Royal Lancaster London opened on 1 August 1967 as the Rank Organisation’s first London hotel, in a Richard Seifert building originally drawn up as offices. That heritage explains a great deal about the place: 18 floors of confident 1960s architecture standing on the northern edge of Hyde Park, with 411 rooms and suites and views that sweep right across the city. An £80 million restoration in 2017 brought it thoroughly up to date without sanding off the mid-century character, and the hotel still wears its era well.
It has always been a hotel that likes a party. The Beatles held the premiere celebration for Yellow Submarine here in 1968, scenes from The Italian Job were filmed on the premises the same year, and a nod to that history survives in the toy Minis dotted around some of the rooms. Today the dining runs from Nipa Thai, which holds a Thai Select award, to the Park Lounge Bar and the Hyde Cafe, where afternoon tea is served in collaboration with the Natural History Museum. It is an unusually characterful hotel for one of this size.
For events, the draw is two pillar-free ballrooms — the Nine Kings and the Westbourne suites — supported by a range of smaller meeting rooms, all with natural daylight and, in many cases, the park laid out below the windows. A single event can be sized anywhere from a private dinner for a handful of guests up to 1,000 in a ballroom, and the hotel can handle considerably more than that across the building when a celebration takes over several rooms at once.
Where the band plays
A pillar-free ballroom is the thing to appreciate here. There is no column standing between a table and the stage, which means a band can be seen from everywhere in the room and a dancefloor can go where it makes sense rather than where the structure allows. Rooms of this size want a full line-up with a decent front line to fill them; the daylight is lovely for a ceremony or a reception, and the same space transforms completely once it is dressed and lit for the evening.
How the evening runs
There is no single published curfew across the hotel — timings are agreed with the events team for each booking — so settle your finish time early, and ask at the same time whether amplified music is expected to wind up before the bar closes, given there are guest bedrooms in the tower above. Load-in and production access are well practised at a hotel that runs events on this scale, and with 411 bedrooms upstairs a good proportion of your guests will still be on the floor for the last number.
Bands available in London and perfectly at home in a venue like this.
More live music in London.
- London Wedding Bands
- London Events Bands
- Tribute Acts in London
- Wedding DJs in London
- Corporate Entertainment in London
Worth reading before you book: Sound Limiters Explained. More questions answered on our England & Wales FAQs.