The new-look property will cater for up to 700 delegates in the main conference hall, The Discovery; and will feature two business centres along with 41 meeting rooms.
The Park Inn Hotel & Conference Centre’s general manager Nick Campbell admits the hotel had ‘fallen behind in its refurbishment programme’ and said that the hotel's location meant it was easy for it to tap into the corporate market.
“We’ve recognised the competitors have gradually overtaken the hotel in general quality of product,” Campbell told BigHospitality. “It’s now time to bring the Park Inn Hotel & Conference Centre London Heathrow back to its rightful position as one of the leading hotels at Heathrow.
“The hotel has fantastic conference space but has never gone to market in any major way to promote the space - the time is right to show off these huge facilities and rub shoulders with the other larger venues at Heathrow.
Major upgrade
A £500,000 project is under way to improve the façade of the hotel, with a further £1.6m being used to refurbish 258 bedrooms in ‘wing 9’, the largest area of the hotel, including two floors of superior rooms.
A further 125 standard bedrooms have already been upgraded with new curtains, decoration and corridors and all 290 rooms in this section of the hotel will be completed by the end of February 2013. By the end of April, over 60 per cent of the hotel’s 895 rooms will have undergone transformation.
Speaking of the balance that the Park Inn Hotel & Conference Centre will now offer for business and leisure guests, Campbell added: “There is a medium, however the leisure market is predominately strong over weekends and much quieter in the week, when there is more corporate demand. But the basic principles of good hotel keeping don’t differ, no matter which market the hotel trades in.”