The private music studio was apparently the idea of Lady Gaga’s producer DJ White Shadow.
When he was on the road with the Born This Way singer, the pair would record new material as soon as she wrote it in her hotel rooms. The frustration for the Grammy-nominated producer was the difficulty in capturing it to a consistent quality.
That’s why, when the Chicago-based superstar DJ worked with W Hotels as their “North America music director,” he wanted to create the hotel recording room. Kitted out with the latest high-end industry tech, musically-minded guests - and local musicians or visiting podcasters - can book it by the hour. Of course, given this is a 5-star hotel, 24-hour-a-day room service is available.
It might just make Edinburgh’s new W Hotel in the St James Quarter the perfect place for Taylor Swift to stay when she brings her record-breaking Eras tour to Murrayfield next summer.
The recording studio is just one of the features that makes the Capital’s latest 5-star hotel, which is due to open later this month, stand out from the crowd.
There’s also the £7,000-a-night Wow Suite, described as “the ultimate play pad”. That’s the price you pay to spend Hogmanay in the hotel’s distinctive answer to the presidential suite.
The rooftop Sushisamba restaurant would be a draw in its own right. Its unique selection of Japanese, Brazilian and Peruvian cuisine has already proved a hit with London diners in one of the prime spots in Covent Garden.
There is also the Joao’s Place “Brazilian-style speakeasy” where you can sip caipirinha on the terrace while you enjoy rooftop views across the New Town to Edinburgh Castle.
W Hotels might not be well known yet to most people in Edinburgh, but it is very familiar across large parts of North America, the Middle East and Asia, where it has a strong following among younger, high-spending travellers.
The nearest we have in Edinburgh is Richard Branson’s Virgin Hotel in the Old Town with a brand aimed squarely at Millennials, its hip, on-site bars and regular live music nights.
The W Hotel brand is said to be inspired by the 24-hour culture of New York. Its next opening in the UK after Edinburgh will be at ex-footballer Gary Neville’s “luxury destination” development, St Michael’s in Manchester.
These new breed of hotels will shake up the traditional hospitality industry in the Capital, according to Dr Jane Ali-Knight, a Professor in Festival and Event Management at Edinburgh Napier University’s Business School.
“W and Virgin are destination hotels, especially W. It does bring a different audience and shakes things up a bit, which I think is always good.
“They are not traditional brands, and are different from the Balmoral, the (Waldorf Astoria) Caledonian, and so on. They’re a bit more exciting and change the dynamic, attracting a younger more hip kind of audience.
“It's really positive that they've chosen to come here (first) rather than to Glasgow or Manchester. It all helps to dispel that myth of Edinburgh being a bit more conservative.”
There is room for these new luxury hotels alongside the city’s famous established names, and the city needs to move with the times if it is to attract the next generation of high spending tourists, she says.
“There is definitely still space at the high end of the market in Edinburgh particularly at peak times like the Festivals and Hogmanay. Tourism is recovering after Covid and it has had a good year, but extra competition helps to raise standards.
“What we think of as a five star hotel in Scotland, often isn't what people would tend to think of as five star internationally, especially if you go to China, the Middle East or the Far East. Having some of these bigger brands here hopefully raises the game in terms of the quality of the service and the overall offering.
“It is places like Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore that tend to have these huge global brands. People know them really well in the Middle East, Qatar for example has got a W Hotel. We already have those routes into Edinburgh from the Middle East with Emirates and Qatar airlines, so this is another reason for people to come here. They love their brands in the Middle East, they like the familiarity and knowing what to expect in terms of the service quality.”
Many of the TripAdvisor reviews of the W Hotel in London offer a clue to the high focus which the brand puts on delivering exceptional levels of service.
The arrival of the W and Virgin along with other similar brands such as the Ruby Hotel on Princes Street should offer a boost to many of the city’s independent food and drink specialists and potentially its arts festivals too, says Dr Ali-Knight.
“We’re not a 24-hour party city, but we’ve got a lot to offer these younger visitors with a bit of money to spend. We’ve got great cocktail bars, great restaurants, shopping now with the St James and George Street, all these new craft breweries, gin distilleries and gin tours, and the Johnnie Walker Experience. These are the kinds of things that people love, aren’t they?
“Virgin were a big supporter of the Fringe and used to sponsor the fireworks, so there may be an opportunity there for our year-round festivals not just to use the hotels as venues, but potentially as a source of sponsorship.”
The hotel has already created significant work with Bam Construction Scotland, for example, doing the exterior fittings, a job that the company did for the Johnnie Walker Experience on Princes Street and V&A Dundee. The interior of the W Hotel is dominated by cool blacks and burnt wood with the design said to take inspiration from Edinburgh’s volcanic prehistoric past.
