SARAH BUITENDACH: Get set for hotels 2.0
They’ve moved beyond just offering sad in-room coffee stations with sachets of Ricoffy
Headphone-adorned creative types cluster around a shared table, overzealously punching at their MacBooks. Fixed-gear bicycles hang nonchalantly from walls and the melodic middle-aged musings of Fleetwood Mac (on vinyl, of course) drift through the air. This, dear reader, is the future of the hotel as we know it. Gone are the days of stuffy, starched receptions with bellhops, faux-wood veneers and gratuitous chandeliers. Beige bedrooms and lift music are out. This the era of hotels 2.0. It began with the advent of boutique hotels in the 1990s, spearheaded by the likes of Morgans Hotels founder Ian Schrager and Bill Kimpton, who founded Kimpton Hotels, later bought by Intercontinental Hotels. They’re the guys who opened small establishments, in up-and-coming areas, that boasted a whole lot of designer flair and individuality. It was all about personal service and extreme coolness. The problem was that these early boutique hotels were great, but really pricey. So, in 1999, the "boutiqu...
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