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It would have been unthinkable a few short years ago, but today, just south of Cancún, tourist-kitsch capital of the Yucatán peninsula, there’s a small hotel so stylish (and sustainable) you’ll think you’ve walked in on a Dutch design expo — at least until the bartender hands over your room keys.
Courtesy of the same minds that brought us Mexico City’s Hotel Habita and Condesa DF, as well as Playa del Carmen’s neighboring Deseo, Hotel Básico is a high-design boutique hotel — but, like its sisters, a highly individual one. In this case it’s a concept that’s far from city glam, with floors made from recycled tires and twin rooftop pools made from converted oil tanks.
Unfinished concrete walls and exposed ductwork lend an industrial feel to the guest rooms, like something from a Bond villain’s island stronghold. Raised platform beds sit at the center of each room, surrounded by the sort of accessories you don’t often see in a hotel room — flippers for diving, a soccer ball, a Polaroid camera. A live video feed brings the beach conditions right to your plasma television, in case you need to check the surf or the scene before venturing out.
There's no mistaking the youthful energy about the place — there's music well into the night, and the atmosphere is anything but sedate. For all the funkiness, though, the Básico is anything but basic; the Caribbean view from the rooftop pools is stunning, and the pool deck cabanas come with built-in mattresses for luxurious lazing. Downstairs, an open-kitchen restaurant fashioned after a traditional puesto serves fresh and authentic Mexican seafood on a patio shaded by leafy trees.
How to get there:
Basico is approximately a 50 minute drive from Cancún International Airport. Transfers are available for approximately USD88 from 1-3 guests, and USD120 from 4-11 guests, per way. Please contact customerservice@tablethotels.com to arrange airport transfers.
It’s not quite on the level of the Stephansdom cathedral itself, but architecture buffs will want to set aside some time for the Sofitel Vienna Stephansdom as well. Pritzker winner Jean Nouvel re-thought the typical hotel shape, changing the ho-hum rectangle into a celebration of geometry. Glass abounds, and the top-floor restaurant ceiling is clearly visible from street level, its riotous colors echoing the many-hued mosaics of the Stephansdom’s roof.
The room interiors stand up to a bit of ogling as well. Like its brethren Sofitel properties around the world, this one is all minimalist polish, with more than a touch of distinctly Viennese elegance. Monochromatic grays play off the surrounding old city, full of steep arches and textured stone, the hotel’s clean look framing the city’s Gothic flourishes. Straight-backed chairs mimic the right-angled buildings, while the interior’s blacks and whites resemble an ever-present cup of coffee, the elixir at the heart of Viennese culture. You won’t likely forget you’re in Central Europe.
Fine-dining restaurant, bar, meeting rooms, 24-hour room service, a just-opened spa — they’re all here, as you would expect. So are views of the Riesenrad, a giant Ferris wheel, and the Vienna Woods, where nature gently asserts its dominion over the city’s urbane sophistication.
Clerkenwell, neighboring on tony Soho, the buttoned-up City and art-damaged Shoreditch, is ground zero for London’s design and creative communities, chock full of imaging labs, ad agencies, and design firms. Many of our customers will have business in and around Clerkenwell, and now they have a convenient place to stay as well. Not that there’s a shortage of hip new hotels in London—this is still the most competitive hotel market in the world—but there’s always room for another good one, especially in this once boutique-shy neighborhood.
Supermarket heir Mark Sainsbury has gutted one of Clerkenwell’s grimiest Victorian warehouses to make room for this hotel, and the entire ground floor is devoted to the restaurant, in order to draw as many local diners as possible. In this it is a success; the atmosphere is less that of a hotel dining room and more that of, well, exactly what it is—an excellent and smartly designed Modern French Bistrot populated by impossibly cool locals.
The rooms are no afterthought, though. A bright crimson spiral staircase negotiates the bright five-story atrium and delivers guests to rooms that are equally bright, if not quite as spacious and airy. The Kubrickian whiteness of the decor is mitigated by sparing splashes of bright color, and the occasional piece of antique furniture. Penguin paperbacks and web-enabled satellite TV provide the diversions, and once it’s lights out you’ll appreciate the duck-down pillows and duvets.
Oddball amenities add to the charm, like hot-water bottles in hand-knit cozies, and vending machines on the landings replace in-room minibars, serving up machine-made coffee and tea as well as disposable cameras and miniature champagne bottles—though presumably once you’re to the point where it’s time to get out the cameras and champagne, the last thing you want to do is make a dash for the stairwell. No sense quibbling over details like this, though—the point is, this place is fun, stylish, with a personality all its own. And not to put too fine a point on it, but in London, you’d expect to pay quite a bit more.
Equally noteworthy, though perhaps less immediately apparent to the casual observer, is the sustainable approach taken to the building’s conversion. A reclaimed industrial district known for its derelict printing presses and its run-down warehouses is not perhaps the first place you’d look for eco-friendly architecture; nevertheless, the Zetter carries some impressive green credentials.
Architects Chetwood Associates, best known for their sustainable Sainsbury’s supermarket at Greenwich Peninsula, have worked their environmentally conscious magic on this site as well, using cold water from the near-forgotten London Aquifer to absorb waste heat, saving space and electricity by eliminating the need for a massive central air-conditioning apparatus, and to flush waste water, reducing the demand on London’s clean drinking water. Access to pressurized water at a constant temperature also means less space need be given over to water storage, thus increasing the number of guest rooms, a bottom-line benefit you don’t have to be a Greenpeace member to appreciate.
