The privately owned Oxfordshire-based Four Pillars Hotel group opened its 318-room Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel in August 2007. The property includes apartment suites, eight rooms with facilities for disabled guests and two honeymoon suites.
All rooms and suites are fully air conditioned with free broadband and free TV film channels. Many have full-height windows giving views over the lake. The rooms and suites are all named after water birds; for example, swan suites, moorhen, grebe and mallard. The rooms are decorated in a beige, birch and blue decor.
The 1,800m² hotel is situated in the UK’s largest water park with 140 lakes, and has a capacity for conferences of 400 delegates, with additional space for a 400-seat marquee if required.
The two floor lodge-style property was built on a 55-acre site that maximises its lakeside views through feature glass walls and verandas.
The Brasserie and Old Boathouse restaurants offer traditional foods. The hotel also has a private dining option, which can cater up to 320 people.
The Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel is set in an unrivalled tranquil lakeside setting, yet close to major motorway access – only 1.5 hours from London, making it an ideal location for conferences.
Conference facilities
The Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel is geared towards meeting the needs of business travellers, major conferences and corporate events. It provides state-of-the-art conference and audio-visual equipment including a video wall and surround sound system and recording equipment, and complimentary wireless internet access.
Corporate or incentive evenings are a speciality, with a dedicated team to ensure events run smoothly.
Facilities at the Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel
The Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel has a health spa called Spa 6, a leisure club and a gastro pub. Situated in the Cotswold Water Park, the hotel hosts a selection of outdoor water activities such as sailing, jet skiing and water skiing, kayaking, dragon boat racing and windsurfing.
There is also a wide range of land-based activities available including cycling, abseiling, quad-biking, a high ropes course and golf.
The 10,000ft² health spa and leisure club provides a retreat centre for guests, with seven treatment rooms offering therapies such as massage, Rasul mud therapy, spray tanning, manicures and pedicures. Spa guests can treat themselves to experience showers, which can be set to simulate different rainforest environments, or try out invigorating bucket showers.
Spa facilities include an 11m pool with mood-enhancing lighting and hydrotherapy jets, a hydro pool, a flotation room, a relaxation room / lounge serving drinks, a herbal sauna, a crystal steam room, Payot beauty and wellbeing treatments and a high-specification multi-gym.
Apartments
The Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel features 27 one, two and three-bedroom luxury apartments.
Businesses can buy these as corporate incentive schemes and also as a base for overseas and travelling staff. The apartments can be bought via a scheme that enables owners to lease the apartment back to the hotel for a guaranteed income, while allowing the owners to use it for 28 days a year.
Design features
An ultra-modern design has been incorporated throughout the Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel by using natural materials, including large expanses of wooden flooring and huge glass walls and terraces to maximise and blend in with the lakeside views.
Cotswold stone was used in the construction of the building, with cedar wood cladding on the facade to lend an alpine-lodge appearance to the hotel.
Contractors and developers
The Cotswold Water Park Resort is a joint project by Four Pillars Hotels and Oxfordshire-based building firm Builders Ede, and was supported by HSBC Bank.
The heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system was provided by Honeywell and installed by PA Collacott and Co Partners of CentraLine, a Honeywell subsidiary.
The building management system is a PC-based SymmetrE system from Honeywell. It controls all of the heating and ventilation and can set the environment for each guest room and meeting rooms.
The HVAC plant is controlled by five Honeywell Excel Controllers in plant rooms situated across the hotel. The PC control uses a LonWorks open network.
Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniPCX Enterprise platform IP telephony system is used at the hotel. Its installation was carried out by NextiraOne UK and provides guestrooms with features such as voicemail and wake-up services, and provides staff with improved internal communications (hotel managers have DECT handsets so they can remain in contract throughout the hotel).
The Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel is the fifth hotel that local developers and entrepreneurs Brian Murtagh, chairman of Four Pillars Hotels, and Jonathan Ede, managing director of Builders Ede, have built together.