Virgin Hotels London Shoreditch

Virgin Hotels opened its first London property on August 1, 2024, taking over the former Mondrian Shoreditch at 45 Curtain Road. The 120-room lifestyle hotel brought Sir Richard Branson's hospitality brand to the city where Virgin itself began, with a rooftop pool and bar, a Dani García-led Spanish restaurant, and a private members' club run by Ibiza's Blue Marlin group. It is the brand's eighth property and its first in Europe.

The place

The hotel sits at 45 Curtain Road in Shoreditch, east London, a neighborhood built on a run of converted warehouses, independent galleries and a dense nightlife scene that has drawn a creative and media-industry crowd for two decades. Curtain Road itself runs through the heart of that district, within easy walking distance of Old Street, Brick Lane and Liverpool Street station. For Virgin, the choice of address carried symbolic weight: London is where Richard Branson founded Virgin in the 1970s, and Shoreditch's reputation for music, design and irreverence lines up closely with the brand's own positioning. The location favors guests who want nightlife and independent retail on the doorstep over proximity to the traditional West End hotel core.

The concept

Virgin Hotels London-Shoreditch is a repositioning of the former Mondrian Shoreditch rather than a ground-up build, and the brand has approached the property as a phased transformation. It opened in August 2024 with its full complement of 120 rooms — called "chambers" in Virgin's house style — each built around a two-section layout intended to separate sleeping and lounge areas, along with walk-in showers, sit-down vanities and Smeg fridges stocked in the brand's signature red. A second phase followed with 14 new suites finished in a 1970s-inflected palette of rust, olive green, pale blue and cream, using boucle, velvet and leather furnishings. The final phase of the rollout added Hidden Grooves, a vinyl-focused listening bar styled after a 1970s living room and stocked with music memorabilia, a nod to Virgin's roots in the record business. The property markets itself as a lifestyle hotel aimed at a mix of business and leisure travelers drawn to Shoreditch's creative-industry base, and it uses Virgin's "Lucy" app for guest requests alongside brand-standard policies such as flexible early check-in and late check-out.

Dining & wellness

Dining centers on BiBo, a Spanish restaurant helmed by chef Dani García that operated at the property before Virgin's takeover and continued under the new ownership. The hotel also has a rooftop bar and pool, and a private members' club operated in partnership with Ibiza nightlife group Blue Marlin. Hidden Grooves, the vinyl listening bar added during the final phase of the hotel's rollout, rounds out the drinking and entertainment offer.