Disco to holiday studios?

MEMORIES of disco nights in a Weymouth seafront hotel, complete with its glass-brick bar, could soon be about to disappear forever.

Memories of disco nights in a Weymouth seafront hotel, complete with its glass-brick bar, could soon be about to disappear forever.

Part of the seafront building could be converted to provide holiday-let “studio” units.

The mid-19th century Fairhaven Hotel at the western end of the Esplanade has asked permission to convert a former bar and disco area to provide six holiday flats.

The consent needs both planning agreement from Dorset Council and listed building consent because of the historic nature of the Grade 2 listed building.

The application comes from the Wild Oak Group Ltd using a London-based planning agent for the proposal.

Details of the request say that a currently vacant part of the hotel, being used for temporary storage, is to be converted, if agreed, together with the creation of parking for ten bicycles and space for water sports equipment.

The details suggest that no existing hotel rooms will be lost and the equivalent of two full-time jobs created.

Ground floor plans for the conversion show each unit having a small bathroom and kitchen area, four of the units with one double bed; two with two double beds.

The same floor shows a cinema room for guests only.

Said the planning agent: “The amount of development is proportionate to the floor area, creating optimised holiday accommodation and premium guest facilities without overdevelopment or external expansion.”

The agent says that re-opening the bar, which also functioned as a nightclub, is both “unviable and undesirable” and operationally detrimental to the main hotel, the area having reportedly been completely gutted during a 20th-century conversion to create a discotheque, resulting in the total destruction of all original internal lath-and-plaster linings, cornicing, decorative joinery, and historic layout partitions – leaving, in effect, what is described as “a concrete box.”

The proposal says the site is sustainable within easy reach of the town centre and beach with bus and train transport likely to be used by many of the guests.

Public comments on the proposals remain open, via the Dorset Council website, until the end of October, via reference P/FUL/2026/05024
The Fairhaven Hotel 41-42 The Esplanade Weymouth.