From 2 stars to 5 stars, these boutique or design hotels provide their guests with the ultimate experience. The majority of these hotels also operate totally individually and can do things bigger ‘chain hotels’ sometimes cannot do. They experience with social media, start partnerships with luxury brands, start with their own application or twitter all over the place.

As we operate our own blog we thought it would be nice to show you some of our ‘competitors’, hotels that also run a blog.

The Drawing Room
The first hotel blog we want to share with you is that of The Greenwich Hotel in New York. This hotel, part of Leading Hotels of the World, offers its guest 88 rooms and suites of which no two are alike. Their blog is called ‘The Drawing Room’ and tells about cultural wanderings through The Greenwich Hotel, Tribeca and beyond.

Happy Hotelier
Another interesting and very popular hotel blog is called ‘Happy Hotelier’ run by a Dutch guy called Guido van den Elshout. We already met him a few years ago and he is what we call a ‘passionate social media hotelier’ of The Haagsche Suites in The Hague, Netherlands. His blog seems to be very popular if you look at the number of comments on his postings and the way his blog has been set-up.

RUMOR
The third hotel and accompanying blog we want to share with you is RUMOR, the Las Vegas Boutique Resort. It looks like a great hotel featuring great stylish suites (Premium Oasis Suite, what a name!) and they operate an event blog where you can read about numerous events they have done.

Florence Blog
The Kursonia boutique hotel in Florence, Italy literally will leave you speechless, especially when you read their blog … the goal of this blog is ‘to experience Florence from the inside’.

May Fair Hotel Blog
The traditional May Fair Hotel in London is not a typical boutique hotel although their overall ‘look and feel’ does tell you a different story, their blog is wonderful, great images and telling you all about what is ‘in’ in London.

Avenue Hotel
Last but not least, the blog of the Avenue Hotel in Copenhagen, they write about events in Copenhagen, events at the hotel, great!!

The number of hotels starting with their own blog is slowly growing and if you look at how these blogs are operated you can see that every hotel has defined their own strategy to ‘catch’ their guests … it is definitely not a must to have a blog but it might help you to create more awareness in the virtual world about your hotel, give it a try …

1. Who are you?

2. What do you like about what you do?
Every day is a new challenge, I enjoy every minute what I spend in the “seven sense”.

3. What don´t you like about what you do?
When I meet the owner and I have to explain him time to time why we are not the best producing hotel of the world!

4. Please tell us about your hotel and your aims with it?
The hotel has 74 guestrooms and it is located in the heart of Budapest, in the capital´s “SOHO” district, next to the best restaurants, bars, theatres. It represents not only an accommodation, but a complete lifestyle with the most unique features of 21^th century. My goal is to reach in 2010 at least 99,9% yearly average occupancy with an acceptable profit for the owner.

5. Are you working with blogs and if yes, what is your favourite blog?
Not yet, but my favourite is blog.theringhotel.com

6. Your TOP 3 hotel experiences:
Soho Boutique Hotel, Boutique Hotel Soho, Soho Hotel Boutique

7. Your TOP 3 destination experiences:
Hungary, Budapest, Lake Balaton

8. Your TOP 3 food and/or beverage experiences:
Hungarian Gulash soup, Pancake in Gundel style, Puszta cocktail (3 cl Tokaji Szamorodni dry wine, 2 cl Apricot spirit, 3cl Mecseki Itoka liqueur or St. Hubertus liqueur, 1 pc cocktail sour cherry)

9. Any comments you want to share with us?
Come and enjoy the SOHO hospitality!

1. Who are you?

2. What do you like about what you do?
The best part was inventing the hotel, the constructions and interior design. It has become an exciting mix of design and classic furniture and modern lighting. Now that we are open, we like giving our guests a very warm welcome in our small, highly personal 4 star hotel.

3. What don’t you like about what you do?
Everything is exiting. We opened The Pincoffs Hotel on the first of March 2008. For us this is a brand new life. Before this my wife and I were journalist at the daily newspaper Algemeen Dagblad for almost two decades.

4. Please tell us about your hotel and your aims with it?
Our place is a small luxury hotel, 4 star rated, with a highly personal service and an informal atmosphere. We give our guests a warm welcome. Trying to please them is our main goal. We want them to leave our building completely satisfied and with a smile. We love to give our guests good directions to discover their Rotterdam.

5. Are you working with blogs and if yes, what is your favourite blog?
We have our own blog connected to our website www.hotelpincoffs.com, but we are not working with different blogs on our site. It’s a matter of time. Your blog is superb. Maybe we have to link this one first.

