By Jonathan Prynn, London Evening Standard.

What more luxurious way to unwind than a soak in the private plunge pool on your hotel room balcony? But this is not Barbados or Dubai. The view is not palm-fringed beach or desert, it is grey rooftops to Trafalgar Square, London.

The plunge pool is in the Lady Hamilton suite - you are at the same level as her lover Nelson's head - at the soon to be opened Corinthia Hotel on Northumberland Avenue. This hulking ocean liner of a building is a former Ministry of Defence office block being rapidly transformed into a palace of five-star opulence at a cost of £300 million.

The Corinthia is one of five super luxury hotels coming to London between next week and early May. It is the most concentrated sequence of openings at the top end of the hotel hierarchy that anyone in the industry can remember. And the most expensive. If the modernisation of the Savoy, which reopened last October, is included, more than £1 billion has been spent over the past couple of years.

The new flurry of openings kicks off on Monday when the Four Seasons on Park Lane welcomes guests again after a two-year absence. Although not technically a new hotel, the renovation has been so fundamental - at one stage only the outside walls were still standing - that to all intents and purposes the old Four Seasons no longer exists.

What more luxurious way to unwind than a soak in the private plunge pool on your hotel room balcony? But this is not Barbados or Dubai. The view is not palm-fringed beach or desert, it is grey rooftops to Trafalgar Square.  The plunge pool is in the Lady Hamilton suite - you are at the same level as her lover Nelson's head - at the soon to be opened Corinthia Hotel on Northumberland Avenue. This hulking ocean liner of a building is a former Ministry of Defence office block being rapidly transformed into a palace of five-star opulence at a cost of £300 million.

The Corinthia is one of five super luxury hotels coming to London between next week and early May. It is the most concentrated sequence of openings at the top end of the hotel hierarchy that anyone in the industry can remember. And the most expensive. If the modernisation of the Savoy, which reopened last October, is included, more than £1 billion has been spent over the past couple of years.

The new flurry of openings kicks off on Monday when the Four Seasons on Park Lane welcomes guests again after a two-year absence. Although not technically a new hotel, the renovation has been so fundamental - at one stage only the outside walls were still standing - that to all intents and purposes the old Four Seasons no longer exists.

It will open quietly with only around 40 rooms occupied on the first night to allow the new staff, kitchens and systems to bed down. But the Four Seasons' loyal followers - the wealthy seem to stick to their favourite hotel in the same way that football fans follow their club - will soon be back in numbers. Within 10 minutes of the date of the royal wedding being announced one American regular was on the line to book for April 29.

Hard on its heels comes the W hotel in Leicester Square on February 14; the Waldorf Astoria in Syon Park towards the end of February; then the Corinthia in Whitehall on April 2 and the Renaissance at St Pancras station in early May.  Two are conversions of grand historic buildings, one a renovation of an existing hotel, another an achingly trendy West End lifestyle location and the fifth a new "country house" style hotel built from scratch in a London park.

They are very different but will set new standards of luxury. The emphasis is on informality and relaxation and they will cement London's reputation as the five-star capital of the world.  At the Four Seasons the traditional English floral fabrics of the old hotel have gone, replaced by understated international sophistication, overseen by Parisian interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon, who also worked on the Savoy and the George V in Paris.

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