A 4.5 from over a thousand people, which for a hotel bar is a genuinely large and genuinely earned number
The Hari is a hotel in Belgravia, and its bar holds a 4.5 from eleven hundred and forty-nine people – which, for a hotel bar, is an unusually large sample and an unusually well-earned score.
The hotel bar that broke out
We have spent this survey documenting the invisibility of the hotel bar – the grand rooms that Londoners walk past, the townhouse lounges known only to guests, the tiny review counts that reflect a private clientele. The Berkeley Bar had sixty reviews. Egerton House had three.
The Hari is the exception, and it is worth understanding why. Eleven hundred reviews means this is not a bar serving only its own guests – it is a bar that the neighbourhood has adopted, that Londoners actually go to, that has broken through the psychological barrier of the hotel lobby and become a genuine destination in its own right.
This is the hardest thing for a hotel bar to achieve, and the most valuable. A hotel bar that only serves guests is a cost centre; a hotel bar that the city comes to is a business. The Hari has managed the latter, drawing a Belgravia crowd that treats it as a local rather than a hotel, and the large review count is the proof.
How a hotel bar breaks out
The Prat’s hospitality desk has thought about what separates the hotel bars that break out from the ones that stay invisible, and it comes down to a few things: a separate entrance or a sense that you do not have to walk through the hotel to reach it; a design that reads as a bar rather than a lobby; a drinks programme good enough to be worth a special trip; and, crucially, an atmosphere that welcomes non-guests rather than merely tolerating them.
The best hotel bars actively court the neighbourhood – they want the local crowd, because the local crowd gives the room energy and turns a quiet hotel lounge into a place people want to be. The Hari has clearly done this, and the reward is a review count that most hotel bars can only dream of.
The name
“Hari” gives the hotel a distinctive, memorable, slightly enigmatic identity – a short, striking name that does not tie it to a place or a founder in any obvious way. It is the kind of confident, contemporary hotel branding that aims for character over explanation, and it works: the name is easy to remember and easy to say, which is half the battle.
The bar
A genuinely good Belgravia cocktail bar, well-run, well-regarded, and doing a strong 4.5 across a large and real sample – one of the more convincingly good hotel bars in this entire survey, precisely because so many people have actually been.
Verdict
Excellent, popular, and the rare hotel bar that the city actually uses – a large, earned score in a category defined by invisibility.
Walk in with confidence, as ever. But here, unusually, a thousand Londoners have got there before you.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
Read this in an actual planning meeting and the satire immediately becomes just documentation with better narrative structure and humor.
Appropriate venue actually. Underground commentary.