How to get there:
The Zetter Hotel is a 5 minute walk from the Farringdon tube station. If you're arriving from Heathrow Airport the most convenient transfer option to central London is The Heathrow Express Train which leaves Heathrow Airport every 15 minutes and takes 15 minutes to arrive at Paddington Station. One way fares are available from £18 and roundtrip fares from £32. By black cab, The Zetter is approximately a 45 minute ride from Heathrow Airport (depending on traffic) and can cost upwards of £50.
About The Zetter Hotel: The Zetter Hotel is a luxury boutique hotel located in London's Clerkenwell neighborhood. The Zetter is the creation of restaurateurs Michael Benyan and Mark Sainsbury. Clerkenwell is home to some of London's best restaurants, pubs, and nightlife, including St. John, Moro, The Jerusalem Tavern and Fabric.
The Maritime Hotel was designed in 1966 for the National Maritime Union; hence its name, and its nautical theme. Today it is one of New York's hipster hangouts, owing as much to its location (just off the Meatpacking District) as to the charms of the hotel itself.
This is not a traditional hotel, by any stretch — all rooms face westward, looking over the Hudson and New Jersey through five-foot porthole windows. The rooms are compact, but well-designed, with built-in furniture, so that all the necessities (storage space, work desk, flat-screen TV) easily fit into the tiny space, and wireless internet, naturally, takes no space at all. The décor borders on kitsch, but is actually quite charming, if one accepts the ship's cabin conceit, in all its wood-paneled glory.
The real action, of course, is in the public spaces, from the parade of models and actors in the lobby to La Bottega, the Italian bistro with its 10,000-square-foot terrace — the largest outdoor space in any New York hotel. Matsuri, downstairs, is an excellent Japanese restaurant.
Not just a boutique, not quite a luxury hotel, the Maritime occupies a middle ground all its own — one of New York's few “hip hotels,” yet with a level of service a bit higher than one would find at a flashier nightclub hotel. The neighborhood is one of the new centers of New York nightlife, and the Maritime benefits from its downtown location; most New York hotels are in stodgy midtown or the stuffy Upper East or West sides. One important fact: each room has, without exception, one queen bed — so travelers in need of twins must look elsewhere. But if you are on your own, or don't mind getting close to your companion, this is a fine hotel for mixing comfort and cool.
A lot has changed since the Royalton opened in 1988, both inside and outside its walls. This is arguably the original boutique hotel, having spawned a legion of imitators, many of which sought to duplicate the formula of stylish-enough bedrooms atop stunning public spaces — both, in the Royalton’s case, by Philippe Starck.
Now, after a much-touted remodel, most of what was Starck about the Royalton is gone, starting with the famous larger-than-life lobby. These days that sort of theatrical ostentation is out of style, and what’s in is the understated, clubby luxury look that you’ll see here. The palette is dark and masculine, full of brown leather and brown wood, and the atmosphere is more discreet than it used to be, more members-club than fashion-show.
The rooms have been updated as well, though perhaps more subtly — they’re oversized, light and airy, in contemporary neutral colors against a backdrop of mahogany paneling that’s calculated to put you in mind of a cabin in an old-fashioned steam liner. Bathrooms, though, go beyond what you’d see on a ship, or in many hotels for that matter; five-foot circular Roman baths are pure indulgence, and still a bold choice in a nation of showerers.
And the place is still abuzz, albeit more quietly; the new Royalton is less stage set, more hotel. Brasserie 44, the new version of the Royalton’s restaurant, is the sort of place that stands on its own, as a restaurant — it’s run by John McDonald, from Lever House and Lure Fishbar, and it’s cozy and unpretentious, two things you can’t accuse most hotel restaurants of being.
Please note: The outdoor pool at Thompson LES operates seasonally and is closed during the winter months.
Over the last few decades the center of gravity of hipness in New York has tracked steadily to the south and east. And given how long these things take to make, it’s natural that only just now are we beginning to see high-end boutique hotels on the Lower East Side — among the first wave, the Thompson LES, on Allen just south of Houston.
This being Manhattan, space is at a premium. Everything’s modestely sized but impeccably designed, and packed with all the necessities — very much in keeping with the Thompson aesthetic. It’s an approach that works particularly well here; this is still the Lower East Side, and anything more upmarket would simply be overkill, in a neighborhood where most of the hotels are residential ones.
It’s uncharted territory for hotels, perhaps, but familiar ground for nightlife. The Thompson doesn’t just take advantage of the local buzz, it aims to contribute its own: the new flagship restaurant is Blue Ribbon Sushi Iyazaka, a Japanese tavern serving sushi and drinks into the wee hours, and Above Allen, the open-air bar with the retractable roof, is bound to become a downtown fixture for members and hotel guests. And when the weather agrees, an outdoor pool bears the visage of none other than Andy Warhol — not many other downtown hotels can say something like that.
Campton Place is tucked away as discreetly as a luxury hotel can be, just off Union Square and right in the shadow of some more famous big-chain hotels. These days it’s owned by the Taj group, but don’t expect a complete re-branding — this is a century-old San Francisco classic, and only the subtlest of updates were required in order to keep it current with the state of the luxury-hotel art.
