Kimpton Fitzroy London is a Finalist for Best UK Hotel at the
2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and it represents a distinct proposition in this field: full-blown Victorian splendour run with the informal, personable style of a boutique. The thé-au-lait terracotta palace on Russell Square — built in 1898 to awe Edwardian travellers — now houses the UK flagship of IHG's Kimpton brand, and the pairing works better than either half would alone.
The building supplies the drama. Fitzroy Doll's architecture gives the hotel a facade of cathedrals and a marble staircase made for entrances, while the restoration threaded modern comforts through the listed fabric: 334 rooms and suites in calming contemporary dress, bathrooms that forgive the building's age nothing, and public spaces that honour the period without embalming it. The
recent redesign of the lobby doubled down on the hotel's role as a Bloomsbury living room, courting the laptop-and-coffee crowd and making the ground floor one of the district's genuine third spaces — a deliberate embrace of how hotels are actually used between check-ins.
Kimpton's culture does the rest. The brand's signature warmth — pet-friendly policies, the nightly social hour, staff empowered to solve rather than escalate — softens the grandeur into somewhere people actually relax, while Neptune, the bar, and the all-day dining room keep the address useful from first flat white to final negotiation. For business travellers, Bloomsbury is a quiet masterstroke: the City and West End are equidistant, Eurostar is one stop away, and the square outside supplies the decompression walk. Bloomsbury's own character — the British Museum a ten-minute stroll, the university quarter's bookshops and cafés — gives downtime a texture the glassier business districts cannot offer.
The nomination recognises a hotel that solved a hard equation — filling a vast Victorian landmark with genuine personality, at a price point that undercuts the Mayfair peers it architecturally rivals. It is a formula
Travelling for Business expects owners of other grand-but-underloved buildings to study closely, because the economics and the atmosphere are both visibly working.
A place among the 2026 Finalists rewards character delivered at scale. Winners will be announced at the 2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and Bloomsbury's palazzo will host the celebration or the commiseration with equal style.
