Irish hospitality
Today’s hotel landscape in Belfast is a runaway success story, with the sector doubling in size over the past 25 years (a marker coinciding with the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement). There are over 10,000 hotel beds across the city, plus four projects underway for 2024/2025 that will add 430 rooms to the city stock.
Growing up in Belfast, it wasn’t always easy to recommend a good city-centre hotel, but change came with the opening of the Bullitt Hotel back in 2016. (Yes, most of us raised our eyebrows at the name, but apparently it’s named after the cult Steve McQueen movie rather than the violent conflict.) The 74-room hotel, which borders the Cathedral Quarter, signalled Belfast’s evolving appeal to a new breed of traveller, notably Gen Z and millennials. The design aesthetic is reminiscent of mid-priced brands such as Ace, The Hoxton and 25hours Hotels, with the property boasting a rooftop bar and open-plan bar/cafe/co-working lobby.
While Bullitt is representative of the city’s first wave of post-conflict tourism, this year’s zero-carbon ‘hometel’ opening from Lamington Group is emblematic of today’s new bleisure wave. The brand’s fourth property, room2 Belfast, joins locations in London and Southampton, and features 175 rooms with functional yet aspirational design, expansive public spaces and a variety of room categories – some of which include kitchenettes. The property seems dreamed-up to serve business travellers – from remote workers to freelancers, digital nomads and film industry creatives.
Design DNA
For Northern Irish people, it’s a delight to see Belfast regaining its status as a creative and cultural hotbed, as well as a centre for industry and innovation – a reputation that was put on ice for several decades.
After all, Belfast was once the shipbuilding capital of the world, with the Titanic constructed in 1909 at Harland & Wolff shipyards. The luxury ocean liner industry sustained Europe’s most innovative engineers and architectural designers, alongside cabinet-makers, linen weavers, potters and interior designers. This industrial history is visible today, with ornate Victorian and Georgian architecture dominating the city centre.
Over in the regenerated docklands and Titanic Quarter are signs of today’s stakeholders. Glass and steel buildings are home to advanced manufacturing, FinTech, MedTech, health sciences and the digital and creative industries.
Smaller businesses, meanwhile, flourish in former warehouse or factory spaces, such as the Portview Trade Centre in East Belfast. This former spinning mill has thread together a community of start-up enterprises and artists’ collectives, alongside microbrewery Boundary Brewing, Detroit-style pizza joint Flout Pizza and Belfast’s first urban mushroom farm – Hearty Growers.
“This is a city where creative and entrepreneurial people can take a bit of a risk, without sky-high rents… and with a really supportive network of small business owners, creatives and entrepreneurs,” explains Terry Vaz, co-founder and CEO of Hearty Growers. Vaz, who grew up in Goa and moved to Belfast eight years ago, speaks highly of the city: “I couldn’t be happier here in Portview, and being here has already led to some really interesting collaborations.” Indeed, I first came across Vaz at one of his mushroom cultivation workshops at Boundary Brewing. Then in April, I was blown away by his live fungi installation at Sonorities Festival – an electronic and experimental music festival in Portview’s event space.
Equally effusive is Ryan Crown, creative director of Crown Creative, a hospitality design and branding agency based between New York and Belfast. We meet at Neighbourhood, his Cathedral Quarter cafe, to discuss how perceptions of the city have changed over the years. “I have to admit that when I moved back to Belfast from Brooklyn four years ago, I kept the move a bit on the down-low, preferring to tell clients I was still based in Brooklyn,” he laughs, shaking his head. This is a lingering shyness or misplaced shame that everyone from Belfast can relate to; I certainly do.
“Anyway, I don’t do this any more,” says Ryan. “Everyone knows that the talent and creativity in Belfast is amazing, and I’m absolutely proud to say we’re based here, in the heart of one of the most dynamic culinary and hospitality scenes on the planet,” he enthuses. (Funnily enough, Vaz used to supply the goods for Neighbourhood’s cult breakfast dish of mushrooms on toast.)
“It’s exciting to see a younger generation with the confidence to set up a business out of a shipping container or hole-in-the-wall hatch, because they know if they bring a good idea to Belfast, the community will help them fly.”
Another more practical advantage is Belfast’s warm international relations. Post-Brexit, Northern Ireland finds itself uniquely within the British domestic and European Single Trading area for goods (see explainer box). “We’re also seeing real collaboration and support across the North-South border, which is new and really encouraging,” adds Crown.