What is distinctly Taj-like is the service, which is hyper-attentive and highly professional, in a way that’s not exactly common in American hotels. Rooms are classic, contemporary but far from modernist — here at the high end there’s little tolerance for high-design minimalism. Instead look for classics like Bose wave radios and feather beds with down duvets.
With just over a hundred rooms, it’s smaller than some so-called boutiques — and there’s a hush of privacy about the place that its bigger five-star competitors can’t quite match. The Campton Place restaurant is an institution unto itself, and the new owners know better than to tamper with success: it still serves the same upscale Mediterranean-inflected cuisine in the same ultra-swanky dining room.
The Berkeley does not boast the longest list of royal guests, the most storied history, or the richest collection of antiques and old master paintings. Nor does it have nightingales or a location in Berkeley Square. What it does have is comfort and under 200 rooms. It is not considered, by any means, to be the grandest or the most stylish hotel, but for many people, it's a favorite. Doormen and concierges call you by name, it's on the doorstep of both Hyde Park and Harvey Nichols, and getting a table at Marcus Wareing or Koffmann's (both in the hotel) is never a problem.
No wonder all sorts of people just opt to move in. Lawrence of Arabia director David Lean lived here, as did London it-girl Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. Rooms are old fashioned in the English country style — chaise longues, canopied beds and mahogany chests of drawers. They are spacious and enormously comfortable. Tea at the Berkeley is certainly not London's most famous, but it is well loved by a small crowd in the know. It is intimate, and at times unusual, as when the chef, inspired by the Chelsea Flower Show, served lavender brulée alongside sloe gin scones.
Though the building that it currently occupies was only built in the 1970's, the Berkeley has existed in some form since the eighteenth century. And for a long time the Berkeley did not feel the urge to move with the times. Its clientele has never been aesthetically demanding.
This, however, has changed. Take the Art Deco-style Blue Bar (part of the old Berkeley hotel, and quite literally lifted and dropped bang in the middle of the present one), and the phenomenal rooftop pool, both of which Madonna, it has been said, adores. The Caramel Room is the chic venue for the hotel's famous afternoon tea service. And then there's the spa. It's unusual for a hotel like the Berkeley to opt for cutting-edge treatments, but the Berkeley Health Club and Spa is state-of-the-art.
How to get there:
The Berkeley hotel is a 5 minute walk from both the Knightsbridge and Hyde Park Corner tube stations. If you're arriving from Heathrow Airport the most convenient transfer option to central London is The Heathrow Express Train which leaves Heathrow Airport every 15 minutes and takes 15 minutes to arrive at Paddington Station. One way fares are available from £18 and roundtrip fares from £32. By black cab, The Berkeley is approximately a 45 minute ride from Heathrow Airport (depending on traffic) and can cost upwards of £50.
About The Berkeley: The Berkeley hotel is a 5 star luxury boutique hotel in the fashionable Knightsbridge area of London's West End. The Berkeley features a rooftop pool, the Gordon Ramsay restaurant Boxwood Café, Marcus Wareing at The Berkeley, and The Blue Bar, a favorite for guests and locals alike.
There are two ways to go with the rehabilitation of a classic motor inn like the Thirties Spanish-style Colonial House. Keep it simple, cheap and funky, smoothing out the rough edges while making the most of the place’s built-in charm. Or else do what the owners of the Colony Palms did: turn it into a high-end boutique hotel, complete with spa treatments, concierge service and exotic fine dining.
After an extensive renovation the interiors bear no traces of standard desert-inn kitsch. The look is a sort of California Moroccan one, with all the modern-luxe trimmings, from flat-panel televisions and down duvets to marble-clad bathrooms stocked with brown-bottled Gilchrist & Soames products. For extra space and privacy (and a hot tub on the patio) book one of the casitas, and for more book the chandeliered and hardwood-floored Winner’s Circle Suite.
There’s a pool and a spa, the latter naturally Moroccan-themed. The hotel’s restaurant, the Purple Palm, goes a little over the top at dinner — it’s not just a hotel restaurant but an upscale Mediterranean fixture on the Palm Springs dining scene, serving inventive modern dishes paired with wines from California and around the world.
How to get there:
Colony Palms Hotel is 1 1/2 miles from Palm Springs International Airport.
“Rooms” more or less sums it up — there’s not much to Karaköy Rooms aside from the accommodations, but we think you’ll agree that with rooms like these, it’s hard to imagine wanting more. Especially in this neighborhood, just down the hill from the Galata Tower; just like so many Parisian hotels, Karaköy Rooms wagers that whatever you can’t find within the hotel, you’ll find within a few minutes’ walk.
And what rooms they are. The so-called standard rooms are nothing of the sort — you’ve got to admire a hotel that can be humble about these crisply updated antique spaces, with their parquet floors, modernist furnishings and fine, fine fabrics. The deluxe rooms expand to fit their name, and the studios are spacious indeed — perhaps not quite the size of dance studios, but certainly more ambitious than studio apartments.
The only thing standing between these rooms and total self-sufficiency is the lack of kitchens. Fortunately the hotel’s own restaurant proves more than adequate, and, a good omen, seems to be a local favorite. You could get away, in fact, with shutting yourself in for some length of time — but let’s face it, you’re in Karaköy to see the town, not to hide away.
