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?
I love the variety in my job. On the same day you deal with marketing, sales, human resources, interior design and more. It’s fun for me to constantly think about how we can improve our service and our performance.

3. What don’t you like about what you do?
There are no closed doors in our offices. The advantage of that is that you notice everything that goes on at the hotel, but it also has the disadvantage that someone constantly waltzes in. I basically cannot finish a single thought. Routine tasks are also dreadful, but for the past year I have been starting to delegate them.

4. Please tell us about your hotel and your aims with it?
Villa Orange has already been around for 10 years. We are a small but lovely hotel, a kind of “business inn”: We have the personal charm of a small inn, but we also have the business facilities that fulfil the needs of today’s business traveller.
For the past 2 years we have become intensively involved with the topic of “sustainability”. Since July of 2008 we have been certified with the organic seal and since January 1, 2009 we are a member of the cooperation of organic hotels (Kooperation Bio-Hotels). Every morning the guests are greeted with a high-quality, 100% organic breakfast. The topic of sustainability also penetrates other areas. For example, in August we started using high-quality bed linens made of organic cotton. Our cleaning products and cosmetic products are also organic, so guests with allergies and intolerances feel especially good at our hotel.

5. Are you working with blogs and if yes, what is your favourite blog?
No, we don’t have our own blog. But I like to read blogs on “related” homepages and homepages that are interesting for me. For example, I think that the Karma Konsum blog is funny.

6. Your TOP 3 hotel experiences

No. 1: The bed & breakfast Briol in South Tyrol
It is a great place to spend a vacation. No TV, no internet access for the guests, no spa, no wellness centre, but puristical original wooden furniture from the 1930s. And in the evening no agonizing choice between 50 courses for dinner, instead a no-frills but good 3-course meal is served. Oh, yes, and the bathrooms are in the hallways. And all that in the midst of nature at an altitude of 1310 meters. There is something about that!

No. 2: Also in South Tyrol, the Zirmerhof
It is a hotel with a lot of history at an altitude of 1600 meters in an almost secluded location. Tasteful rooms with timeless furnishings. A small wellness centre with indoor and outdoor pools. A gorgeous dining room with original murals from 1900.

No. 3: This time it is a city hotel with minor quirks: The College Hotel in Amsterdam
This hotel has a SUPER design! Everything is perfectly styled. The rooms, the bar and the restaurant are a dream! That is how you imagine a city hotel to be! The only minor limitation is that the hotel is a practice hotel for hotel trainees. There is not much competent advice available from the front desk. Support from professional supervisors is missing.

7. Your TOP 3 destination experiences

Ireland’s western coast
I studied for a year in Galway on Ireland’s western coast, and I always enjoy returning there. I am really taken with the western coast and Connemara. The lively student city of Galway is located directly on the coast, there are countless pubs and places to stops for refreshments, and a rich cultural programme. And if you like things to be quieter, you can take a trip through Connemara, it is pure nature. You can spend a very comfortable night at the defiant Ashford Castle.

Oberwesel am Mittelrhein, Germany
An ancient city in the midst of the Unesco World Heritage site of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley (Oberes Mittelrheintal): Good Riesling wine, you can spend the night at a real knight’s castle www.burghotel-schoenburg.de, to stop for a bite to eat there is the fun wine-themed restaurant www.Historische-Weinwirtschaft.de and if you want something to visit, there is the Oberwesel Cultural Centre with its museum (Kulturhaus Oberwesel).

Black Forest
The wine town Durbach in the Black Forest in Baden is wonderful for a weekend trip with the whole works. A lot of nature and everywhere more or less steep hillsides overgrown with grapevines, which appear to directly run into the town. An overnight stay at the Hotel Ritter Durbach is more than comfortable. This traditional inn was completely renovated in 2008, and offers fancy and tasteful rooms and suites since its reopening. In addition to the cosy Baden-themed pub there is also a gourmet restaurant. From Durbach in just one hour you can reach the famous wine-growing region of Kaiserstuhl, or also take a trip to Freiburg or Baden-Baden.

8. Your TOP 3 food and/or beverage experiences
My favourites for Frankfurt are: The puristical and elegant Emma Metzler in the Museum for Applied Art; the little French bistro Rosa in the Frankfurt Westend district (no homepage); and if you want to really impress your guests, The Ivory Club in the British-Indian colonial style.

