Built between 1898 and 1899, it is located in the city centre in Italiiska Street, opposite the Odesa Philharmonic Theater.

[3] The hotel was designed in a mixed Renaissance Revival and Baroque Revival Victorian style,[2] with Neoclassical statues and white marble columns facing the street.

It reopened in 1928, but in the Soviet Union it seemed inappropriate for the hotel to be named after the city of Bristol in England, so it was renamed the Hotel Krasnaya (meaning "Red" in Russian) for the Red banner of the Revolution.

[6] The hotel closed in 2002 and underwent a lengthy restoration, reopening under its original name on December 15, 2010.

On 31 January 2025, the hotel was hit with a ballistic missile during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, injuring at least 7 people.