For some of us, the name is all the description this one needs. But for those of you who demand a little more explanation than simply Casa Camper Berlin, we’ll elaborate. It’s a sequel to the Casa Camper in Barcelona, owned by the Spanish footwear brand, and it brings the same youthful irreverence and unpretentious artiness to Berlin, which for all the differences between the two cities is probably the most logical choice if it’s young cosmopolitan creative types you’re after.
The rooms and suites are stylish in a remarkably original way. That Camper brick red color is everywhere in evidence, and the modern-utilitarian design comes off humble rather than bombastic. Guests expecting white-glove luxury should look elsewhere, but most of us will find it more than comfortable enough — here some of the weight is carried by inspiring visuals and clever design rather than acres of marble and handmade horsehair beds.
With a location right in the middle of Berlin Mitte the Casa Camper is anything but isolated. Inevitably there are times when you’ll want to stay in, though, and the hotel offers one remarkable enticement: the Dos Palillos restaurant serves Asian tapas under the direction of Albert Raurich, formerly the chef de cuisine at Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli.
Located on the rue de Buci, in the left bank, the newly renovated Artus is doubly remarkable; not only is it contemporary and stylish, but it’s quiet about it as well. Some of the most fashionable Parisian hotels take themselves a bit too seriously, with pompous service to match (we could name names, but won’t; not to worry, they aren’t listed here anyway).
The Artus, by contrast, isn’t trying to be a lifestyle, an ideology, a religion, just a hotel, a rather good-looking one, with a personality all its own — clean lines, vivid colors, modern furnishings and some original artwork, and a gallery showing regular exhibitions.
Rooms have dark wood floors, platform beds, modern designer furniture, and walls painted in deep, bold colors. The duplex room is split-level, with the bath upstairs, and the top-floor junior suite has a private walk-out balcony with a view over rue de Buci and Boulevard Saint-Germain. Breakfast is served downstairs in a chic minimalist space, and from there it’s out on the town — the Artus is ideally placed for a walk through the Odéon or a day of shopping in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
About Artus Hotel: Artus Hotel is a luxury boutique hotel near Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Odéon, steps away from shopping, landmarks, and art galleries. The hotel features a breakfast room done with minimalist decor, a fitness room and sauna, and massage service. The rooms have modern, minimalist decor, while the hotel also has a gallery showing regular exhibitions.
Often a new city hotel has to settle for adapting an existing building, shoehorning modern interior design into a prewar skyscraper or hiding boutique flash behind an unassuming facade. Not so the Sofitel Water Tower. Architect Jean-Paul Viguier was allowed to start from scratch, and the result is striking — a dramatic bright white wedge-shaped building that looks for all the world like a giant ice breaking ship cutting its way across Chicago.
The inverted wedge shape, while arresting enough from the outside, has a delightful effect on the interiors as well — guest rooms on the underside of the wedge protrude out over the sidewalk, allowing a unique view straight down onto the street.
Of course in some chain hotels one would prefer to look out the window, rather than catch a glimpse of the tired decor and flabby furniture. Here, again, this hotel is different; Sofitel is a chain, yes, but one with respect for design — guest rooms feature Barcelona chairs by Mies van der Rohe and the hotel lobby is stocked with a small library of books about Chicago architecture and design.
Let's not forget the creature comforts — though the Sofitel Chicago Water Tower Hotel could certainly get by on good looks alone, it is a fully-functioning big-city luxury hotel, with high-speed internet, 24-hour room service, spacious bathrooms, and a convenient downtown location, just off the Magnificent Mile. Though the staff may speak with French accents, and the interiors are deeply European, there's little danger of forgetting where you are — those vast picture windows have commanding views of the city's unique architecture, if you can tear your eyes from the sidewalk below.
How to get there:
Sofitel Chicago Water Tower is located a few blocks from the Chicago Ave. station on the red "L" line and approximately a 30 minute drive from Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Please contact customerservice@tablethotels.com to arrange airport transfers.
That stray capital M is a nod to the neighborhood; fairly recently a no-man’s-land, the district North of Madison Park is a Manhattan renewal success story in the making, and with the arrival of the NoMad Hotel it’s moving up a notch or two on the luxury scale. There’s a pronounced European accent to what’s got to be the most Haussmannian building on Broadway — and of course the architectural ministrations of the Parisian designer Jacques Garcia only intensify the effect.
Even the smallest rooms are a touch larger than you might expect from a New York–Paris hybrid, and the bigger rooms find space for freestanding claw-foot tubs. The richness of the materials — from leather chairs to reclaimed hardwood floors — makes them feel authentically cozy, and the eclectic design sense (and the thoughtfully quirky artwork) lends a residential aspect, especially in the suites, which present a sort of artistic/aristocratic fantasy that’s unique in New York hotels.
What pushes the NoMad from stylish pied à terre to grand-boutique status, however, is the restaurant — not a single space, but a single menu spanning a variety of rooms, including a cavernous atrium, a private fireplace alcove, and even a handsome two-story library, a little heaven on earth for the epicurean bibliophile. Just don’t expect to have the place all to yourself: your hosts for the evening are Daniel Humm and Will Guidara, famous for the nearby Eleven Madison Park — they’ve got a built-in following and a reputation to maintain, so you might as well pull up a chair and sample the buzz for yourself.