9. Can you offer possible readers 3 things they absolutely need to do/visit/see when visiting your city?

Palm Garden: This botanical garden in Frankfurt is absolutely worth seeing. You can take a lovely stroll through magnificent gardens and exotic greenhouses. You can stop for a bite to eat at the nice café or at the elegant Villa Leonhardi with excellent Italian cuisine.

Museum Riverbank
You can become acquainted with Frankfurt’s numerous museums while strolling along the Main: German Museum of Architecture, German Film Museum, Museum for Applied Art (MAK), Städel Museum and Museum of Communication.
And in the evenings you can relax in a very casual manner in the apple wine pub Schreiber-Heyne in the Sachsenhausen district and get acquainted with the famous apple wine.

10. Any comments you want to share with us?
Actions speak louder than words.

Where can you ride a luxury car? Well, we have looked at some magazines and of course searched through the web, here are our results:

The Emirates Palace in Dubai offers a chauffeur-driven Maybach, it is part of a very exclusive and also expensive package. The Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong has an incredible pool of 14 (!!) Rolls Royce Phantoms and 2 customized Mini Coopers. At the Grand Hotel Europe in St. Petersburg in Moscow you can choose between a BMW 7 or if you like it more sporty to drive to a ‘Dacha’ you can also take a BMW X1 or X5. The hotel chain Kempinski does offer at some hotels a luxury car, at the Ciragan Palace in Istanbul you can hire a Maybach including driver. The Grand Hotel Wien offers next to BMW 5 and 7 also a Mercedes 500 S class.

We actually wanted to show you the car brand that is part of The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel as well as Lake’s – my lake hotel & spa, both in Austria. Both hotels do have a completely branded Fiat 500 and use them partly internally or for transfer purposes.

The Fiat 500 of The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel has been delivered in 2009 and is branded with the logo and the color scheme of the hotel. Believe it or not but this car makes people turn their head around when driving through the city of Vienna.

The Fiat 500 C (Cabriolet) was delivered to Lake’s – my lake hotel & spa during the opening beginning of July 2010, this is a very nice example on how to brand a car and also providing the guests with a typical ‘summer feeling’ when taking the roof off.

Fiat stands for technology, Italian design, dynamism and versatility. Guests sometimes ask us why we decided to take Fiat and the question is, it has a sign of recognition and both hotels aim for the same.

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?
To host and provide the best service, that is my profession.

3. What don’t you like about what you do?
To work with dishonest people.

4. Please tell us about the hotel “Lake´s – my lake hotel” and your aims with it?
Well, I see this new hotel as a new chance for Pörtschach, the region as well as the Wörthersee. It is a brand new hotel with the same philosophy as The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel in Vienna, just in a different location. We are modern, innovative and young. We are contemporary and we plan to be different. This is a high end product without any airs and graces and providing the best service is our most important credo. Lake´s – my lake hotel should be the signal for the new generation in Pörtschach am Wörthersee but also in Carinthia.

5. Are you already working with blogs and if yes, what is your favourite blog?
Sorry, but I have to be honest, I never heard about “blogs” before. Now that is changed.

6. Your TOP 3 hotel experiences and why?
Brenners Park Hotel in Baden Baden, it was my first experience in a luxury hotel.
Villa Feltrinelli, Gardasee. The best I have ever seen. Every detail was perfect.
The Ring, Vienna’s Casual Luxury Hotel. Really friendly and attentive employees, nice property, good philosophy and very well positioned.

7. Your TOP 3 food/restaurant experiences and why?
Red Bull Hangar-7 – Restaurant Ikarus – outstanding and unique concept.
Burg Wernberg, Operpfalz – Chef de cuisine – Christian Jürgens – perfectionist.
Residenz Heinz Winkler Aschau. Perfect harmony between cuisine and service.

8. Can you offer our blog visitors 3 things they absolutely need to do/visit/see when visiting the city of Pörtschach or visiting Wörthersee?
It is a must for families to visit the “Minimundus” park in Klagenfurt, furthermore the famous “Pyramidenkogel” with an outstanding vista. Last but not least spend a night at Lake´s – my lake hotel.

