Corinthia Hotel London
This is just one of the rooms you can book through Suiteness.
LONDON — You may assume that the most luxurious and expensive hotel suites in the world are impossible to book or are filled with VIP guests and celebrities. However, this isn’t the case.
Online booking site Suiteness gives members access to reserve over 20,000 of the most exclusive — and expensive — hotel suites in top cities around the world, including London, Las Vegas, New York, and Los Angeles.
The company teams up with hand-picked hotel partners, such as the Four Seasons, Park Hyatt, and Shangri-La, with over half of the rooms exclusively available to Suiteness.
CEO Robbie Bhathal told Business Insider that luxury hotels usually don’t offer their most exclusive seats to deal-centric booking websites, making Suiteness unique, as it operates as a sign-in members-only platform so that the hotels “know it’s the right type of customer.”
“Hotels don’t want to give them the next level up — it’s like putting a Toyota dealership next to a Porsche dealership,” he said.
He added that Suiteness is targeting young families, special occasion bookings, “people with higher disposable income, or those who would rather spend an extra £100 to £150 a night to get something where you can be all together.”
According to TechCrunch, most hotel suites are only occupied about 20% of the time, meaning Suiteness has access to luxury suites that most people didn’t even know existed, or were possible to book.
“We’ve grown tenfold over the last year,” Bhathal said. “We’re really trying to create something in a market that’s not existing right now. We’re onto something unique and we want to build it the right way.”
Suiteness let us test out the service for a one night stay in London free of charge to see to see if the suite life would really be worth the splurge.
Scroll down to see what it’s like to use Suiteness to stay like a star in one of the world’s most luxurious hotel suites, complete with a butler and private concierge.
This is one of over 20,000 rooms you can book on Suiteness, the booking site that only deals with hotel suites, and allows you to access some of the most exclusive — and expensive — ones in the world.
CEO Robbie Bhathal launched the company in 2014 alongside co-founder Kyle Killion (previously of the Geek Squad and Yelp) in an effort to find a solution for families with children looking for a place to stay together while still maintaning a high quality standard.
“We found so much demand for this type of room,” CEO Robbie Bhathal told Business Insider. “There are a lot of five bedroom houses or hotel rooms with a king or queen bed, but we wanted more than that.”
Suiteness let us test out the service for a one night stay in London free of charge to see to see if the suite life would really be worth the splurge.
In December 2015 the company announced $1 million in funding led by Structure Capital, the first investor in Uber, which allowed them to land big partnerships and expand around the world.
“It’s our mission to make booking a suite as easy as getting an Uber,” Killion has previously said.
After creating a free account on the members only site, there were a number of options — from junior suite to penthouse, £300 to £6,550 — available at a range of top hotels in London, presented in both a visual and map format.
A new member joins the site every three minutes, and the company plans to double the number of cities it operates in over the next 12 to 18 months.
Bhathal said the company works with “a specifc sub group” — luxury — so that their hotel partners feel they can control their brand, and get data on relevant customers so they can serve them better.
We opted for the River Suite at the Corinthia Hotel, which starts at around £1,390 a night. We booked it for Valentine’s Day, because why not?
The suite’s listing page provided pricing details, floor plans, images, suite and hotel amenities, location, as well as its rating on TripAdvisor.
Depending on the room you’re booking, you can either book instantly, or submit a request — the most exclusive suites require approval by the hotel, who want to manually look at the people who will be staying in their higher priced suites.
Suitness offers a Best Price Guarantee, meaning if you see a better price on the suite listed somewhere else, they’ll refund you the difference. The company takes a cut of the booking.
Each Suiteness customer has access to a personal concierge, who can help with any bookings or information during your stay. Our concierge, Cherie, got in touch immediately after we booked.
“We’ve had phenomenal reviews in terms of ease of use, pricing, and customer service,” Bhathal said, adding that the company is working on making the concierge service 24/7.
I’ve stayed at a number of nice hotels over the years including The Four Seasons, but The Corinthia, located in London’s Whitehall, was the most luxurious by a mile.
The glamour started in the entrance way, which featured a roaring fireplace and roses for Valentine’s Day…
… and carried through to a bright atrium with a stunning chandelier.
In the reception area, a friendly team checked us in and introduced us to our butler, Christian. Yes, many top suites come with a butler.
Christian showed us to the room, offering to carry our bags.
A bottle of Laurent-Perrier Champagne, fresh fruit, and chocolates awaited us on arrival.
Christian poured us each a glass, and left us his direct number for anything else we might need during our stay.
The plush 905-square-foot room was incredibly spacious for two people.
Usually, Suiteness targets “occasion customers” looking to spend a bit more on a honeymoon or an anniversay, or groups looking for more than one bedroom.
“We want to tackle the groups of four to eight people who want to stay at a hotel. Not everyone wants to stay at someone’s home,” Bhathal said.
For those who need even more space, penthouses are also an option, such as the Musicians Penthouse at the Corinthian.
However, Bhathal said many customers are still looking to spend between £600 and £1000 a night for two bedrooms. “It’s a little bit higher than the regular base rate, but not that much higher. It’s line with what you’d get in a really nice vacation rental.”
The panoramic windows in our bedroom offered a view of the London Eye and the Thames.
However, some rooms on Suiteness, like the Corinthia’s Hamilton Penthouse, come with their own private rooftop terrace featuring a pool or a hot tub.
The main marble bathroom had underfloor heating, a rain shower, a separate toilet room, and a bathtub with a built-in TV and floating remote.
There was also a second guest bathroom, in case of visitors.
The mini bar options were some of the most luxurious we’d seen. We made sure to stay away.
Before dinner, we checked out the hotel’s ESPA Life spa. Suiteness bookings give you access to all of the hotel’s facilities, which, in this case, were pretty great.
The team had also helped us book a table for dinner at the hotel’s restaurant, Massimo.
However, our concierge would have happily booked us into any restaurant in the city, found us a table at any bar, and arranged cars to make our stay as easy as possible.
A turndown service meant that the bed — featuring chocolate hearts — was ready to crawl into when we returned from dinner, the perfect end to an incredibly luxurious, pampering, and relaxing experience.
While one night stays like ours at the River Suite won’t become a regular occurence due to the price tag — and would be out of the question for many people — the experience certainly revealed the appeal of the suite life.
Whether your budget can stretch to £300 or £7,000 a night, you go for the smallest suite or a giant penthouse, the concierge and stunning hotel facilities make the experience more than worth it.
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