Flood-affected Crowne Plaza Leeds re-opens after £1m refurb
The 135-bedroom hotel on Wellington Street, which had to be evacuated on Boxing Day due to the city's heavy floods, was closed for nine weeks to allow refurbishment work.
Work has included the replacement of 43 internal doors, 150 square metres of carpet, lifts and car park barriers. The hotel's entire IT, telephone, electrical and heating systems - including the boilers and generators, were also all replaced.
The cleaning bill for the hotel, which includes a restaurant, meeting rooms and leisure centre was £25k alone while another £50k was spent on general maintenance and upgrading.
Crowne Plaza Leeds general manager Marco Frik said the hotel lost £1.2m in revenue due to its closure.
“There is no doubt that the Boxing Day floods devastated our hotel’s infrastructure and that it’s been a difficult and costly journey to get to this point," he said. "However, we have spent more than £1m getting the hotel back to full working order, and we’ve taken the opportunity to upgrade certain areas of the hotel such as the leisure centre, so the reopening is certainly worth the wait.”
Hotel staff
During the work, the majority of the hotel's 80 members of staff were deployed to other hotels in the country while a small team remained on-site.
Frik said: “I would like to take this opportunity to thank my wonderful colleagues who really have gone above and beyond over the last two months to get the hotel reopened. It has been a very difficult and stressful time for us, particularly as we lost all our IT systems which meant we didn’t have access to our booking information.
“My staff worked tirelessly to contact as many people as possible and use social media networks to let guests know the situation the hotel was in and that we had unfortunately had to close.
“Our customers have been extremely patient and accommodating with us, particularly our Spirit Health club members. We are absolutely delighted to now to be at the point where we can open the doors and welcome people in once again.”
The hotel officially re-opens today (1 March) with the car park due to open next month. The hotel's leisure centre is partially open while refurbishment work on the swimming pool area is completed.
