Globetrender gets an exclusive tour of the soon-to-open Six Senses London and discovers a fermentation lab, ‘alchemy bar’ dishing out ancestral tinctures and meditation television therein. Robbie Hodges reports. 

Six Senses London is, by any measure, a gamble. When the Six Senses brand launched onto the scene in 1995, it challenged a stuffy luxury sector, helping to put “barefoot luxury” on the map while placing sustainability at its core. The Queensway enclave in London, charming as it is, doesn’t exactly invite you to pad around shoeless in the way Six Senses Uluwatu in Bali does; that prized connection to nature a little stifled by vape smoke and urban grit. 

Transplanting the Six Senses concept into a megacity forces a kind of narrative contortion – a retranslation of everything that made it distinct in the first place. London becomes the stress test: can a boutique brand known for sanctuaries far from the fray stretch that hard-won equity into bold new shapes? The brand's recent opening in Rome is a promising proof of concept, but this new outpost pulls at the seams even harder, marking the brand's first foray into the private members' club space. "London is the world capital of members' clubs," says Richard Martyn-Hemphill, general manager of Six Senses Place London. "So, if this works, it can work elsewhere." 

Globetrender was fortunate enough to step inside on an exclusive media tour of the property. Though photography was strictly off limits with phones and cameras forced into hessian pouches, we took note of the more notable details that indicate how Six Senses plans on finding its roots in the city. 

The hotel’s main restaurant, Whiteley Kitchen, will be “veg-forward” in every conceivable way. Sure, there’ll be plenty of greens on the plate, but the real flex is how they get them: all sourced from a regenerative farm just beyond London’s concrete sprawl. And if you’re picturing a bleak parade of turnips come winter – perfectly reasonable, this being Britain – they’ve already outsmarted the season with a “fermentation lab”.

It’ll be less of a chrome-and-goggles situation, more Victorian scullery in style: flagstone floors, a hulking wooden table and shelves of jewel-bright jars performing their slow alchemy. Guests can drop in for pickling workshops, though the space exists first and foremost to keep food waste as close to zero as possible. Pretty much everything, right down to the ketchup, will be made on-site. In the era of dark kitchens, that’s becoming a real point of differentiation, notes general manager Nick Yarnell. 

And then there’s the spa or wellness facilities. On one side, you have a medi-spa staffed by NHS consultants, complete with a biohacking lounge, cryotherapy and hyperbaric chambers, plus a health concierge serving up all the metrics and digital feedback a Bryan Johnson acolyte could want. The pool is UV-sterilised to reduce harsh chemicals and, despite being underground, is topped and tailed by circadian lighting panels synced to real-time sunlight so it genuinely feels like the right time of day. A magnesium-infused hot tub (apparently London's first) bubbles alongside. Then you cross a bridge – literal and metaphorical – into a realm of esoteric, quasi-spiritual practice.

There, on the other side, is an “alchemy bar,” co-created with a 14th-generation Celtic healer who hand-distils tinctures, potions and hydrosols in Somerset. It’s “functional medicine,” Yarnell says, meaning a patient-centred free-for-all where multiple traditions can coexist without anyone breaking into a sweat. “If it’s a placebo and it works, it works!” The alchemy bar won’t be the only nod to Celtic traditions, with the programming of the private members club – details of which are yet to be revealed – revolving around the ancient Celtic calendar; also known as the Celtic wheel, the pagan’s wheel, and sometimes the witches wheel. 

But this Celtic influence isn’t just about what Globetrender calls Spellbounding. The marriage of science and spirituality, data and ritual, taps into a distinctly 2026 mood: the comfort with holding two opposing ideas at once. Theorist Tony Wang calls it “horseshoe maximalism”, embracing both ends of a spectrum and recognising their surprising harmony. In an age of information overload, new dualisms like sustainability vs convenience or indulgence vs self-discipline define our daily battles. “Are they contradictory, or complementary?” asks Martyn-Hemphill. A question guests will have to ask themselves when, renovations pending, doors open in spring 2026. 

On fitness, the hotel faces some stiff competition, with a branch of high-end fitness club Third Space occupying a spot in the building. The club is one of recent years’ runaway gym success stories, good enough for David Beckham, Tom Holland and Zendaya, each of whom have been spotted at their facilities, and having recently secured a £75 million loan from OakNorth bank guaranteeing its expansion. Of course, overexposure could signal its ultimate demise, but in the short-term it makes sense that Six Senses is looking to define itself in relation to the chain by placing greater emphasis on social wellness as opposed to classes. 

As for the interiors, whispers of the building's past remain. It was one of London’s original department stores alongside Selfridges, Liberty and Harrods, established in the mid-19th century before assuming its ultimate form on the current Queensway site in 1911. Nods to the Industrial Revolution and the glassy pavilions of the Great Exhibition appear in the looping white framework. Those subtle references to Britain’s age of empire meet teak wood fittings and extensive planting that aims to “bring a touch of Bali to Bayswater”. Rooms are awash with the tones of a faded sunset; some bisected by a prominent shower – modesty curtain optional. In-room TVs come with three channels each depicting timelapses of fungi, flowers and insects unfurling and evolving over time, designed for in-room meditation.  

Fans of the brand may be wondering how The Earth Lab, a Six Senses staple, will look. Elsewhere in the portfolio, expansive gardens are fertilised with food waste, hens roam sun-kissed earth. That connection with the landscape is made more challenging in London. As expected, there will be the opportunity for guests to make eco-friendly products to take home, little shoots of green knowledge that might sprout on their own turf. 

Far more interesting are the hotel’s plans to tackle "the insect apocalypse" and revitalise green urban spaces. It’s a refreshing approach, hopefully more than just setting up insect hotels; the decline in pollinators and biodiversity, which threatens soil health, directly challenges the hotel’s commitment to sourcing hyper-local products. It will be interesting to observe how this inside-out approach (focusing on how the hotel itself can help to create a more resilient local ecosystem, rather than simply teaching guests to mitigate the effects of climate change) can deliver tangible results in such a densely urban setting.

Time will tell whether the property has the heft to shift Six Senses into a new era; one in which urban sanctuaries sidle up against sand-swept resorts and private members' clubs provide social wellness and community, year-round. Six Senses London itself won’t so much offer escape from the city so much as a softer way of moving through it. If the experiment holds, this could be barefoot luxury recalibrated for urban life.