Why you should experience InterContinental London The O2 in London, England.
InterContinental London The O2 is a kinetic riverside hotel where Greenwich Peninsula's entertainment culture, maritime inheritance, architectural ambition and global events economy converge beside one of Britain's defining performance venues.
Set along Waterview Drive near Millennium Way and just steps from The O2, the hotel was conceived by Surinder Arora's Arora Group as a purpose-built hospitality and conference destination beside the former Millennium Dome, with Grove Developments designing and constructing the project before its January 2016 opening. The 18-storey building established a new hospitality presence beside a structure originally designed by Richard Rogers Partnership with engineering by Buro Happold for the Millennium celebrations, then reconfigured by AEG into The O2 entertainment complex and reopened in 2007. Sir Cliff Richard joined Surinder Arora, AEG president and CEO Thomas Miserendino and IHG chief executive Richard Solomons for the hotel's formal opening ceremony on July 5, 2016, unveiling a commemorative plaque in the lobby. The result is a hotel where Surinder Arora, Grove Developments, Richard Rogers Partnership, Buro Happold and AEG connect Greenwich Peninsula's millennium-era architectural experiment with a new generation of large-scale London hospitality.
What you should know about InterContinental London The O2.
InterContinental London The O2 is best known for opening in January 2016 with 453 rooms, including 59 suites, alongside a purpose-built 4,500-square-meter conference center whose 3,100-square-meter pillar-free Arora Ballroom ranked among Europe's largest hotel function spaces and was supported by 19 additional meeting rooms and 1,600 square meters of pre-function space overlooking Canary Wharf. The property opened under an IHG franchise with Arora Group management, becoming the second London hotel then operating within InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, while inaugural general manager Hasham Soliman arrived after working at the 1,021-room Park Plaza Westminster Bridge London. Five original dining and drinking venues comprised Peninsula Restaurant, Market Brasserie, Clipper Bar, Eighteen Sky Bar and Meridian Lounge, and Peninsula Restaurant advanced the culinary reputation in September 2017 when the AA awarded it three Rosettes under head chef Tomas Lidakevicius. The events operation subsequently expanded with the 1,300-square-meter Peninsula Ballroom, capable of accommodating more than 1,700 guests and dividing into two soundproofed spaces, helping raise the current events estate above 8,200 square meters with two pillar-free ballrooms and 38 meeting rooms. The original 453-room opening, Hasham Soliman's leadership, Tomas Lidakevicius's three-AA-Rosette achievement and the expansion from the Arora Ballroom into the Peninsula Ballroom establish InterContinental London The O2 as a hotel built around unusually large-scale hospitality from its inception.
Pastry chefs Tanuj Sharma and Narayan Shrestha introduced another nationally recognized chapter when they represented InterContinental London The O2 on Bake Off: The Professionals in 2024 and defeated the Royal Air Force Club and Soko Patisserie teams in the final after presenting an afternoon-tea display and a British-themed banquet of desserts for 120 people. Sharma had previously worked at The Savoy before joining InterContinental, while Shrestha brought a career developed across five-star hotels in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, giving their partnership distinct London and Middle Eastern professional lineages. Judges Cherish Finden and Benoit Blin awarded the pair the competition title, after which Sharma and Shrestha translated their collaboration into Chai by the Shore at Kinaara, combining European pastry technique with flavors drawn from regions across India. Together, Tanuj Sharma, Narayan Shrestha, Cherish Finden, Benoit Blin and Tomas Lidakevicius give InterContinental London The O2 a culinary history extending from three-AA-Rosette European cooking into nationally recognized contemporary pastry and Indian-inflected afternoon tea.
How to fold InterContinental London The O2 into your trip.
InterContinental London The O2 works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing maritime engineering, royal astronomy and Baroque artistic ambition through Greenwich.
Begin at Cutty Sark, the 1869 tea clipper built on the Clyde for John Willis and designed by Hercules Linton, whose composite iron-and-timber construction carried the ship through the final competitive era of sail before its eventual preservation at Greenwich. Continue to Royal Observatory Greenwich, founded by Charles II in 1675 with John Flamsteed appointed the first Astronomer Royal and Christopher Wren responsible for Flamsteed House, establishing the institution from which Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian became internationally consequential systems of measurement. Conclude at Old Royal Naval College, where Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor developed the former Royal Hospital for Seamen on the site of Greenwich Palace before James Thornhill spent 19 years, beginning in 1707, covering the Painted Hall with an immense Baroque cycle of royal, maritime and allegorical imagery. The progression moves from Linton's nineteenth-century shipbuilding through Flamsteed and Wren's astronomical institution into Wren, Hawksmoor and Thornhill's riverside composition, revealing the maritime, scientific and architectural inheritance extending southward from InterContinental London The O2.
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