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Anyone who grew up in west London remembers Whiteleys. The Bayswater shopping centre, formerly a gargantuan department store, rang its tills for the last time in 2018. Now flattened and totally rebuilt, with only the grand Edwardian facade remaining, Whiteleys is staging a grand reopening fit for the 2020s. Within its reconstructed walls, you’ll now find a posh cinema and gym; restaurants, shops and an art gallery; and, most excitingly of all, the first UK hotel from Six Senses.
Most famous for its high-end resorts in Asia, Six Senses has been gradually moving into city locations like Istanbul, Rome and Kyoto. Six years in the making, its arrival in London is one of the year’s biggest hospitality happenings, especially for the capital’s ever-expanding crowd of wellness devotees. (Or at least, those with a bit of spare cash – the location near Notting Hill checks out.)
Why stay at Six Senses London?
The spa is the crown jewel here, with a whole panoply of good stuff on offer: the full gamut of wellness, from traditional herbs and crystals right through to high-tech ‘biohacking’. But everything at Six Senses – the restaurant, the rooms, even the bar – puts a premium on health and wellbeing, with a side of sustainability.
If that sounds massively po-faced, it somehow isn’t here: whatever your taste in wellness, they’ll make sure it’s just one note in a laidback, luxurious, grand old time. You might be fresh from the cryotherapy chamber, but that doesn’t mean you can’t treat yourself to a martini or a plate of chicken wings.
What are the rooms like at Six Senses London?
Given the grandness of the lobby – with its lush vegetation, Victorian cabinetry and the original Whiteleys staircase as a cast-iron focal point – you might expect the bedrooms to be both numerous and extravagant. In fact, they’re neither. There are just over 100 rooms and suites here – fewer than half as many as, say, The Savoy – and they lean heavily towards the quiet end of the luxury scale. They cocoon you in dove greys, off-whites and light wood.
Excellent beds, a full pillow menu, highly adjustable (and impeccably labelled) lighting and top-end marble-and-tile bathrooms accomplish in-room zen. (Although the bathrooms have glass walls and no doors, so you’ll want to make sure you’re on intimate terms with your roommate.) Plenty of the rooms have terraces, and the inward views, looking over the courtyard, are just as good as the outlook over Bayswater’s terraces.
A quick round of applause, too, for the sustainability efforts on show: you’d have to look hard to find a single scrap of disposable plastic anywhere in your room. Even the key cards are made of wood.
What is the spa like at Six Senses London?
The spa is the main event here, accessed via a spectacular staircase right inside the main hotel doors. Lurking below street level like a therapeutic iceberg is a vast, hushed warren of treatment rooms, each dedicated to a different wellness practice. Of course you can get a massage here, join a yoga class or work out in the impressive, ’30s-inspired gym. But there are also rooms dedicated to flotation, cryotherapy, hammam, contrast therapy, red light, electrogmagnetism, crystals and even more.
A recovery room screens bespoke time-lapse videos of mushrooms by documentarian Louie Schwartzberg, while a spectacular ‘Alchemy Bar’ hosts one-on-one consultations as well as regular workshops using seasonal British plants: we spent a happy hour distilling the essence from magnolia leaves, freshly harvested in Sussex. But if herbalism feels a little too traditional, how about a session in the biohacking lounge? Here, a whole array of tech – sleep tracking rings, LED face masks, compression boots, resistance machines – promises to screen your body’s data and optimise your workout or recovery. The pool and hydrothermal circuit hadn’t yet opened at the time of our visit – but we’ll make sure to visit them soon.
What is the restaurant like at Six Senses London?
At the laidback Whiteleys Kitchen, just off the lobby, the MO goes something like ‘British ingredients, global flavours’. There are some daring pairings here – Cornish mussels with dashi broth and guanciale (cured pork cheek); roasted beetroot hummus with Levantine sumac and Japanese mizuna; hispi cabbage with kimchi jam; fermented rhubarb with hot honey – but it works a treat. I’d go back just for the sticky, spicy chicken wings stuffed with Dorset crab.
Breakfast is served in the same space, with an à la carte menu that ranges from a Full English to a collagen and miso broth, plus a ‘kitchen counter’ buffet. Don’t skip the pastries, also available at Whiteleys Cafe: the place to pick up a grab-and-go coffee or mushroom latte. Next-door Whiteleys Bar, meanwhile, has a trick up its sleeve: all the cocktails can be ordered with or without alcohol, so that non-drinkers aren’t relegated to a separate menu.
Hotel guests can also blag a table at the Mediterranean restaurant upstairs in Six Senses Place, which is otherwise open only to members.
What’s the area like around Six Senses London?
Bayswater has a history as a surprisingly low-key and affordable pocket of inner west London, with a multicultural community that’s still evident in ace local restaurants like Normah’s (Malaysian) and Aphrodite Taverna (Greek Cypriot). That identity could be slipping away, however: the friendly warren of Queensway Market is at risk of closure, the row of shops opposite the redeveloped Whiteleys is boarded up ahead of redevelopment, and upmarket new openings like The Park (from serial restaurateur Jeremy King) – plus, of course, the Whiteleys redevelopment itself – herald the transformation of the area into something much more like nearby Notting Hill.
For more recommendations, check out our full guide to Bayswater.
DETAILS
Address: 1 Redan Pl, London W2 4SA
Expect to pay: From £625 per night for a room, with suites fetching up to £1,660 per night; from £125 per head for dinner at Whiteleys Kitchen; spa treatments and workshops from around £50.
Closest transport: Bayswater tube