9. Any comments you want to share with us?
This is definitely a great initiative to promote our new hotel in Pörtschach, I have never heard about a blog before in my life, but after having done some research I can tell you that it absolutely amazed me to see how many blogs there are, city blogs, fashion blogs but also hotel blogs! The Ring Hotel Blog is the best!

Cape Town

Endless beaches, great people, absolutely an upcoming city that can show itself to the public. The location between the Table Mountain which is approximately 1000 meters high and the Table Bay is more than spectacular.
What is so special about Cape Town? The Malaysian Bo-Kaap district is a very colorful one. A stroll along Sea Point, De Waterkant and Green Point is a must. During the evening the Long Street is transformed into a party zone – don’t miss that one!

The best hotels in Cape Town? Well, we came to the conclusion that the best is absolutely The Grand Daddy, the only hotel that has a luxurious Trailer-Park on the roof, all 7 Airstream caravans have been retro-futuristic designed by local artists. Also nice is the Urban Chic Hotel & Café (we like the name), great location and nicely designed rooms. We think a hidden hot spot is the Hippo Boutique Hotel in Cape Town, a hotel that offers its guests a black book with tips on where to go to. Every single month new highlights for eating, drinking, shopping and seeing. Fabulous!

Johannesburg

This city, also called “gold digging city“, just celebrated its 100^th birthday. Life is moving fast in this finance and business megacity, actually the largest city in South Africa and one of the 40 largest metropolitan areas in the world.
What to visit or see? Easy: take the headquarter of the diamond company De Beers. It looks like a sparkling diamond. The Carlton Centre, a 223 meters high skyscraper offering the highest view in South Africa on the 50^th floor called The Top of Africa. One should visit the Braamfontein, a hip district with design shops, art spaces like you see them in Soho or Berlin and great scene cafes, restaurants and bars.

Try The Peech Hotel in Johannesburg, a eco-chic boutique hotel & bistro, nominated as South Africa’s leading boutique hotel for the last three consecutive years. Take The Westcliff, it is situated in Johannesburg´s most exclusive residential suburb. Being part of “Orient Express”, they offer a selection of movies with an Orient-Express connection including Murder on the Orient Express, From Russia With Love, Strangers on a Train and Shanghai Express. Look at The Grace Hotel, located in the elegant Rosebank district. Art galleries and the Rosebank Mall with offer a huge range of beautiful crafted merchandise – yes, our favorite hotel in Johannesburg.

Durban

A city which is developing itself pretty fast due to the World Cup, new districts, an enlarged beach promenade, renovated malls and by far the most beautiful football stadium, the Moses-Mabhida-Stadium it looks like a mix of an UFO and a hand bag. Extremely futuristic and able to host more than 70.000 visitors. A must-see is the “Bean Bag Bohemia“, opened in 1995 as bar, café and restaurant, in the meantime it has strong connections to art, the creative as well as the entertainment industry. Yes it became the hot spot for the creative trendsetters of Durban. Also worthwhile to visit is the “KZNSA Gallery“, an important gallery for photography, multimedia and audiovisual art.

A lovely hotel to stay in is the Quarters Hotel in Durban, also called “Quarters on Florida“, as 4 Victorian houses on Florida Street in Durban have been transformed into this luxury boutique hotel. A new hotel is the Docklands Hotel Durban Waterfront, it offers 87 rooms and 12 lofts and stunning views over the Indian Ocean and the harbor, the Canary Wharf of South Africa. Perfectly situated on the ocean´s edge ist the Oyster Box Hotel, closely located to the Afro-chic Durban city centre. It is more a grand dame then a boutique or design hotel but worthwhile staying in.

Which country will win the World Championship Football 2010? We would not like to bet on that, we leave that up to you. We decided to get on the plane to Cape Town and stay at the Hippo Boutique Hotel. Happy football!

The most important “10 Festival” dates:

June 4^th : VIP Party@Drings / The Ring, Vienna´s Casual Luxury Hotel (only by invitation)
June 7^th : Festival & Guerilla Store Opening at Liska
June 8^th : Vernissage “Eight Views” at Contemporary
June 10^th : “Cinema Photographique” party at the Pratersauna
June 12^th : Azubis 01-party at “The Loft”
June 14^th : “departure fashion night” at the Semperdepot
June 14^th : “Sand People” a multimedia art fashion event by Andreas Waldschuetz
June 15^th : Show Liska by Thomas Kirchgrabner “Apokalypse” at the Semperdepot (only by invitation)
June 16^th : “Awards 10 – AFA Austrian Fashion Awards”-show at the Semperdepot (only by invitation)
June 16^th : “Awards 10 –Afterparty” “The Black Lodge Party” at Celeste
June 16^th : “peng!” party at the Pratersauna?

