables, who paid 12 guineas (equivalent to £444 as of 2023) each. Sixteen Yeomen Warders from the Tower of London lined the entrance staircase. The interior of the Savoy was decked in hundreds of yards of dove-grey material and heraldic banners in scarlet, blue and yellow. The design was supervised by Bridget D'Oyly Carte, whose fellow organisers included Cecil Beaton and Ninette de Valois.
Under Wontner's leadership, the Savoy appointed its first British head chef, Silvino Trompetto, who was maître-chef from 1965 to 1980. Giles Shepard (1937-2006), succeeded Wontner as managing director from 1979 to 1994 and helped to defend the Savoy Group against Charles Forte's attempt to take control of the Board in the 1980s. Forte gained a majority of the shares, but was unable to take control due to the company's ownership structure. Shepard also introduced competitive salaries for the staff, increased international marketing of the hotel, and led the Savoy's centenary celebrations. Ramón Pajares was managing director from 1994 to 1999.
The Savoy continued to be a popular meeting place. Bridget D'Oyly Carte died childless in 1985, bringing an end to her family line. In 1998, an American private equity house, The Blackstone Group, purchased the Savoy hotel group.
The 2007 Renovation
In December 2007, the hotel closed for a complete renovation, the cost of which was budgeted at £100 million. The hotel conducted a sale of 3,000 pieces of its famous furnishings and memorabilia. The projected reopening date was delayed more than a year to October 2010, as structural and system problems held up construction.
The new design features a Thames Foyer with a winter garden gazebo under a stained-glass cupola with natural light, which is the venue for late-night dining and the hotel's famous afternoon tea. The glass dome had been covered since World War II. A new teashop and patisserie is called Savoy Tea, and a glass-enclosed fitness gallery with rooftop swimming pool, gym and spa are located above the Savoy Theatre. The new Beaufort Bar has an Art Deco interior of jet-black and gold and offers nightly cabaret.
The River Restaurant (now renamed Kaspar's), facing the Thames, is also decorated in the Art Deco style, but the American Bar is nearly unchanged. The rooms are decorated in period styles harmonised with the adjacent hallways, and they retain built-in wardrobes and bedroom cabinets.
The critic for The Daily Telegraph wrote: "The Savoy is still The Savoy, only better. ... [The rooms] are calm ... you are the personality, not the room. ... [The hotel is] a saviour of The Strand I suspect now. The lobby is bigger and grander, and JUST THE SAME." A review in The Guardian noted that reception "now is sheer sleight of hand. ... In under five minutes I have been expertly drawn into the world of Savoy. [Furniture and furnishings] conspire to enhance my stay". While the same reviewer found the spa disappointing, she gave highest marks to the hotel's personalised service, the Savoy Tea, afternoon tea in the Thames Foyer, and the Beaufort bar, concluding: "The Savoy is back where it belongs - right on top."
The Savoy Grill, however, lost its Michelin star and reopened to mixed reviews.
Cultural Significance and Famous Guests
Claude Monet and James Whistler both painted or drew views, from their Savoy rooms, of the River Thames. The Savoy featured prominently in guest Oscar Wilde's trial for gross indecency.
Other celebrity guests in the hotel's early decades included the future King Edward VII, Sarah Bernhardt, Enrico Caruso, Lillie Langtry, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Nellie Melba, Charlie Chaplin, Al Jolson, Errol Flynn, Fred Astaire, Marlene Dietrich, Lionel Barrymore, Harry Truman, Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland, Josephine Baker, Cary Grant, Babe Ruth, Ivor Novello and Noël Coward. The hotel kept records of its guests' preferences, so that it could provide for them in advance. For Coward, the staff made history by taking the first photographs of a hotel guest's toilet articles so that they could lay them out in his bathroom exactly as he liked them. Bob Dylan stayed in the hotel in 1965 and filmed the video clip "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in an adjacent alley.
The Savoy hotel has long been associated with the arts. Whistler stayed in 1896 with his wife Beatrix and painted eight lithograph views of the Thames from his top-floor room. Monet stayed at the hotel on three occasions in 1899, 1900 and 1901, and served as the hotel's first artist-in-residence. He worked on paintings there including views of Charing Cross Bridge (1899-1901) and Waterloo Bridge (1903). The artist-in residence position has continued in the 21st century. For example, in 2012, the British artist, David Downes, worked in the hotel's lobby to create a large-scale drawing, displayed in the hotel's front hall, depicting the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant.
The following year, South African artist Jonty Hurwitz created a chrome and resin anamorphic sculpture of Kaspar, the hotel's cat mascot, titled "The 14th Guest", found at the entrance to the hotel's restaurant, Kaspar's Seafood Bar & Grill.
Kaspar, the Hotel's Cat Mascot
Kaspar's story begins with the legend of an 1898 dinner at the Savoy given for 14 guests by Woolf Joel, a South African diamond tycoon. One of the diners was unable to attend, leaving the number of guests an unlucky 13, and another diner predicted that whoever first left the table would soon die. The first to leave was Joel, who was shot dead a few weeks later in Johannesburg. After this, the hotel offered to seat a member of its staff at tables of 13 to ward off bad luck.
Entertainment and Social Events
The hotel established its first dinner dances in 1912, laying a dance-floor in the centre of the Thames Foyer in time to take advantage of the popularity of the tango, which exploded in 1913. William de Mornys became head of entertainment after the First World War and helped set up the Savoy Havana Band and the Savoy Orpheans dance band, led by Debroy Somers. Lena Horne and others made their British debuts there. Frank Sinatra, who regularly stayed at the hotel, played the piano and sang there. The 1960s and 1970s saw cabaret appearances from artists including Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and The New Seekers. Traditional dinner, dancing and cabaret evenings came to an end in 1980.
The hotel has often been used as a film location. For example, the romantic finale to Notting Hill (1999) is set in the hotel's Lancaster Room, where Anna (Julia Roberts) and William (Hugh Grant) declare their...
Comparison Table: The Savoy Hotel vs. Other Luxury Hotels
| Feature | The Savoy Hotel | Royal Savoy Sharm El Sheikh |
|---|---|---|
| Location | London, England | Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt |
| Historical Significance | Rich history dating back to 1889 | Modern luxury hotel |
| Architectural Style | Art Deco | Modern |
| Key Features | Famous afternoon tea, Beaufort Bar, Thames Foyer | Opulent rooms, suites, villas, private swimming pools |
The Royal Savoy, one of the best luxury Hotels in Sharm El Sheikh, provides an exhilarating vacation for guests looking for outstanding service, a tranquil setting, exceptional facilities, and a sense of exclusivity.The Royal Savoy, built on the Red Sea's shoreline, is a premium hotel that welcomes tourists from all over the world.
The Royal Savoy had opulent rooms, suites, and villas with plasma air conditioning and satellite television. The villas each have a balcony or patio with a view of the hotel's landscaped grounds or the sea, a marble bathroom, and a private swimming pool and garden.The Savoy Spa has numerous massage rooms, a hot tub, a steam room, a sauna, and a lounge area with umbrellas on the rooftop.
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