Located on the rue de Buci, in the left bank, the newly renovated Artus is doubly remarkable; not only is it contemporary and stylish, but it’s quiet about it as well. Some of the most fashionable Parisian hotels take themselves a bit too seriously, with pompous service to match (we could name names, but won’t; not to worry, they aren’t listed here anyway).
The Artus, by contrast, isn’t trying to be a lifestyle, an ideology, a religion, just a hotel, a rather good-looking one, with a personality all its own — clean lines, vivid colors, modern furnishings and some original artwork, and a gallery showing regular exhibitions.
Rooms have dark wood floors, platform beds, modern designer furniture, and walls painted in deep, bold colors. The duplex room is split-level, with the bath upstairs, and the top-floor junior suite has a private walk-out balcony with a view over rue de Buci and Boulevard Saint-Germain. Breakfast is served downstairs in a chic minimalist space, and from there it’s out on the town — the Artus is ideally placed for a walk through the Odéon or a day of shopping in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
About Artus Hotel: Artus Hotel is a luxury boutique hotel near Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Odéon, steps away from shopping, landmarks, and art galleries. The hotel features a breakfast room done with minimalist decor, a fitness room and sauna, and massage service. The rooms have modern, minimalist decor, while the hotel also has a gallery showing regular exhibitions.
If ever there were a city that needed a bit of the old Philippe Starck treatment it was Venice. Here a little design goes a long way — not that you could accuse the Palazzina G (formerly Palazzina Grassi) of being just a little bit designed. Here Starck is at full strength: masks on the bedside lamps, comically exaggerated chandeliers, mirrors on every surface. It’s a classic Venetian palazzo filtered through the mind of a dedicated anti-classicist, and the result was always going to be memorable.
In a Starck hotel the bedrooms feel less like a refuge and more like some kind of provocation. Enough of the bones of the old structure remain to firmly remind you you’re in Venice, and there’s a bit of fun to be had with the city’s famed glasswork. Meanwhile just outside is the original Venice, which is somehow made fresher and more vibrant by contrast with the Palazzina’s inventive interiors; you’ve never seen the Grand Canal quite like this.
The hotel’s Krug Lounge is open only to hotel guests and local members, ensuring a well-curated crowd. There’s no reception desk, and meals are served at any time in any place within the hotel, dispensing with the traditional restaurant dining room. It’s hard to believe this is the same Venice from the postcards your grandparents used to send — and that, thankfully, is entirely the point.
Hôtel Americano’s location is one that’ll have more than a few guests checking their maps — some to verify that the Mexico City–based Grupo Habita has indeed set up shop in New York City, and others to check that there is indeed a bit more of Chelsea west of 10th Avenue. It could have been risky on both counts, but there’s no doubt that Habita waited until they were good and ready — and no doubt at all that they’ve pulled it off.
You can’t miss the building, with its perforated metal cladding, and once through the doors there’s no doubt you’re in the right place. The room concept is “urban ryokan,” which is about as now as it gets, and it’s hard to decide what’s more surprising: that it hasn’t been done before, or that the Americano, with its platform beds, its wood-lined sleeping pods, its pared-down but thoughtfully constructed room layouts, gets it exactly right. Here, as in the best hotels, comfort and style aren’t opposed to one another, but seem rather to reinforce each other, the clean lines creating a sense of ease, and the luxe textures helping to enrich the visual experience.
Room service, ordered from an in-room iPad, comes delivered in a Bento box, and downstairs The Americano serves Latin-inflected French cuisine in a stylish dining room or out on the patio. Meanwhile they’re grilling out by the rooftop pool, and in the Bar Americano, with its concrete surfaces and white furnishings, you’ll feel instantly transported to Mexico City, at least for a moment — proof that New York can still stand to learn a trick or two from south of the border.
Campton Place is tucked away as discreetly as a luxury hotel can be, just off Union Square and right in the shadow of some more famous big-chain hotels. These days it’s owned by the Taj group, but don’t expect a complete re-branding — this is a century-old San Francisco classic, and only the subtlest of updates were required in order to keep it current with the state of the luxury-hotel art.
What is distinctly Taj-like is the service, which is hyper-attentive and highly professional, in a way that’s not exactly common in American hotels. Rooms are classic, contemporary but far from modernist — here at the high end there’s little tolerance for high-design minimalism. Instead look for classics like Bose wave radios and feather beds with down duvets.
With just over a hundred rooms, it’s smaller than some so-called boutiques — and there’s a hush of privacy about the place that its bigger five-star competitors can’t quite match. The Campton Place restaurant is an institution unto itself, and the new owners know better than to tamper with success: it still serves the same upscale Mediterranean-inflected cuisine in the same ultra-swanky dining room.
Florence is home to many old-fashioned palazzo hotels, and more than a few modern-design boutiques; and though JK Place falls closer to the latter category, it is something a little bit different. The architect designed the Lungarno hotels as well, so he’s no stranger to contemporary chic interiors—but this one is not quite from the same mold.
Ultimately what makes JK Place special is a sense of intimacy—there’s no reception desk, for one, and though the hotel is located on the bustling Santa Maria Novella square, once inside, there is little sense of the city outside. Instead small public sitting rooms with fireplaces and a profusion of antiques and artworks create the feeling of a private mansion, and the fact that there are only twenty rooms makes the house-guest illusion entirely plausible.