6. Your TOP 3 hotel experiences
Raffles Singapore, Pera Palace Istanbul, Inglaterra Havana Cuba

7. Your TOP 3 destination experiences
Bunaken & Togian Islands Indonesia
Kenia & Zanzibar (Tanzania)
Traveling through Australia

8. Your TOP 3 food and/or beverage experiences
‘t Molentje/ Danny Horseele, Zeebrugge, Belgium
George Blanc, Vonnas, France
Oud Sluis, Sergio Herman, Sluis, the Netherlands

9. Can you offer possible readers 3 things they absolutely need to do/visit/see when visiting your city?
Take a walk along the riverfront.
Visit restaurant Parkheuvel.
Get an impression of the world harbour by boat trip (if you have time) or take a quick ride with the Water Taxi (if you are running out of time) from our place to Hotel New York or the SS Rotterdam (former cruise ship, opening September 2009).

10. Any comments you want to share with us?
Rotterdam is a relatively new city, but it is vibrating. When you are visiting Holland or Amsterdam please try to take a day or two to see the architectural city Rotterdam. And of course we are happy to welcome you in our hotel.

A few examples: Stein Group, Geisel Privathotels in Germany, Schössle Hotel Group and Bulgari Collection. Mostly all boutique hotels are furnished in a themed, aspirational or stylish way, boost between 30 and 80 guest rooms and suites and have special ‘unique selling points’ like for example their location, special features like a spa, themed restaurant or bar, the history of the building, their name, the façade or the connection to a specific luxury lifestyle brand like for example Bulgari Collection.

That is why boutique hotels are considered to be individual and unlikely to be found within the large hotel chains. The term ‘design hotel‘ comes along when parts of a small size hotel are designed by a well known designer or when the hotel did choose a famous interior design company for the room concept, restaurant or bar design or other parts of the hotel. Good examples of design hotels can be found on www.designhotels.com like for example the Lux 11 in Berlin, designed by Guiliana Salmaso – Silvestrin/Salmaso, London as well as Goetz Maximilian Keller – MK Architects, Berlin. This design hotel is situated in Berlin’s upcoming district of ‘Berlin Mitte’, The positioning and style of the hotel has been adapted to the various shops, restaurants and bars in this district. It was opened on July 1st, 2005 and one can see that the interior design and modern structure has been developed together with the historical setting of the building. The hotel offers 72 rooms, suites and apartments so it fits to the defined number of rooms boutique hotels in general feature. Look at the different color concepts and the use of various interior design elements … this is what design is all about.

Another good example of a design hotel is the Rockhouse Hotel, Jamaica. It is stretched across the cliffs of Pristine Cove in Negril, a great location! Interior design/architecture by Jean-Henri Morin, Australia and Cornerstone Design, Jamaica, this hotel can also be defined as ‘lifestyle hotel‘. The hotel can be seen as ultimate exotic escape. It offers 34 rooms and suites in 4 different categories, including villas. The rooms are built from timber, stone and thatch and designed to exist in harmony with the jungle-like garden and volcanic rock of the hotel’s setting.

Boutique and design hotels tend to position themselves, in addition to using the terms ’boutique’ and/or ‘design’, also as ‘hip’, ‘trendy’ or ‘lifestyle’ hotel, different terms with no exact definition. A lifestyle hotel can be seen as a hotel that tries to keep updated with traveler preferences as well as changes in overall travel. A lifestyle hotel can also be seen as a hotel that defines its target group / target audience as well as the travel preferences, habits, level of income, characteristics and ‘personalities’ of this target group, and by combining both a lifestyle hotel defines its interior design, hotel products, level of service, type of outlets etcetera, creating a ‘home-away-from-home’ feeling for the dedicated guest, offering the same ‘lifestyle preferences’ in a hotel as the guest does have at home.

As the big hotel chains see potential in this segment (Hyatt Hotel with their concept ‘Andaz’, InterContinental with their brand ‘Indigo‘, Rezidor does launch ‘Missoni‘ and Starwood has ‘Element‘), the future will show if this trend will continue. If travelers, which tend to prefer small hotels that cater more individually to their personal needs and preferences, will focus more strongly on ‘lifestyle hotels’ … good question.

“In the cultural heart of Vienna, Austria, The Ring – Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel bucks the trend of traditional 5 star hotels, with a smiley, helpful concierge team who are genuinely friendly and discrete. Just 2 years old, the property retains the atmosphere of a boutique hotel with stylish chocolate browns, greens and rusty orange décor, enormous cuddle-up beds and shiny plasma televisions. [Read more ...] “