Checking in to Hotel Gotham, Manchester’s decadent playground
As Manchester continues to turn heads on the hotel design scene, editor of Hotel Designs Hamish Kilburn checked in to check out Hotel Gotham’s…
/ 13.11.2018
As Manchester continues to turn heads on the hotel design scene, editor of Hotel Designs Hamish Kilburn checked in to check out Hotel Gotham’s…
/ 31.10.2018
Design firm Goddard Littlefair injects golden-age glam into the former The Grand Hotel Imperial… Hilton Imperial Dubrovnik, situated just above Dubrovnik old town, was…
/ 17.10.2018
Being the ‘first’ in international hotel design is a daring move, but one that carries ample rewards if conceived well. Editor of Hotel Designs…
/ 26.09.2018
Editor of Hotel Designs Hamish Kilburn joins Alexandra Champalimaud herself to take a closer look of the new London boutique hotel that is on…
Launching / 24.09.2018
Editor of Hotel Designs Hamish Kilburn checks in to the only hotel in Bath that taps into the natural thermal springs of the city,…
Trends / 06.09.2018
Hotel Herman K, Denmark’s first chemical-free hotel, is a converted station situated in the heart of Copenhagen. Hotel Designs took a sneak peak at…
/ 22.01.2018
Cheval Phoenix House, tucked away on a side street in one of the most exclusive parts of London, is a marvellous example of serviced…
/ 03.11.2017
Manchester is going through somewhat of a renaissance in the hotel industry. Recent openings – including Hotel Gotham – have put the critical and…
/ 10.10.2017
Right in the very heart of any city – London in particular – is probably not the first place one thinks of when ‘affordable…
/ 06.07.2017
Hotel Century Old Town Prague – MGallery By Sofitel has relaunched following an extensive renovation of the property. The 5-star property has undergone a…
/ 12.06.2017
Marriott International recently announced the expansion of its extended-stay brand, Residence Inn by Marriott, with the signing of two new properties in London. With…
/ 05.05.2017
Provocateur is Berlin’s first shamelessly sensual hotel designed by Amsterdam-based interior designer Saar Zafrir, who is behind a number of Europe’s most buzzed about…
/ 20.02.2017
‘20 miles from central London…’. Think of that radius and you likely imagine yourself still amongst the concrete jungle of Greater London. But with…
/ 11.01.2017
It was confirmed last month that The Principal York (designed by Goddard Littlefair and one of the launch hotels for PRINCIPAL, a collection of…
/ 07.12.2016
For nearly a decade now, citizenM has been altering perceptions of what a hotel can and should be – with its ‘Living Room’ concept…
/ 10.11.2016
Far removed from the bustling streets of European metropolises like London or Paris – the usual investment hotspots for British entrepreneur Javad Marandi –…
/ 20.10.2016
“You’ll love it,” I was told by friends when I mentioned I was heading to Jersey for the first time. It’s true, I knew…
/ 14.09.2016
Tucked away in 22 acres of Kent countryside is the beautiful Chilston Park – a Grade I-listed manor house from the 15th century –…
/ 27.07.2016
On a recent editorial jaunt for Hotel Design’s sister publication (PA Life) I was invited to spend an evening at Clevedon Hall, a Victorian…
/ 17.06.2016
Guest reviewer Molly Dyson shares her experience of the newly refurbished 11 Cadogan Gardens in the heart of London. . . I arrive at…
/ 01.06.2016
For those of us in the know, the Lake District needs little introduction. Indeed, sometimes, there are no words to capture its outstanding beauty….
/ 21.05.2016
One of the many things I love about London is the way tradition and modernity seamlessly merge – it’s impossible to ignore its ‘grand…
/ 10.05.2016
With all due respect to any of our readers who hail from the cities of Bath and Durham, I will tell anyone who will…
/ 04.04.2016
The transformation of the Wembley area of north-west London in the last 15 years has been nothing short of incredible. The most obvious and…
/ 10.03.2016
I still consider the historic centre of Bruges (or to use its correct, local name; ‘Brugge’) to be a relatively ‘hidden gem’. Of the…
/ 10.02.2016
The Carlson Rezidor hotel group, over the last decade or so, has been steadily building up and expanding its portfolio across the globe with…
/ 16.12.2015
When I first moved to the UAE back in mid-2011, I had come to the conclusion after several previous holidays that Dubai was the…
/ 01.12.2015
One of the perks of my job is being able to see the progression of hotels from mere ideas and drawings right through to…
/ 09.09.2015
Very often, when out and about reviewing hotels or sifting through property announcements at HotelDesigns HQ, I encounter some variation on that old hospitality…
/ 07.08.2015
In recent years, the global hospitality industry has been marking the steady rise in popularity of the ‘aparthotel’. And looking at the trends, it…
/ 07.05.2015
In March I made a long overdue trip back from the antipodean colonies to the motherland. To break up the frenetic efforts to see…
/ 14.04.2015
I have reviewed a Sofitel before – the Sofitel Hamburg. It was an hotel I found very difficult to like; the décor was cool…
/ 03.01.2015
Sleeping umbrellas and rear elevation curling around the pool, balconies giving guests a view of the beach and sea Reception lobby – click to…
/ 09.11.2014
Putting new in old, contemporary into antique, can be a difficult trick. Mix in English vernacular style and wave a designers’ wand. Magic in…
/ 14.10.2014
Breezy Bay for Bracing Blows October and the sea temperature is nearly 70 degrees, and bikini clad sunbathers catch the last rays of the…
/ 09.10.2014
I try to look at different types of hotels in both Reviews (166 of them) and Miniviews (and there are over 150 of those),…
/ 06.09.2014
For many years my practice worked for island hotel groups, the Hugglers (see Club Hotel and Spa) and the Seymours of Jersey (see the…
/ 06.05.2014
Going green means many things to many people, from adding solar power panels to a roof to a through total reworking of energy use….
