Forget the Pirates of Penzance – the UK’s first gaming hotel is set to open in the Cornwall town.
Game On Cornwall will feature an esports centre, gaming cafe, shop, bar, Dungeons & Dragons tavern, virtual reality (VR) and seven rooms for visitors to stay in.
It’s due to open this month, with the hotel rooms ready for booking in March 2023, according to a report by Cornwall Live.
Game On Cornwall will be located at the former Edinburgh Woollen Mill store in Market Place. The owner of the building was evacuated to Penzance as a child and wants to do something new with it.
Neil Potter, who is behind the gaming hotel and liaising with the building’s owner, told Cornwall Live:
“We are all very excited about this – I’m certain there is nowhere else like it in the UK.”
Neil Potter, Game On Cornwall
“In the short time since we announced the project, there has been a lot of love for it in Penzance. The reaction has been insane – a lot of people are very excited about it. We are sure this will bring a lot of visitors into the Penzance area.”
The Game On Cornwall website currently features Xbox, Nintendo, Razer, Twitch and Harry Potter logos, and features the slogan: ‘Eat, sleep, game, repeat.’
There are other gaming hotels around the world, including some in Osaka, Amsterdam, Taiwan and more. Riot Games parent company Tencent also recently opened a gaming hotel in China featuring AI technology.
Game On Cornwall joins a growing list of gaming-themed bars and cafes in the UK like Pixel Bar, Meltdown, Sidequest, Platform, New Meta and more.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