Browse the library, study the drawings, mix with the other guests—or just retire to your room, an eminently warm blend of modern and traditional, in a fusion that recalls some of London’s cozy-yet-chic boutique hotels. Louis XV fireplaces and paneled walls mix with muted colors and technological gadgetry; four-poster beds and LCD screens live happily side-by-side. Rooms are not overly large, but those with an eye to romance won’t mind. JK Place isn’t about the presidential treatment, it’s about a comfortable and elegant home away from home.
The old courtyard, now glass-roofed, serves as the breakfast venue, and the rooftop terrace boasts a lounge bed from which to comfortably soak in the view. Dining is bed & breakfast only, though room service is available until 11pm, and any number of excellent restaurants lie within a few minutes’ walk from the front door; just bug the concierge for a recommendation, or strike out on your own—we hope you haven’t come to Florence to shut yourself in your hotel room all day.
Please note: JK Terrace is open seasonally, March through November.
The long-awaited Upper West Side sequel to Soho’s successful 60 Thompson is here at last. Like its sister, 6 Columbus is named for its address, and it’s a prestigious one, right on Columbus Circle, next to the Time Warner Center retail-and-dining development and at the southwest corner of Central Park.
Designer Steven Sclaroff’s inspiration was Sixties modernism, but beyond some touches of fur and leather in the lobby, any Austin Powers–esque kitsch is studiously avoided. The 6 Columbus Hotel is stylish, in a somewhat serious vein, never stuffy, but always impeccably composed. The rooms aren’t huge — this is still New York, after all — but they’re well-equipped with all the luxe-boutique must-haves (flat-screen TV, iPod docking stereo) and some thoughtful extras as well (Dean & DeLuca snacks in the minibar, Kiehl's toiletries in the bathrooms).
Service is quite a bit friendlier than you might expect from such a fine-looking hotel, and while the amenities aren’t quite on the luxury-hotel level, neither are the rates. Anyway the absolute necessities are accounted for: the Blue Ribbon is a sushi restaurant and a swanky wood-paneled cocktail bar, and a second rooftop bar and lounge, complete with park views, is set to open soon.
About 6 Columbus Hotel: 6 Columbus is an affordable boutique hotel in New York City, conveniently located across the street from Central Park on Columbus Circle (Midtown, West Side).
Time was, a hotel’s life span was measured out in fractions of a century; now just staying around for the better part of a decade is a genuine achievement. Having opened towards the end of the early wave of downtown Manhattan boutique hotels, 60 Thompson, a few years in, can now rightly be called an established classic.
The location doesn’t hurt, down one of SoHo’s swankier streets, and the carefully art-directed interiors have aged well (which is to say they haven’t visibly aged at all, unlike some other high-design vaguely Eastern-influenced properties). The soaring loft-style guest rooms are as quintessentially downtown as they come, a little bit luxe and a little bit boutique, with high-end Italian linens, 60 Thompson's Dean & Deluca pantries (we used to call them minibars) and bathrooms manage to be decadent and heavily marbled and yet stylish at the same time.
Of course the rooms aren’t the whole story. A place like this lives and dies by its public spaces, which, in this case, are impeccable, from the guests-and-VIPs-only rooftop lounge to the Kittichai restaurant, an upscale Thai kitchen overseen by a Spice Market alumnus. This is the luxury boutique as it ought to be — plush but not precious, hip but not off-putting, and an authentic fixture in the nightlife of lower Manhattan.
About 60 Thompson Hotel:
60 Thompson is a hip boutique hotel located in SoHo New York City. With airy loft-like rooms, a popular roof-top bar and Kittichai restaurant, 60 Thompson is a favorite of guests seeking both privacy and downtown nightlife and shopping.
Many people find this hotel a strange way for Anouska Hempel to follow her celebrated Blakes Hotel. It isn't really. If Blakes represents how the West saw the Orient a hundred years ago—decadent, ornate, with long fingernails and opulent brocades—then the Hempel is how the West sees the Orient today: calm and pristine, with meticulously raked rock gardens and more than a touch of Zen.
It's a bit of tea ceremony in Bayswater, but you won't be able to tell from its Georgian facade. Step in, and you've entered koan heaven, with its all-white lobby, sunken tatami spaces, and floating fireplaces. Beds are Japanese style, on the floor or suspended on platforms; or else they are bamboo four-posters, or even simple, square structures of minimalist chic. The Hempel bedrooms are all individually designed with luxury products including bathrobes, slippers, candles, Wi-Fi ability and even oxygen! Furniture is Indonesian woven rattan, or antique Chinese bamboo.
In fact, despite its overriding Zen flavor, the Hempel is quite eclectic. There are baths à la Isamu Noguchi—at once monastic and modern, black and square like a rock fountain outside a temple—and Victorian tubs sitting on clawed feet. This eclecticism extends to the restaurant, I Thai, which fuses everything from Italy to Thailand with a hefty dose of Japan thrown in for good measure (try the squid noodle salad). Most astonishing is the garden, where English greenery and hedges surround a rectangular pool and artfully placed rocks.
Nonetheless, Hempel, for all its good points, is not the place to party. Though people claim that its East-West fusion is intensely witty, there's not a lot that makes you want to laugh out loud. Indeed, you would't dare. The Hempel is beautiful, serene, stark. It's very, very quiet, and just a bit on the serious side. Bedrooms, especially, are for meditating, not necessarily for misbehaving. Indeed, the Hempel's not the place if you're looking for some London late night romping. But it is certainly the place if you want to turn off your mobile, throw away your watch, and spend a weekend alone.