/ 06.04.2014
When I stayed at the Shangri-La in Dubai I had no doubts about what I would be looking at. The review was specifically so…
/ 06.03.2014
Now owned since 1998 by Elite Hotels, enough time has passed since the ownership of De Vere to be able to see the image…
/ 05.02.2014
It stands almost as a symbolic icon of the recovery of Germany from past disasters. Top floors burned out, requisition by occupation forces, rebuilt…
/ 06.01.2014
Pretoria is the administrative capital of South Africa, Every morning commuter trains bring civil servants in to work, in a town with tree shaded…
/ 05.11.2013
Budget hotels have flourished in recession. Not only will business people trade down, but the ‘bang per buck’ element has become exaggerated as new…
/ 07.08.2013
The building is an existing 116 bedroom hotel in San Francisco, built in 1913. It had been recently purchased by Pebblebrook Hotel Trust and…
/ 05.07.2013
Last time I rode a luxury train it was the Orient Express UK end, steam pulled from London to Kidderminster, and not the blue…
/ 05.06.2013
In February 2005 I reported that Shangri-La had signed a lease on the space in then planned Shard, and had already started design work…
/ 05.03.2013
A few years ago I was in Washington to Review a couple of hotels. Staying in a Staybridge Suites I was collared by the…
/ 05.01.2013
Babbacombe is just along the road from Torquay – so close in fact that some people class it as Torquay suburbs, but it is…
/ 05.12.2012
Like many Brits, my images of America are part Hollywood, part romance,part television all tempered with the reality of numerous visits over the years….
/ 04.10.2012
Unmissable as you drive in to Exeter, this 60 bedroom hotel occupies a spectacular example of a re-engineered building. The hotel is a conversion…
/ 04.08.2012
Aquae Sulis was the Roman name for this spa. The British of course are more ‘lumpen’ than classical, so called it Bath. It has…
/ 04.07.2012
Seaside towns have a look about them. The ocean close by obviously, but the kind of shops they have – a strange mix of…
/ 04.05.2012
Lancashire can appear a very strange place full of witches and forests as well as seaside towns and industrial centres. In the late 18th…
/ 04.02.2012
The English aristocracy didn’t just build their country houses in England. Scattered across the whole British Isles are grand houses that remind one of…
/ 04.01.2012
I don’t ski. I have this image of gliding out onto the slope and slowly sinking into the snow as my weight proves too…
/ 04.12.2011
This is one of those accidental Reviews. They happen when a stay en-route to a targeted hotel or for some other reason finds me…
/ 04.12.2011
The owner lives on the other side of the bay, looking on to his hotel, or at least the Victorian seaside hotel that was…
/ 07.10.2011
Louvre Hotels Group brands are known to generations of UK travellers through France. My first visit to a Campanile in the 1980’s amused me….
/ 04.10.2011
The hotel market in Cardiff has boomed. Most of the major chains are now present, and the City has bloomed under devolved government, tourism…
/ 04.07.2011
Whilst football is often said to be a game of two halves, Chapmans Peak hotel, known popularly locally simply as ‘Chappies’, is a hotel…
/ 04.05.2011
Refreshed? Mint is the new brand name for City Inns as they continue to grow the group, this being one of two large hotels…
/ 04.02.2011
Falmouth has its place in history, its place as a centre of the web. Not the internet but a network of Royal Mail packet…
/ 23.01.2011
I’ve lost count of the number of trips I have made into what we must now call Central Europe over the last ten years….
/ 06.01.2011
Many things can drive the genesis of a new hotel chain, but mostly it is driven by personal views of owners. Room Mate was…
/ 23.12.2010
Any ski hotel will fill if it is positioned at the bottom of the ski-lifts. The Royal Spa sits on the edge of Jochberg,…
/ 23.11.2010
Set in the Silesian coalfields, Katowice is a city of concrete. Dotted around the skyline of this grey city are sets of the pithead…
/ 23.10.2010
I have just featured two hotels (Cube and Ongava) where the guests’ needs, in terms of why they are at those locations, has driven…
/ 23.09.2010
The boy was nervous, shining his torch carefully into the shadows, walking slowly so we were treading on his heels. The man with the…
/ 23.08.2010
I have a fascination with railway hotels. In Britain, they were part of the revolution in travel and hotel use in the mid-nineteenth century….
/ 22.08.2010
Cube’s name is expressive. The building is a glass cube, unashamedly modernist amongst the traditional Tyrolean valley chalet style architecture. The ‘shock of the…
/ 06.08.2010
Noel Coward’s ‘Brief Encounter’ was set on a railway platform in which a couple waiting for different trains fall for one another. Returning to…
/ 21.07.2010
We tend to think of the USA as a new country filled with new buildings. However the preservation of old buildings is as much…
/ 21.06.2010
South Africa is in the Southern Hemisphere, which means its seasons are the reverse of those in the Northern Hemisphere – as upside down…
/ 06.01.2010
To look into the increasing popularity of small and personal luxury cruises in 2009 we headed to Scotland to sample a cruise along the…