Battersea Power Station to help ‘fuel’ London’s Left Bank?

Battersea Power Station is an iconic London landmark. The famous cream coloured chimneys, dramatically erupting out of the station’s striking Art Deco brickwork, are as integral to the London skyline as Nelson’s Column or Tower Bridge. But ever since it stopped producing electricity in 1983, the power station has gradually descended into a sorry state of decay.

Proposals for the redevelopment of Europe's largest brick building have come and gone and its future still remains unclear. Today, however, its owners and developers have revealed their £5.5 billion planning application (the biggest in London’s history) to the City of Wandsworth which, the owners hope, will make Battersea Power Station as iconic as the Sydney Opera House or the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

According to The Telegraph, the mixed use development, if approved, will include over 3,000 homes, 1.6m sq ft of offices, 700,000 square feet of shops and restaurants, and a zero-carbon power station and could create 15,000 jobs. The developer’s intention to transform the site into a “cultural hub for London” is in keeping with our own aims here at Hotel Rafayel and, if realised, would further enhance Battersea’s position as “London’s new Left Bank”.

We will be watching with keen interest!

Wonderful Water

The British love affair with bottled water shows no signs of abating. According to a report by market analyst Datamonitor, UK consumers have increased their consumption of bottled water at the fastest rate in Europe, with growth predicted to continue at 7% a year. Water is calorie and caffeine free and contains no artificial colours – it is good for you and for the environment. Or is it?

Unfortunately, whilst water is undeniably good for you, plastic water bottles take a tremendous toll on the environment, with each bottle taking up to 1,000 years to biodegrade. According to a report by the Earth Policy Institute, more than 10 million barrels of crude oil are used each year to make plastic water bottles. The American National Resources Defense Council reports that about 9,700 tons of carbon dioxide are emitted annually to transport bottled water overseas to California. Alarmingly the Container Recycling Institute claims that over 86% of water bottles are not recycled.

We at Hotel Rafayel are distressed by such statistics and are determined not to contribute to the plastic mountain. We are therefore delighted to announce the installation of the Vivreau purified water system in our hotel, which will eradicate the need for plastic bottles and water delivery and will result in dramatic energy and cost savings. Based on an average weight of a glass bottle and average consumption, the Vivreau system will enable Hotel Rafayel to eliminate a staggering 432 tonnes of delivered bottled water over 5 years and eliminate 205 tonnes of glass bottled waste for disposal. Vivreau is Europe’s leading developer and manufacturer of purified drinking water systems and we are pleased to bring its quality product to our guests.

"The Most Comfortable Beds in the World"

Named after the Greek god of sleep, and father of Morpheus (the god of dreams), Hypnos has been producing luxury handcrafted beds for over a century and has a reputation for making “the most comfortable beds in the world”. A family-run British business, Hypnos proudly bears the Royal Warrant of HM The Queen and its beds can be found in some of the world’s finest palaces, hotels and homes.

At Hotel Rafayel we treat all our guests like royalty and so we are proud to provide a Hypnos bed in every room. No mass manufacturer can match the quality of these handmade items. Master craftsmen have combined their traditional skills with the latest technology to provide our guests with the ultimate sleep indulgence.

However, no matter how distinguished a company’s clients or how glorious its products, we at Hotel Rafayel expect commitment to an environmentally-friendly philosophy. We take environmental issues seriously and expect the same from our suppliers.

We are therefore delighted that Hypnos provides a revolutionary bed disposal and recycling service that exceeds all environmental objectives, providing a zero landfill and a zero carbon footprint process. Machinery at Hypnos’s certified ‘waste management’ facility shreds and separates materials. The recycled raw materials are used within a range of alternative manufacturing processes - nothing is wasted and nothing ends up in landfill: metal hinges and springs are recycled back into steel products; timber into MDF or wood shavings; foam reused in carpet underlay; textiles recycled into insulation products or briquettes for industrial heating – even the packaging materials from new beds are recycled!

Comfort, quality and conscience. Hypnos is clearly right for Rafayel!

Tomorrow'sWorld Today

In this digital age we rely on technology to make our daily lives easier and more enjoyable. The average home is brimming with hi-tech wizardry, much of which is regarded as essential to our 21st century lifestyle. Unfortunately, hotels often seem to lag behind the average home, with the latest technological gadgetry taking many years to find its way into hotel rooms and leaving guests frustrated. At Hotel Rafayel we understand this. We know that our guests want to have the same hi-tech access that they can receive at home. It is our goal to meet and exceed those expectations.

