The UK’s poshest hotels were once solely the preserve of the rich, the famous and the royal – the wealthy, dressed exquisitely, would glide in and out of such establishments with little fanfare.
However, the luxury hotel landscape in the UK has changed dramatically with the advent of social media – and a very different kind of guest is now checking in.
Influencers – including everyone from reality TV stars to ‘dogfluencers’ and OnlyFans creators – are targeting the glitziest places to stay in the land to capture content and win more followers.
Find them, often for hours at a time, posing up a storm in the Michelin-starred dining room, draped against the bannister of a sumptuous staircase in a barely there gown or enjoying a late night dip in a beautiful swimming pool.
This new breed of client sweeps in, often with entourages and egos, and gets to ‘work’, using the five-star retreat of their choice as a photogenic backdrop, while many genuine guests watch on in horror.
Those who work in the high-end hotel industry in the UK say the situation has got so bad they fear the gilded reputations of the properties, earned over decades via impeccable service, could soon be left in tatters if the selfies continue.
Daily Mail columnist Nadine Dorries recounted this week how a celebrity-packed festive soiree at Claridge’s had been ‘infiltrated’ by influencers, all with smartphones glued to their hands.
Ms Dorries penned that the social media stars were ‘posing outlandishly, gurning, gesturing, speaking into little furry microphones clutched between their fingers, the look-at-me brigade behaved as though they were the real event.’
The writer’s experience is far from a unique one. Push through the door of any luxe accommodation in the land, be it The Ritz, The Dorchester or The Bvlgari Hotel in London, upper-class favourite Limewood in the New Forest, or any of the properties in the Soho House fold…and you’re likely to find yourself swerving a content shoot.
Estelle Manor, the luxury hotel and members’ club in Lord Cameron’s Cotswolds stomping ground of Witney, is another exclusive haunt social media stars have put high on their weekender wish-list.
The honeyed stone, decadent interiors and opulent restaurants of this country estate, which only opened two years ago, has become the place to see and be seen.
Who’s bedding down there? Ex Love Islander Molly Mae – who has 8.5 million followers on Instagram, has been three times this year. Other guests have included Ampika Pickston, of Real Housewives Of Cheshire fame, and a clutch of OnlyFans stars.
One staff member told the Daily Mail’s Jane Fryer during a recent visit to Estelle Manor that while some of the influencers checking in may have impressive profiles on social media, they’re not always quite so big on manners.
‘We are getting more and more influencers and they can seem very entitled – though I’m not sure why.
‘Of course we can’t stop anyone from coming here and we wouldn’t want to. But we do want them to behave better. And maybe put their phones down. It is changing the vibe.’
What do followers looking at the hotels through the lens of Instagram see? It’s a glossy affair.
Chloe Khan, a former contestant on Celebrity Big Brother and The X Factor is a regular at Corinthia London, a refined five-star hotel in the heart of the capital’s tourist district.
This week, the 34-year-old, who has two million followers on Instagram was seen perched at the establishment’s marble-topped bar, with a plate of oysters next to her. The star captioned the images: ‘Hello @corinthialondon gosh how I missed you’.
And in the last fortnight, Bulgarian influencer Anna Metusheva, who has 115,000 followers, has apparently checked into two of England’s most regal establishments.
A photo posted two weeks ago shows the glamorous influencer stepping down the sweeping staircase at The Ritz in London, wearing a mini-dress, fur coat and kitten heels – with a Chanel handbag in her perfectly manicured hands.
This week, Ms Metusheva is striking a similar pose on a equally notable staircase – at Cliveden House and Spa.
The Berkshire country pile never goes out of fashion thanks to its spicy history – it famously had a cameo in the scandalous Profumo Affair in the early Sixties. Meghan Markle resided here too the night before her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry.
The influencer let her photos do the talking; captioning the festive montage ‘Once Upon a December’ with a love heart emoji. The replies from her followers were equally succinct, with the majority leaving more heart emojis.
One penned: ‘You are gorgeous, Princess Anne!’
Another influencer, who goes by the Instagram handle Anthea.xf and describes herself as on a ‘feminine energy journey’, has also been to The Ritz in recent weeks.
A photo shows the glamorous social media fan, who has 36,600 followers, reclining in black lace lingerie including suspenders on a pristine white bed. The photo is captioned: ‘Netflix & chill. Cute. I prefer Ritz & thrill’.
Another image in the five-photo glimpse into Anthea.xf’s extravagant lifestyle sees a plate of smoked salmon blinis and a fruit bowl and a bubble bath running.
More salubrious content? Toto the Pomeranian, a four-legged dogfluencer with a modest 3,184 followers, is seen pictured ‘lunching in London’, not at any old greasy spoon, mind, but at The Lanesborough, a five-star residence in Knightsbridge.
The pet and two of their canine chums are seen seated on a finely upholstered sofa, with marble pillars and expensive curtains behind them.
There are plenty of questions when it comes to how involved the hotels are when it comes to this avalanche of online content.
One industry insider told the Daily Mail that influencers have been known to simply walk in, shoot the video and photos they want and then leave, creating an illusion of a lavish lifestyle that doesn’t exist in reality.
‘They can actually be really demanding to work with. I was sat in a hotel bar last week after attending an event and watched as an influencer captured content. She had two people with her, one for video and one for photographs.
‘She was literally just sitting their posing. I watched and thought “How have we come to this?”‘.
They also suggested that it’s isn’t always fair to tar all influencers with the same brush, saying there are seriously skilled content creators on social media who work hard to produce authentic content.
‘The good content creators put huge amounts of effort into the work that they do. If you look at someone like Chelsea Dickenson for example, who goes by the name of @holidayexpert on Instagram, her videos are funny, quirky, and she gets lots of hits.
‘She has a team, they come up with the ideas, the concept and then they edit it.’
They add: ‘It’s a huge amount of work, so much more work than a woman standing on the stairs at The Ritz, who has some poor Instagram husband who gets dragged along to take a photo of her’.
