In the 1970s and early 1980s it was threatened with closure but, helped by poet laureate John Betjeman's praise for its architecture, it was saved by a major refurbishment.

They selected the architect C. Forster Hayward,[1][2] who later designed the Swyddfa'r Sir in Aberystwyth to the same style but on a smaller scale.

Owned by the Plymouth Hotel Company, the Duke of Cornwall cost £40,000 to develop including the excavation work required to clear the site where the Saracens Head Public House and Millbay Grove Terrace once stood.

[5] Twenty stewardesses returning from the United States after surviving the sinking of the RMS Titanic spent their first night ashore back in England at the hotel.

[6] Long-distance road travel was becoming a viable option in the 1920s and during the same period the number of ocean liner visits to Plymouth had doubled from 350 to 700 a year.

Plymouth's location was attractive as it could cut a whole day in getting back to London by train rather than being continuing on the liner to Southampton.

With this spare day the people were looking for accommodation and due to this increase in passing trade the hotel went through a thorough program of reconstruction and redecoration.

[citation needed] During the 1930s many celebrities came through Plymouth's Millbay Docks including Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, Duke Ellington and Bing Crosby.

Guests were entertained by the likes of Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth and other artistes who were staying at the hotel whilst playing at the nearby Palace Theatre on Union Street.

In particular, the manager's daughter-in-law was accused of taking American servicemen to her bedroom where she would coax sensitive military information from them after 'entertaining' them.

A local newspaper article read: Plymouth's 114-year-old Duke of Cornwall Hotel which kept the tourism flag flying in Queen Victoria's days and defied the wrath of Hitler's bombs, is in danger of being pulled down.