Raffles London at The OWO is a Finalist for Best UK Hotel at the
2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and no nominee occupies more storied ground: the Old War Office on Whitehall, where Churchill worked, Ian Fleming took notes for a certain fictional commander, and the machinery of empire once hummed. Its transformation into Raffles' London flagship gave the capital something it lacked — a grand hotel where the building itself is the narrative.
The restoration rewards every corridor walked. Two and a half thousand rooms of Edwardian baroque became 120 rooms and suites of remarkable scale, wrapped around the great marble staircase and panelled halls where generals once briefed ministers; heritage suites occupy offices whose former tenants shaped the twentieth century. The famous Raffles service culture — imported from Singapore with
its legendary butlers, whose
stories and signature experiences have become an attraction in their own right — animates the formality with genuine warmth.
Dining ambitions match the address. The house holds one of London's highest culinary concentrations, crowned by Mauro Colagreco's flagship — holder of three Michelin stars — with Endo Kazutoshi's Kioku, Langosteria and a run of bars beneath the vaulted ceilings; the Guerlain spa spreads across four floors of subterranean calm. For business purposes the hotel is almost unfairly located: Downing Street is a neighbour, Westminster and the City bracket the postcode, and the ballroom and private rooms host occasions that need gravitas on the invitation. Guards ride past outside, Horse Guards Parade is over the road, and the evening walk home passes the Cenotaph — nowhere else does statecraft-as-setting quite like it.
The nomination recognises the boldest hotel opening London has seen in a generation growing confidently into itself — theatre matched by substance, history matched by three-star cooking and butlers who mean it. The numbers alone tell the ambition: a restoration measured in years and hundreds of millions, 85 private residences sharing the address, and a subterranean quarter of dining and wellness carved beneath Whitehall.
A place among the 2026 Finalists puts the war office on a happier list than most it has known. Winners will be announced at the 2026 Travelling for Business Awards, and Whitehall's newest institution will attend in full dress.
