A Brief Introduction to Boutique Hotels?
While there are certainly a large number of folk who, when visiting a city, like to stay in familiar surroundings and several of the large hotel chains offer accommodation that varies little from city to city making them ideal for such people. However there are many, many people who prefer something a little more intimate and something a little bit different and such folk often choose to stay in a local guest house or small local hotel. For the last few decades there has been an increase in the number of boutique hotels in London and many other popular city destinations. The following article explains a little about boutique hotels and describes what you should expect from such accommodation.
“Boutique hotels” originated in North America and such hotels are usually small privately run hotels with a strong and noticeable character offering a most excellent personalized service which is not commonly experienced in the larger, well known, hotel and motel chains.
Roughly three decades ago the culture and style of society was rather different and many liked to fashion a specific lifestyle for themselves. More and more people began to demand hotel accommodation which would fit more closely to their chosen lifestyle. The hotels which where redesigned to meet this demand became known as design hotels or lifestyle hotels.
In 1984, the Morgans Hotel in New York opened, it was owned by Ian Schrager, a famous hotelier, who had commissioned Andre Putman to design it. Morgans Hotel, New York is credited as being the world’s very first Boutique hotel. There are other boutique hotels which lay claim to being the first, such as San Francisco’s hotel Vintage Court which opened in 1983. Vintage Court is part of the Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group Inc. which has many boutique hotels.
While most of the hotels belonging to the larger chains offer all of the most modern luxuries in often rather uniform buildings boutique hotels are really rather different. It is extremely common for these hotels to be designed around a particular theme with unique aspects you would not normally see in an ordinary hotel. For instance the Church Street Hotel in London UK has a rich Spanish-American theme with numerous examples of art to match the interesting Cubano style and such things as mexican tile work.
Many cities, including London, now have a selection of boutique hotels to choose from but the definition of a true boutique hotel has recently become rather blurred due to the actions of some of the major hotel chains. Best Western has opened the boutique hotel, Shaftesbury Kensington and several other chains have also began to develop more hotels which could be described as a boutique hotel so there is now a little confusion about what exactly makes a hotel a boutique hotel.
Of all the boutique hotels in London one of the most interesting addresses is that of the, Red Carnation, 41 Hotel which is situated opposite the Royal Mews of Buckingham Palace. This five star boutique hotel is superbly placed within minutes of Buckingham palace itself, Pall Mall and other important London attractions. Staying at 41 Buckingham Palace Road, London, just has a certain ring to it when you tell friends where you stayed.
While the word boutique may well be used extensively now and there are usually many to choose from the very nature of them dictates that each will be considerably different than the other. They seem to be appearing virtually everywhere these days and there is even a boutique hotel on the Isle of Harris in the extremely remote Outer Hebrides. Now that you have a greater understanding of what makes a boutique a hotel boutique then you may wish to consider booking into one next time you visit somewhere new.
