The Savoy opened on the Strand on 6 August 1889, built by the impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte on the profits of his Gilbert and Sullivan productions, after he noticed that London was one of the only European capitals without a grand hotel. It was the first hotel in Britain to hold electric light throughout, electric lifts, bathrooms in most rooms and constant hot and cold running water at once. Carte engaged César Ritz as manager and Auguste Escoffier as chef de cuisine, and the modern luxury hotel was assembled inside it.
The house
The Savoy was financed by light opera. D’Oyly Carte had built the Savoy Theatre next door in 1881 — the first public building in the world lit entirely by electricity — and the hotel followed on the same principle: install what has just been invented, and let the building be the argument. The architect was T. E. Collcutt.
It has 267 rooms and has been Grade II listed since 16 January 1981. In 2005 the hotel was bought by Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holding and management passed to Fairmont. It closed in December 2007 and reopened on 10 October 2010 after a £220m rebuild — the most expensive hotel renovation on record. It is now held fifty-fifty by Kingdom Holding and Katara of Doha.
What distinguishes it
The technology came first. Electric light throughout the building, electric lifts, constant hot and cold water and bathrooms in most rooms — held together in one house before any other in Britain. The Savoy sold engineering before it sold glamour.
Two men were hired, and an industry followed. Ritz ran the floor and Escoffier the kitchen, as one system rather than two departments. Both later left to build their own houses; the arrangement they invented here is the arrangement every luxury hotel still uses.
The standard text of two trades was written in this building. Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire came out of his years here in 1903, and Harry Craddock compiled The Savoy Cocktail Book in the American Bar in 1930. No other building in this Library has produced the reference work of even one trade, let alone two.
A woman ran the bar for twenty-three years. Ada Coleman was head bartender of the American Bar from 1903 to 1926, when women rarely worked behind a bar at all, and trained the successor who wrote the book.
The ownership left Britain. Riyadh and Doha have held it since 2005. Of the four grand hotels that founded the category, none is now owned in the country it stands in.
The Savoy is the wrong choice for a traveller who wants a house untouched since its own era. It has been rebuilt repeatedly, most drastically in 2007–10, and what is on offer is a continuously renewed interpretation of an 1889 idea rather than a preserved one. Guests seeking the quiet of a small house will also find the wrong building: the Strand entrance, the American Bar and the Thames Foyer are among the busiest public rooms in London.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
Editorial note — Opening date, technological firsts, the Ritz and Escoffier engagement and dismissal, listing, the 2005 sale and the 2010 reopening checked against Savoy and Fairmont corporate material, Historic England and independent accounts; verified August 2026 in the Parts I–VIII pass. ⚑ The dismissal year is given as both 1897 and 1898 across sources and the register carries the flag.
Sources
What the entry rests on. Each reference records the specific facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.