The Ring Hotel, Vienna´s Casual Luxury Hotel, is partner of the 10 Festival for Fashion & Photography in Vienna.

When hoteliers and internet marketing folks start to discuss the value of a hotel blog, you hear lots of tech talk about visibility in search engines, the importance of social networks and so on.

All of which is true. But it misses the point which is at the heart of hospitality.

Blogs are an opportunity to have a conversation with a customer, to express the property’s personality and convey a passion for interests associated with the hotel’s locale.

In short, a successful hotel blog is like a successful dinner party – guests converse, make delightful discoveries, are amused, feel included and look forward to the next get together.

Let’s face it, hotel websites, by necessity, are a collections of facts, maps, menus and photos – more akin to a product catalogue than a conversation with a customer. Blogs can compensate with frequency of ‘new news’, imaginative inclusion of ‘beyond-the-guidebook’ events and attractions and leave a visitor with the feeling ‘I want to go there’.

Hotel blogs that only promote their own product or agenda are like guests at a dinner party than can only speak about themselves – boring.

While the technology exists to measure the impact of a blog:

• How many visitors
• How many comments
• How many links in others’ blogs to the hotel blog

The real measure is more elusive and that is – the power of affinity. People frequent restaurants where they feel comfortable, recognised. Similarly, a blog can convey the hotel’s ambiance and attitude prior to a guest ever setting foot in your lobby. The feeling of ‘I belong there’ is persuasive when choosing a hotel or restaurant.

This ability to project personality and passion empowers a hotel to stand apart from the competition and, further, be distinguished from the bland, overused verbiage characteristic of descriptions on the big portal sites.

So, yes, an active blog, crosslinked with your main site, will reach more searchers using a greater variety of search terms.

Yes, an active blog will get quoted in others’ blogs, reaching their audiences as well.

Yes, an active blog can attract partners, contributors and comments in a way that websites cannot.

But is a hotel blog worth the time, energy and investment?*

In this digital age of self check in, concierge kiosks and the like, the essence of hospitality can be lost, the personal touch, welcoming communication, the delight of satisfying a customer.

A blog is a creative canvas, an opportunity to experiment … if curated with care and attitude, a hotel blog connects with guests in a uniquely personal way … in a way that is not measured by bookings alone.

Ready to inject hospitality spirit into digital? Ready to give it a try? There is a plethora of excellent ‘how-to’ advice online.

Some blogs that embrace a hospitality attitude:

Opus Hotel Blog
Hotels Paris Rive Gauche
Happy Hotelier

* I often hear ‘we don’t have the budget’. Reframe the issue ‘how do I finance this effort?’…but that is a story for another time.

Many thanks to Carl-Peter Echtermeijer for seeking my opinion on blogging.

About Liz Craig

Liz Craig, President and founder of OneglobeNetwork, an interactive agency that provides online and mobile marketing services, strategic business consulting, cutting-edge website production, fully enabled by proprietary processes and web based technologies.

“A young and extremely professional service crew, a performance of international par-excellence, a perfect location and an audacious and distinctive cooking – a combination rarely seen in hotel kitchens in Vienna.” This can be read in the new edition of Gault Millau as overall statement on the restaurant At Eight.

The total of 15 points for the concept of aroma cuisine of Thomas Seifried do acknowledge the excellent and fascinating combinations of menus and dishes with which he his pampering his guests. His cuisine is focusing on high quality, seasonal products, various spices and sauces as well as fresh domestic and exotic herbs which he combines with different essential/ethereal oils.

“Getting the second toque means a lot to us,” rejoices Thomas Seifried. “It states that the direction we have constantly and strategically followed since the opening in 2007 has been the right one. I am moreover positive that it will help the old and wrong prejudice that one cannot expect as much from hotel kitchens as from classical restaurants.”

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.