Not surprisingly for a brand that was the first hotel chain in the UK to deliver a marketing campaign on Snapchat, everything is designed to be distinctive and luxurious.
For starters, there is no traditional hotel lobby – but rather a large space filled with comfy seating, bar, DJ, and, off to one side, a check-in desk. This “living room” has been part of the W concept since the founding of the brand in Manhattan in 1998.
You don’t even have to walk through the door to notice that this is not your average hotel - there is a large illuminated W mounted in the pedestrian square outside, close to where Festival events have been staged in August.
It is all very different from the Balmoral, although perhaps not… We should not forget that one of our most beloved city landmarks was lambasted as a carbuncle, by the city’s conservation watchdog, the Cockburn Association, around the time of its opening in 1902.
Citizen scientists step up fight against sewage dumping
The Porty Water Collective has been set up in response to concerns about the levels of sewage dumping in the city’s waterways that is making its way into the sea.
Sewage dumping is a growing problem in the Capital, as the Inquirer reporter earlier this year, with the city’s sewers struggling to cope with the demand being put on them by major development and increasing extreme weather.
Several sewage overflows bring waste straight into the Figgate Burn - or Figgy Burn as it is known locally - at times of pressure on the network. Yet none of them are regularly monitored and results published by Scottish Water.
The Marine Conservation Society estimates that less than 4% of Scotland’s storm overflows are currently monitored and reported on, compared to almost all such outlets in Wales and 91% in England.
The absence of local monitoring has prompted the Collective to carry out its own regular testing with support from Surfers Against Sewage.
Charlie Allanson-Oddy, founding member of thePorty Water Collective and an SAS regional representative, said: “It's obvious from walking the beaches, from the number of baby wipes, that there is a massive sewage-related problem - something that is ignored by SEPA and Scottish Water. What we know - from testing conducted in 2021, and now from the Collective’s current water quality testing backed by SAS - is that there are dangerously high levels of E. coli and chloroforms in the Figgy Burn from CSOs (storm drains) further upstream. Not all the locals know this.”
E-coli is linked to gastrointestinal sickness and skin, ear and eye infections, while exposure to high levels of chloroform in water can cause skin irritation.
The volunteer team hope their work will raise awareness of the problem and in particular the poor water quality and complete lack of monitoring of the sewage contamination flowing through Portobello and into the sea towards the western end of the popular beach.
Surfers Against Sewage’s annual water quality report published today highlights that Scottish Water discharged sewage 58,304 times in the last 5 years and 14,008 in 2022 alone. These discharges come from just 161 of the 3,641 overflows in its network, with no statistics available for the other 96% which are not regularly monitored.
Giles Bristow, CEO of Surfers Against Sewage, said: “Yet again, our annual water quality report reveals the complacency and disregard of governments, water companies and regulators towards the health of rivers and coastlines in Scotland and across the UK – and by extension people’s health. How much do our blue spaces need to suffocate in sewage before those we elect to keep us safe and protect our environment wake up and smell the shit?
“We are seeing failure at every level – from governments and regulators failing to enforce the law, to water companies refusing to clean up their act – with the general public ending up the biggest loser every time. How many times can we say ‘enough is enough’? Our leaders need to prioritise transparency, ensure laws and regulations are properly enforced, and prevent water companies from continuing to pollute our blue spaces.”
Scottish Water is committed to installing monitors at 1,000 high priority sewage overflows by the end of next year with the initial focus being on bathing waters and shellfish waters.
The nationally-owned water company says that work to upgrade largely Victorian infrastructure is a “huge undertaking” that will take time and large scale investment, adding “water quality is at its highest level ever in Scotland, with more than 87% of watercourses having a good or better classification”.
Sicknesses due to sewage pollution reported to SAS reached 1,924 UK cases in the last year – nearly triple the number of cases reported a year prior. These cases resulted in 1,987 days taken off sick, which translates to 5 years of work lost to ill health caused by polluted waters. Many of these sicknesses have led to hospitalisation, events cancelled, earnings lost, and businesses closed. As this data only covers cases reported to SAS, these numbers are likely to be the tip of the iceberg.
SAS are calling on the Scottish Government to direct Scottish Water to install event duration monitoring on all overflows and for that data to be freely and easily accessible to the public in real-time so the Scottish public can make informed decisions when entering the water. Additionally, SAS want the Scottish Government to set progressive sewage reduction targets to end untreated discharges into bathing waters, popular water usage areas, and high priority nature sites by 2030.
This year SAS developed the End Sewage Pollution Manifesto, which sets out the policies needed to clean up our rivers and seas.