Hamilton Princess & Beach Club

The Hotel

The Hamilton Princess opened in 1885 as the Princess Hotel, named for Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, who had visited Bermuda the previous winter. It is the oldest continuously operating hotel on the island and the building (a vast pink Victorian on the harbourfront just west of Hamilton's commercial centre) is the most recognisable architectural set piece in Bermuda. Acquired in 2012 by the Bermudian-Italian Green family (Andrew and John Green) and brought under Fairmont management, the hotel underwent a $90 million top-to-bottom renovation completed in stages between 2014 and 2018, including the addition of the Princess Marina (60-slip private dock), the rebuilt Crown & Anchor restaurant, and the Princess Beach Club on Sinky Bay.

There are 400 rooms across the main hotel and the harbourfront wing, of which roughly 160 carry the post-renovation contemporary fit-out (cooler palette, marble baths, Bermudian artwork), these are the rooms to book. Standard categories run between 30 and 35 square metres; Suite categories larger; the Princess Suite and the Royal Princess Suite are the headline units, both with private terraces over the harbour. Pitts Bay Wing rooms tend to be the larger renovated keys; Heritage Wing rooms preserve more of the original 1885 fabric. The hotel's contemporary art collection, Warhol, Banksy, Hirst, KAWS, and an extensive Bermudian artist programme, is hung throughout the public rooms, the most considered private hotel collection in the Atlantic islands.

The hotel runs five food and beverage outlets. Marcus' is the headline dining room, Marcus Samuelsson's Caribbean-American restaurant on the marina-front terrace, a serious destination since 2014. Crown & Anchor is the traditional brasserie in the main lobby; Intrepid the all-day pool restaurant; 1609 the rooftop bar above the marina (the most reliable evening room in Hamilton); the Beach Club Restaurant the lunch venue at Sinky Bay. Two pools on-property (one adults-only, one family) plus the separate Princess Beach Club on South Shore, a 20-minute complimentary shuttle, with a beachfront restaurant, watersports concession, and a small private cove. The Exhale Spa runs eight treatment rooms.

For business stays, and Hamilton is the only Bermuda location where business stays really happen, the Hamilton Princess is the only sensible answer. The marina handles superyacht arrivals; the boardroom suites on the harbour wing handle private banking and reinsurance meetings (Bermuda's largest economic sector after tourism); the position three minutes' walk from Hamilton's Front Street puts every reinsurer headquarters in walking distance. Combined with a credible art programme, a Marcus Samuelsson restaurant, and a separate beach club to handle the leisure side, the Hamilton Princess is the Bermuda hotel that handles the broadest brief.

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