Crowne Plaza Glasgow

Crowne Plaza Glasgow
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Crowne Plaza tower on the banks of the River Clyde, with the reflection of the Clyde Auditorium on its east face. Bell's Bridge is in the foreground.
Location in Glasgow
Location	Glasgow, Scotland
Coordinates	55°51′35.05″N 4°17′25.16″W / 55.8597361°N 4.2903222°W / 55.8597361; -4.2903222
Opening date	1989
Developer	Queens Moat Houses
Management	IC Hotels Group
Owner	IC Hotels Group
Rooms	283
Suites	15
Restaurants	2
Floors	15
Parking	Available, Parking is chargeable
Website	http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/cp/925/en/hd/glwcr

Crowne Plaza Glasgow is a high-rise skyscraper in the Finnieston area of Glasgow, Scotland. It is a 4-star hotel on the banks of the River Clyde adjacent to the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre and the Clyde Auditorium (Armadillo).

The building frequently appears on images of modern Clydeside, and on current affairs TV programmes broadcast from the STV and BBC Scotland studios on the opposite bank of the river.

The tower was built in 1988, its construction featuring prominently across the Clyde from the Glasgow Garden Festival of that year. It opened the following year as the Forum Hotel, and later came under the ownership of Queens Moat Houses where it was renamed the Glasgow Moat House International, and most recently Crowne Plaza following the collapse of the QMH company in the late 1990s.

The building is notable for having no designated thirteenth floor, meaning that despite the top floor being designated "16", it is really a fifteen-story building (an example of Triskaidekaphobia). One of the three lifts serving the main tower of the hotel is glass-sided, giving views upstream of the Clyde and the Kingston Bridge. It has the second-largest function room in the city, just behind that of the Glasgow Hilton.

The hotel’s ballroom was frequently used as the location of the Glasgow auditions of The X-Factor (most notably 2007 winner Leon Jackson's initial audition was filmed there) before they moved to Hampden Park in 2008, and then to the neighbouring Armadillo when the show changed to a live audition format.