Our rooms, all of which have a Philips-designed energy saving lighting scheme and a high efficiency Daikin air-conditioning system, are amongst the most advanced to be found anywhere in the world.

Features which are standard in all rooms include:

* Personal digital frames that can be uploaded with your favourite pictures.

* VDA Micromaster room automation system with touch control glass panels enabling door access, lighting control, air conditioning control, internet room service and housekeeping management

* MediaHub panel fitted to all bedrooms allowing guests to connect their laptop, iPod, MP3, game console, digital camera or DVD player to the in-room TV and audio system

* Flush ceiling speakers to bedrooms and bathrooms to allow audio from TV or personal device connected through MediaHub

* Philips HD 32” Ambilight LCD TVs

* IPTV System with freeview channels, blockbuster movies, radio, TV internet, on-screen newspapers, room service and express checkout.

* In-room video conferencing enabled

* Free broadband and Wi-Fi

* Cordless and speaker phones available via guest services

* Wii, Playstations & games and laptops available via guest services

Whether it be offering you a digital version of any newspaper from around the world, enabling you to speak to family or co-workers via video-conferencing, supplying you with any mobile/cell phone charger you might want, or providing you with the ability to connect your favourite digital media player to your room TV and audio system, we have tried hard to make the hotel experience as easy, pleasurable and convenient as possible.

There is only one downside….you may never want to leave your room!

Rafayel is Roomy!

As an ecologically aware hotel, Rafayel on the Left Bank is committed to doing as much as it can to help preserve our planet’s environment and its precious resources. But long gone are the days when practitioners of a “green” philosophy had to sacrifice luxury and make do with second best!

We at Rafayel want each and every one of our guests to enjoy the most luxurious, relaxing and decadent stay imaginable. Utilising the latest technology and making full use of our spacious setting, we are able to adhere to our ecological principles whilst delivering 5-star quality and comfort to all of our guests.

Nowhere is this dual doctrine of “conscience “and “quality” more obvious than in our 65 plush bedrooms, all of which feature our bespoke furniture and fittings. London is a city notorious for small hotel rooms. We know all too well that many hotels practice the false economy of trying to increase the number of bedrooms at the expense of room, corridor and lobby size. This is an approach we wholeheartedly reject. Visitors will be struck by the generous width of our corridors and the overall feeling of space that permeates all areas of the hotel.

Rooms at Rafayel on the Left Bank come in one of four spacious sizes:

Big (The Mississippi Rooms) – up to 220 sq ft
Bigger (The Yangtze Rooms) – up to 350 sq ft
Even Bigger (The Amazon Suites) – up to 500 sq ft
Biggest (The Nile Suites) – up to 700 sq ft



Our rooms are open and airy and, graced with full-length windows, are suffused with an abundance of natural daylight. Needless to say, given our magnificent location, high-up on the Battersea riverfront, our rooms afford breathtaking views over this great city.

Our indulgent bathrooms are extremely spacious and feature body-spray showers, with larger rooms equipped with hydrotherapy baths. By harvesting rain water collected from our various terraces we are able to offset such luxury by 6,000 litres of water per day. Rain water is used to grow thousands of new plants on our grounds and it feeds a beautiful fountain that recycles the water. The fountain is notable for its LED low-footprint lighting display. We eventually hope to reinforce these eco-friendly credentials by increasing our rain harvesting capacity to 10,000 litres per day.

But the decadence does not end there! For our rooms are amongst the most technologically-advanced one will find anywhere in London or indeed the world. More about this in our next post.

Rafayel -- The News Spreads!

The blogosphere is already alive with chatter about the forthcoming launch of Rafayel on the Left Bank. Over the past couple of weeks news about our exciting new hotel concept has appeared on several notable websites, including Sleeper Magazine, Big Hospitality,the British Hospitality Association, and Guillaume Thevenot's superb Hotel Blog. The latest website to mention us is Leisure Property.com.

We are delighted by the interest and enthusiasm we have generated so far. But we have much more still to show! Stay tuned -- this is only the beginning!

Things are coming along...in fact its begining to look like a hotel!

Things are coming along nicely...in fact it's begining to look like a hotel, for me this is the most rewarding part of the build, things are coming together and those CGI's and my imagination are being made real. More photos next week...