Aros

The new DoubleTree by Hilton offers 165 guestrooms, bar restaurant, fitness club and attached conference and banquet facilities, and was intended to cater for renewed interest in the city of Hull. The hotel features a dramatic sky bar – The Lexington – with big lightbox windows with views towards the city and the Humber Bridge. The Lexington is a reference to a well-known nightclub that stood on the site called Lexington Avenue, acknowledging the site’s local history.

The hotel is highly innovative in terms of its construction. All guestroooms were built in China to modular techniques by CIMC. DoubleTree, unlike hotel operators who regularly employ standard modulated construction, had no interior brand standards for rooms of this type. Working closely with CIMC, a functional but bespoke room type was designed, which could be specified to the same standard in China.

The modular rooms arrived by boat, in under four weeks and were craned into position stacked atop a podium housing the public areas of the hotel, which includes the Marco Pierre White restaurant and hotel lobby. Each modular room was fully sealed on installation, with almost every element pre-installed including furniture, bathrooms and fully fitted carpets.

The whole construction cycle took just four weeks, to which the façade was then added to wrap the building

The arrival of Hilton in the city of Hull is a positive marker for Hull’s renewed status as a cultural destination – while the new hotel facilities is designed to cater for a new demographic and increased influx of visitors to the city.