May 6 2025

A central Edinburgh office block is set to begin a new life as a hotel following the submission of plans for a 195-bed venue by Whitbread.

The Premier Inn owner proposes to reconfigure Capital House on Festival Square off Lothian Road, by investing £21m in remodelling its floorplates for short-stay accommodation.

Working with Lawrence McPherson Associates the hospitality specialists will rework the 65,350sq/ft building, including a ground floor restaurant and bar. Adopting an infill approach to bulk out the C-plan building with additional rooms without impinging on views, the architects will pursue a low-key approach that leaves it largely unchanged from primary vantage points.

In their design statement, LMA wrote: "The roofscape has been angled and sculpted to match the existing pitches, offering an inset area to house the required plant and services. The elevations would be further developed to hide the inherent modularity of the additional hotel accommodation, and keep the aesthetic more in line with the language of the existing building."

Opaque glazing will be used to hide partitions necessary for the new hotel rooms. 

2 Comments

#1 Posted by town planner on 6 May 2025 at 23:14 PM

Festival Square has promised much over the years, the unbuilt Richard Murphy Film House most notably, so in that context a new Premier Inn is a bit underwhelming.

#2 Posted by Mark on 7 May 2025 at 22:18 PM

It's possibly just as well that the Film House remains unbuilt, it sat rather uncomfortably in the square.

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