Britannia Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool

The Britannia Adelphi is a Grade II listed Edwardian railway hotel completed in 1914 to serve passengers of the White Star Line at Liverpool Lime Street. It has more than 400 bedrooms spread across multiple floors, and is one of the largest hotels in the city.

Britannia Hotels acquired the Adelphi in the 1980s and it has since become the chain's flagship North West site. From 2020 the hotel has been block booked by the Home Office for asylum accommodation alongside its remaining commercial use, forming part of a wider Britannia asylum estate documented by UnHerd, Byline Times and City AM^[3]Press.

The August 2024 UnHerd profile of Alex Langsam called him Britain's asylum hotel tycoon and named the Adelphi as the largest single site in his Home Office portfolio^[1]Press.

In May 2024 Byline Times reported that Britannia Hotels had generated tens of millions of pounds a year from its asylum contracts, with the Adelphi cited as a prime example of a landmark Britannia property used for the work^[2]Press. City AM separately reported on the rising profits Langsam was drawing from the Home Office estate.

The Adelphi is also the subject of Liverpool City Council prosecution proceedings following the death of a guest at the hotel in 2022, who was found inside a wardrobe in their room. The Caterer reported the council was pursuing the prosecution against Britannia Hotels in connection with the case^[4]Press.

The case sits separately from the asylum contract but adds to the volume of safety and conditions reporting around the site.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[5]and a 400 room block booking, the Adelphi implies headline taxpayer exposure of around £68,000 per night and roughly £24.8 million per year. That is well above the May 2025 NAO portfolio average of about £5.84 million per hotel per year, reflecting the unusual scale of the site^[6]NAO.