Vacations To Cabo San Lucas

For a great many people staying in a quality guest house or lodge is the best type of accommodation to stay in when visiting a city such as London in the United Kingdom. Such accommodation is usually considerably cheaper than even the cheapest hotels while the accommodation’s rooms are usually of a very high standard. Some of us dislike the majority of modern hotels even though there is often a wide choice from various hotel chains and family run hotels. Many consider the modern hotel rather cold, clinical and hardly inviting but for several decades now there has been a marked increase in the number of hotels which describe themselves as boutique hotels but what exactly is a boutique hotel?

In stark contrast, to the well known national and multi-national motel and hotel chains, boutique hotels are usually much smaller and family run. The term originates from North America where these hotels offered a highly personalized service in a luxurious hotel of a distinctive character.

About thirty years ago society became a little more stylized and style conscious and many attempted to create a distinctive style and culture that influenced all aspects of their life. For an increasing number of folk the style became incredibly important and the demand for hotels which more closely matched such lifestyles increased. A number of small hotels attempted to meet this demand and they became known as design/designer hotels or lifestyle hotels.

There are a number of hotels which claim that they were the first hotel be become a boutique hotel. One such hotel is the Morgans Hotel in New York which was owned by a famous hotelier Ian Schrager. Schrager had commissioned Andre Putman to design the hotel which opened in 1984 and is usually credited as being the very first of the many boutique hotels we see today. Another hotel with a reasonable claim to the title is the Vintage Court hotel in San Francisco (part of the Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group Inc.) which opened in 1983.

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.

London, like many of the world’s largest cities, has a large number of boutique hotels. Best Western have many hotels in the city including the boutique hotel, Shaftesbury Kensington, which has recently been refurbished and offers a huge range of services including broadband Internet access from all rooms. The hotel has all of the amenities of the largest hotels, such as bars, restaurants, conference facilities and a fitness room. The sudden and rapid growth in interest in boutique hotels has led to a little confusion over the true definition of the term and to blur things a little more several large corporations have established boutique hotels to grab a little of this expanding market.

If you like to boast a little, or if you like to impress friends or you just like to make interesting conversation then you might want to consider staying in the London boutique hotel Red Carnation, 41 Hotel at 41 Buckingham Palace Road. Yes this wonderful hotel is within minutes of the Palace itself and just opposite Buckingham Palace’s Royal Mews. In such an excellent position it is little wonder that the hotel is extremely popular.

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.