Six Senses London opens in a former department store with a fermentation lab

May 8. Six Senses opened its London outpost in the shell of what used to be Whiteley's department store. The Fitzrovia address is the brand's first in the UK.

The hotel runs 110 rooms across a building that held retail from 1911 through 2018. Six Senses kept the facade and rebuilt the interior around a wellness structure: eighteen treatment rooms, a Korean-run bathhouse, a biohacking lounge, and a fermentation lab that produces kimchi and kombucha for the ground-floor restaurant. The spa spans three floors. A rooftop terrace holds a lap pool and cabanas.

The biohacking lounge offers cryotherapy, red-light beds, and oxygen pods. The bathhouse follows Korean jjimjilbang format: charcoal saunas, ice baths, heated jade floors. Both spaces book independently of room stays. Walk-in day rates start at £150 for bathhouse access, £200 for biohacking sessions.

The fermentation lab sits behind glass on the ground floor, visible from the lobby. Chef Rene Redzepi consulted on the program during development. The restaurant menu leans into the lab output: kimchi appears in three dishes, kombucha in two cocktails. The lab also supplies product to the spa for treatments.

Rooms start at £600 per night. Suites with terrace access begin at £1,400. The property doesn't brand itself as a destination hotel, but the bathhouse and biohacking components are structured to pull London locals who won't book a room. The positioning reads less like a hotel with a spa and more like a spa that happens to have rooms upstairs.

Six Senses operates 23 properties globally, most in resort locations. The London site is the brand's second urban property after New York. The Whiteley's building sat empty for three years before Six Senses took the lease in 2021. The conversion took four years.