How to get there:
The Hempel is a 7 minute walk from Paddington station. If you're arriving from Heathrow Airport the most convenient transfer option to central London is The Heathrow Express Train which leaves Heathrow Airport every 15 minutes and takes 15 minutes to arrive at Paddington Station. One way fares are available from £18 and roundtrip fares from £32. By black cab, The Hempel is approximately a 45 minute ride from Heathrow Airport (depending on traffic) and can cost upwards of £50.
Please note: For selected weekends throughout the year, the hotel has a two (2) or three (3) night minimum stay requirement.
It would be difficult to imagine a location for a hotel that would be closer to the center of it all than the Hotel Thérèse. Just a stone's throw away from the Louvre, the Palais Royal, and the Comédie Française, this hotel could hardly be in a better location for shopping or sightseeing. The Opéra, rue Saint Honoré, Place Vendôme, and Place de la Concorde are all an easy walk away, as are the major department stores. And there is no lack of public transportation in the area, for those who wish to explore further.
One would almost be willing to sleep in a cardboard box in an alleyway, just to be this close to the action. Fortunately this is far from necessary. The hotel's 43 rooms, while not large by any definition, are quietly contemporary and comfortable. With surroundings so stimulating, hotel designers need not rely upon bombastic design gestures or corny retro furnishings to provide an impressive experience. Instead the Thérèse makes use of high-quality furniture and bedding, unpretentious design, and soft natural lighting, creating a relaxing atmosphere which lets the neighborhood speak for itself.
This is a small, inexpensive boutique hotel, and a Parisian one at that, which means it does not provide the same services as, say, a Mexican luxury resort. But for this price, and in this neighborhood (with all the attractions of central Paris right at hand), it would be churlish to bemoan the absence of an indoor swimming pool or a full-service spa.
About Hotel Thérèse: Hotel Thérèse is a luxury boutique hotel in Paris. It is located near the Louvre, steps the Palais Royal, the Comédie Française, The Opéra, rue Saint Honoré, Place Vendôme, and Place de la Concorde. The hotel's design and atmosphere are refined yet comfortable, with exotic yet warm furnishings.
“Rooms” more or less sums it up — there’s not much to Karaköy Rooms aside from the accommodations, but we think you’ll agree that with rooms like these, it’s hard to imagine wanting more. Especially in this neighborhood, just down the hill from the Galata Tower; just like so many Parisian hotels, Karaköy Rooms wagers that whatever you can’t find within the hotel, you’ll find within a few minutes’ walk.
And what rooms they are. The so-called standard rooms are nothing of the sort — you’ve got to admire a hotel that can be humble about these crisply updated antique spaces, with their parquet floors, modernist furnishings and fine, fine fabrics. The deluxe rooms expand to fit their name, and the studios are spacious indeed — perhaps not quite the size of dance studios, but certainly more ambitious than studio apartments.
The only thing standing between these rooms and total self-sufficiency is the lack of kitchens. Fortunately the hotel’s own restaurant proves more than adequate, and, a good omen, seems to be a local favorite. You could get away, in fact, with shutting yourself in for some length of time — but let’s face it, you’re in Karaköy to see the town, not to hide away.
When some big chains venture into boutique-hotel territory, the result is basically the same old chain hotel, with an extra helping of funky plastic furniture. Not so with the Hyatt group’s Andaz sub-brand. The hotels under the Andaz banner are about more than just design; they’re boutique in philosophy as well, each one of them intensely localized — the London and West Hollywood outposts are as different as their respective cities, and a hotel doesn’t get much more Lower Manhattan than the Andaz Wall Street.
The casual deskless check-in sets the tone for a stay that’s not exactly typical. Today’s Wall Street leaves the traditional Gotham look to Midtown, and the Andaz, designed by New York’s own Rockwell Group, follows suit. You can expect the glossy finishes and lavish fittings of a luxury hotel that’s located at the heart of the financial world, but there’s also a healthy dose of downtown hipster funk, from the rough brick walls in the bedrooms to the impeccably sourced farm-fresh cuisine. And underneath it all is a high-end hotel by a group that certainly knows high-end — the bathrooms, for example, are as luxurious as those in any Park or Grand Hyatt, just a little sexier, in patented Manhattan black-on-black.
The Spa
This eco-friendly spa suits clientele with tight schedules who are looking to re-boost their engines in time increments as short as 15, 30, or 45 minutes. In the heart of the city’s Financial District, catch up with the Wall Street Journal away from your desk and prior to receiving a treatment. Try Andaz Spa’s ‘Create Your Own’ package combining any of the spa options, and specifying the duration of the treatments, as well as the results you hope for. As the Andaz Spa would say, ‘Invest stock in yourself and consider the Spa your broker.’
There are hotels that play against type: the rare Miami hotel that eschews Art Deco, for example, or an English country house that’s post-modern to the core. The Hotel de Tuilereën is not one of them. The meticulously preserved medieval city of Brugge is known for its classic good looks, its sedate atmosphere, and a healthy respect for the past — all of which could equally be said of the Tuilerieën.
