- A viral tweet spawned criticism for the prison-turned-hotel Malmaison Oxford and some of its guests.
- Insider heard from a travel influencer that she felt the hotel did a good work of conserving the site.
- Many other hotels have been converted from prisons around the world.
A British hotel has come under fire on social media after a viral tweet called out how it was converted from a prison and derisively called it an “influencer hotel.”
The online discussion started when comedian and podcast host Anna Seregina tweeted about the Malmaison Oxford hotel on Monday, attaching a number of screenshots of Instagram pictures featuring women posing in the hotel corridors, as the Daily Dot first reported.
“Found a prison that has been converted into a luxury hotel,” Seregina wrote. The tweet was shared on Monday and Tuesday. It received more than 19,000 likes, more than 4,000 replies, and dozens upon dozens of comments and quotes from people critiquing the hotel as well as the Instagram creators who were there.
—Anna Seregina (@touchingcheeses) September 20, 2021
As the tweet spread, people criticized the hotel for turning a prison space into a boutique hotel. Some were disappointed that the hotel’s history was made fun of by travel influencers who used Instagram captions to make jokes about prisons.
“My god they’ve gentrified the penal system,” One Twitter user commented.
The facility, run by the Malmaison boutique hotel chain, is part of the Oxford Castle & Prison tourist attraction. The hotel’s website explicitly bills it as “better than your average prison” and urges visitors to “enquire about their jailhouse break activity.”
The “95 rooms and suites were once your average basic cell,” the Malmaison Oxford’s websitesays. “But they’ve done their time and are now reformed as luxurious locations to lay your head, thanks to super-fast Wi-Fi, super-comfy beds and powerful drench showers you’ll want to surrender to.”
Several images circulating on Twitter were originally posted on Instagram in June by the travel influencer @nuriatravels, or Nuria, who has 59,000 followers.
“Just spent the night in prison and I loved it!” reads the caption of one of the images. The photo showed Nuria posing in front of a half-glass bridge at Malmaison Oxford.
Insider spoke to Nuria about her belief in historical building preservation. She believes that the Malmaison Oxford was able to preserve the site while renovating it. She said Malmaison invited her and she “really enjoyed the stay,” and thought the rooms were “beautifully made.”
Other travel bloggers have referenced the hotel’s history as a prison in Instagram captions.
Seregina, whose tweet about the hotel went viral, told Insider that she found the hotel — including “the flirty lighting” — to be “abhorrent,” and pointed toward organizations that support incarcerated people likeA New Way of Life, which provides legal services, care, and housing for women after they leave prison.
The hotel was once a castle almost 1,000 years ago before it was made into Her Majesty’s Prison Oxford, which lasted until 1996 when the prison space was converted into a luxury hotel, as Insider previously reported.
Some of the hotel suites are named after former prison governors, according to On the Luce.
Business Insider reported on many other cases where prisons have been transformed into luxury hotel rooms, such as Boston’s Liberty Hotel which was the Charles Street Jail and Prague’s Unitas Hotel which was previously a prison that was used by the country’s Secret Police.
The Malmaison Oxford didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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