Silverstone Hotel

[mark_l]

The BRDC have re-submitted the plans for a 200 room hotel at Silverstone circuit.

I ask myself why!

200 rooms aren't enough for F1
What is the point of building a hotel if there is no GP next year.
Why not spend the money on Pits and Paddock and try to save the GP instead, it has survived this long without a hotel, but it wont survive with out new Pit Garages etc.

[mark_l]

Although with a bit a landscaping and digging up of tarmac,a 200 room hotel and championship golf course would make a lot of money for the BRDC when it sells Silverstone

[garcon]

200 rooms? That's pathetic. Will it be open to BRDC members only, like their shiny new clubhouse?!

Where is the integrated plan for a complete re-working of Silverstone?? New pit and paddock complex and grandstands, new facilities for proper punters (not just the prawn sandwich scoffing hospitality takers), and supporting elements like hotels and other facilities to help generate income??

These bits and pieces the BRDC keep coming up with are useless. Do they actually want to keep the GP, or is it all getting a bit much for them??

[PurplepplEater]

Hello? Are they made of money!!

[garcon]

They don't need to be. Anyway, the BRDC stand to gain a significant amount when Interpublic inevitably pay to be released from their contract to lease the track.

If the BRDC could just improve the PR side of things, and provide that integrated plan I mentioned, then they'll find it much easier to attract a new promoter for the British GP and other backers to help fund the redevelopment.

And don't forget, Bernie has pledged to guarantee the British GP at Silverstone until 2011 if a new promoter is found.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/moto...ne/3696717.stm

[Suzy]

As I understand it the hotel is for more than just the Grand Prix. They do have other races at Silverstone and not everybody wants to commute from other parts of the country for 2-day meetings - and not all competitors are keen on sleeping in their cars overnight at 2 day meetings.

[garcon]

Quite right too. But it should be bigger - there's a real lack of decent accommodation in the area, and with the improved A43 it's within half an hour of Oxford, Banbury and Milton Keynes, an ideal central point for business travel I'd have thought.

But maybe they should take a leaf out of Bahrain's book. In Bahrain, they got the track and immediate facilities right first. Now they're looking at hotels, leisure complexes and other facilities around the venue.

Turn Silverstone into a gold sealed premiere motorsport venue, to equal and better those in Bahrain and China, and that will see F1 secured there for the foreseeable future. Then look at investment in the area, using a few acres of all that land around the circuit, to provide hotels etc.

[Sato san]

I bet Whittlebury Hall Hotel are unhappy about it ....they are the nearest circuit hotel as they are right behind the Copse Corner area ...