It’s a fifteenth-century residence, and a grand one at that, standing alongside the Den Djiver canal, quite close to the center of the old city. And it’s got interiors to match. The décor is period, if not exactly antique — not some faded remembrance of the old days, but a clean-lined recreation. The difference is more or less the difference between a museum exhibit and a period film set — so you’ll feel the era rather than the age (plus the essential modern comforts, of course).
There’s a fine little restaurant, Le Menu Belge — no points for guessing the variety of the cuisine. Meanwhile an indoor pool and spa facility add an unexpected touch of luxury to the proceedings. If it’s quietly upscale residential living you’re looking for, in the center of one of Europe’s most picturesque cities, then there’s no need to look any further.
No matter how many stylish boutique hotels open in New York City, it seems it’s never quite enough. So to the Thompson group, who seem to be opening an endless stream of them, we can only say: keep them coming. New in Tribeca, surrounded by some of lower Manhattan’s top restaurants and shops, is the Smyth, a 100-room luxury boutique standing proudly over West Broadway.
Here the dark and slightly masculine Thompson house style is used to stunning effect, its rooms and suites clean in line yet rich in color, its public spaces swanky and romantic, whether by day or by night. Fittings are strictly boutique-luxe, with iPod docks and massive LCDs in the bedrooms, and faultless high-flow rain showers and Kiehl’s products in the striking tiled bathrooms.
It suits the neighborhood perfectly, which is very much the point — it’s halfway between 60 Thompson and Gild Hall both in geographic and stylistic terms. Downstairs there’s a surprisingly well-equipped fitness center, and the ground floor is given over to a dark and clubby lounge. Between that and Plein Sud, a new brasserie by Frederick Lesort, you could say the center of gravity of Tribeca’s nightlife has shifted a bit farther to the south.
Please note: Children 17 years and younger are not permitted.
We spend a lot of time in these virtual pages wrestling with the pros and cons of India’s two main hotel genres. On the one hand you’ve got the historic palace hotels, which make a virtue out of traditional architecture and traditional service. And on the other you’ve got the stylish, design-conscious boutique hotels. Rarely can you stay in a hotel with one foot in each world — but that’s exactly what the Raas is. Thoroughly modern within, thoroughly ancient without, it’s something special indeed: a chic luxury boutique that blends seamlessly into the old walled city of Jodphur.
It’s practically in the shadow of Mehrangarh Fort, whose towering hilltop figure dominates the old city, and it would be impossible to ask for a more inspiring backdrop. Once inside Raas, though, you’ll be struck by architecture of a more recent vintage — still respectfully idiomatic, but decidedly modern, a style that’s sensitive to context but keeps well clear of cliché.
The immediate centerpiece of the hotel is the pool, lined with cabanas, the ideal refuge from the daytime heat. Most rooms have views of the fort, and its presence is felt wherever you go. Dine on Indian or international fare by night, and by day, experience one of India’s most magical places.
Just when we were beginning to worry that “design” had become a synonym for “monochrome,” along comes a place like Athens’ Fresh Hotel, a place that’s bursting with color. And by color we don’t mean muted earth tones, or burgundy and brown leather — think, instead, of a palette that’s not found in nature, a selection of cartoon colors like safety orange, hot pink and lime green.
If there’s a down side it’s the neighborhood, which shows signs of gentrifying but to date remains somewhat unsavory, to say the least — it only heightens the building’s contrasts, with its glowing frosted-glass balconies separated by blocks of solid color. For all the vibrant hues, though, the Fresh Hotel evokes the same serene and restful atmosphere you’d expect from another all-white Zen boutique — which is, one supposes, the point of hotel design, in whatever style.
Rooms are simple and spare, with modernist furnishings like Eames chairs, and come with all the necessities, like flat-screen televisions and wireless internet. Also featured are some location-specific extras: how about a view of the Acropolis, visible to all from the vantage point of the rooftop pool deck.
In fact it’s in the public areas that the Fresh Hotel shines; half of Athens, it seems, queues for a table at the Magenta restaurant. At night the pool deck becomes the Air Lounge, serving cocktails against the backdrop of the city lights, all a few minutes from the city center — just be sure and arrange a car, if you’re traveling by night.
There’s no shortage of ultra-modern accommodations in Barcelona — it seems there’s a stylish little boutique or two on just about every street. This is a first-class city, though, and a phenomenally well-traveled destination, and so there’s always room for another good one, something like the B Hotel, just off the Plaza Espanya.
Here the interiors, in a palette of slate grey and black, are spare and masculine, an effect that’s only intensified by the Spanish predilection for dark spaces — bedrooms in Barcelona aim to provide a refuge of cool (the literal, temperature kind of cool) against the blazing midday sun. These ones are cool in the other sense as well, with platform beds, sleek modern sofas, futuristic fixtures and high-tech lighting systems (perhaps a bit too high-tech for some; ask your porter for a demonstration if you’re not technologically inclined).
If there’s a drawback, it’s that the neighborhood, a good half-hour’s walk west of the Plaza Catalunya, isn’t the pedestrian tourist’s paradise that some may envision. It makes up for this weakness, however, with convenient Metro and bus access, as well as a few attractions of its own; there’s a hip little lobby lounge and an extensive wine cellar, and the rooftop terrace is the ace in the hole — infinity-edge pools have been done before, yes, but rarely on a rooftop overlooking the skyline of a city as picturesque as Barcelona.
