Reviews

With all due respect to any of our readers who hail from the cities of Bath and Durham, I will tell anyone who will…

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…

I still consider the historic centre of Bruges (or to use its correct, local name; ‘Brugge’) to be a relatively ‘hidden gem’. Of the…

The Carlson Rezidor hotel group, over the last decade or so, has been steadily building up and expanding its portfolio across the globe with…

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…

One of the perks of my job is being able to see the progression of hotels from mere ideas and drawings right through to…

Very often, when out and about reviewing hotels or sifting through property announcements at HotelDesigns HQ, I encounter some variation on that old hospitality…

In recent years, the global hospitality industry has been marking the steady rise in popularity of the ‘aparthotel’. And looking at the trends, it…

In March I made a long overdue trip back from the antipodean colonies to the motherland. To break up the frenetic efforts to see…

I have reviewed a Sofitel before – the Sofitel Hamburg. It was an hotel I found very difficult to like; the décor was cool…

Sleeping umbrellas and rear elevation curling around the pool, balconies giving guests a view of the beach and sea Reception lobby – click to…

Putting new in old, contemporary into antique, can be a difficult trick. Mix in English vernacular style and wave a designers’ wand. Magic in…

Breezy Bay for Bracing Blows October and the sea temperature is nearly 70 degrees, and bikini clad sunbathers catch the last rays of the…

I try to look at different types of hotels in both Reviews (166 of them) and Miniviews (and there are over 150 of those),…

For many years my practice worked for island hotel groups, the Hugglers (see Club Hotel and Spa) and the Seymours of Jersey (see the…

Going green means many things to many people, from adding solar power panels to a roof to a through total reworking of energy use….

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…

Now owned since 1998 by Elite Hotels, enough time has passed since the ownership of De Vere to be able to see the image…

It stands almost as a symbolic icon of the recovery of Germany from past disasters. Top floors burned out, requisition by occupation forces, rebuilt…

Pretoria is the administrative capital of South Africa, Every morning commuter trains bring civil servants in to work, in a town with tree shaded…

Budget hotels have flourished in recession. Not only will business people trade down, but the ‘bang per buck’ element has become exaggerated as new…