You don't come to a hotel to feel at home: you come to feel much better than at home
These are some of the hotel trends that will be consolidated in 2017.
But remember: the most important thing in a hotel is still you , the person who showers , eats breakfast and sleeps in it . Don't let anything — not a wacky pool, not an organic rooftop garden, not a large suite like Versailles — take that honor away from you.
1. THE RESURRECTION
The hotels give a second life to buildings who already had, in the past, an important life. This has always existed, but now it is placed at the center of the agenda. There is pride in being an oxygen cylinder but also a responsibility. This year he will open **The Silo**, in Cape Town, which is built in an old…silo. The Line , in Washington DC , is in a church in the Adams Morgan area, and the ** 21C Museum Hotel Nashville ** in a warehouse that is part of the United States National Register of Historic Places. ** The Poli House **, one of the hundreds of Bauhaus buildings in Tel Aviv, comes back to life thanks to Karim Rashid. Who would not want to sleep in a space like this, with that architectural and cultural weight? This recovery of historical places becomes the (interesting) protagonist of the story. And, with this, the hotel has half a story told.
You will sleep in an old warehouse now dedicated to art and rest
two. THE OTHER NEIGHBORHOODS
In parallel, hotels take responsibility for something: bring energy to previously forgotten neighborhoods . We are not talking about impoverished places or ready to gentrify, but about places where hotel life was scarce. In Madrid we have a good example in the Only YOU Hotel Atocha , which is installed in an unlikely place for a hotel, confirming that the future belongs to the brave.
In New York, already bored with SoHo and the two Uppers, hotel life is springing up in neighborhoods like Hell's Kitchen ( Hotel Ink48 ), on the Brooklyn Bridge, at the ** Hotel 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge ** or at the Seaport, with 1 Seaport, a complex of residences that is almost a resort. The Redbury , in NoMad (north of Madison) also claims new corners of the city. The same is true in London, where the Green Rooms , which is defined as a hotel for artists, is placed in a place outside the tourist routes, Wood Green. Have you heard of this area? That's the idea.
life overlooking the bridge
3. MATURE AND INTERESTING
Hotels, unlike some people, love to celebrate years and tell the age. The past is used to claim, not so much experience, but legend which is much sexier. The more decades they have, the more in their favor; above all, if they are rehabilitated following contemporary patterns. It is not enough that a hotel is old to be of interest, it is important that have a contemporary attitude and do not smell of camphor or pretend to live on the rents.
The Eden of Rome , with 125 years, reopens by the hand of Dorchester Collection after a comprehensive rehabilitation. **The Peninsula ** celebrate, in 2017, a century of life with excellent health and openings like the one in London, in Hyde Park Corner. Y L'Hôtel de Crillon of Paris reopens its doors with all the fanfare expected from one of the epitomes of parisian luxury . The Ritz , very close to the Crillon, did so last summer after years of renovation with the same intention of being the myth that it was.
The future opening in London: the great Peninsula
Four. THE NEO-HOSTELS CONTINUE
And compared to the old, the very new. The hostels or hostels They have been undergoing a deep process of redefinition for years. This trend becomes sophisticated and spreads throughout all the big cities. It not only appeals to millennials, that public that marketing departments like to mention so much, but to all those who seek to differentiate themselves in their decisions. Some recent examples are Soul Kitchen in Saint Petersburg, the ** Home Lisbon ** in Lisbon, ** Wallyard Concept Hostel ** in Berlin or all of the chain Generator . The Moxy They have hostel prices and social life and good hotel services such as free coffee and snacks. Freehand , the brand that knew how to see that hostels could and should be attractive places for all audiences regardless of their account balance, continues to expand. After Miami and Chicago, it now opens in Downtown Los Angeles, in a building from the 1920s. How will a hostel work in La La Land ? If it's a Freehand, great.
5. BLEISURE, BLURRING AND SURROUNDINGS
We feel the words, but they help to talk about a trend that has been setting traveling rhythms for years. The bleisure add leisure to the work trip ( business+leisure ) and the blurring blur the boundaries between work and life. If work formats change, if there are more and more workers without offices and hours, it is logical that the way of traveling will change. Hotels, attentive to this new lifestyle in which people work in the lobby and family or friends are added to business trips, are also changing. In them, The rooms are small , but the spacious, active and multifaceted common areas.
Luxury is no longer necessarily a European principality-sized suite . There are hotels like ACE that they have this very internalized and continue to open; this year they settle in Chicago . The hotels pod , built with prefabricated modules, open up Brooklyn. This label is one of the apostles of small rooms versus hyperactive common areas. The ** Edition ** have also been able to merge leisure and business in hotels with a lot of personality and that work the same for meetings, wines at the end of the day, a swim in a pool or writing a report. This year they plan to open in Bangkok, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai and Barcelona . Long live this happy chaos.
6. HOTELS FOR INTERIOR TRAVELS
Borders can be geographical or mental. The transformative journey, so of our time, seeks to break what we have inside. At the latest edition of ** PURE ,** in Marrakech, a fair-barometer of contemporary post-luxury , this concept invaded everything. The entire macrotrend of yoga retreats, meditation, wellness, health , is based on that thesis that defends that a trip can change , even if it is little, a life. If not, ask Don Draper . But you can go beyond promoting a multi-day retreat.
It's what makes **Eremito,** a place located in Umbria, which is closer to a convent (with a shockingly chic look) than a hotel. Those who sleep here seek vacations of the soul . Reconnection is not only reached through meditation, but also through contact with extreme Nature. This is what you are looking for Alladale , a Scottish castle in the Highlands that organizes retreats without cell phones or watches to connect with the landscape and its inhabitants and, incidentally, with oneself. Other places do it unconsciously. Hosh Al Syrian It is a small hotel that is in Bethlehem. You don't come here by chance. If you book in it, it is because you have questions that you want to answer.
The "little hotel of the soul"
7. THE EXTRAVAGANCE
And in the face of these post-postmodern spiritual exercises, the excessive, the absurd . Although, let's not be cynical, every journey is an inner journey . The rare is a value in the post-luxury, as seen in the last edition of the ILTM ( International Luxury Travel Market ), in Cannes. It is not enough to have a spa: if you can be in the middle of an island outside of Marrakech, all the better.
This is the bet of the new ** Oberoi ,** which will soon open in Morocco, increasing the hotel bet of the city. Another extravagance also presented in that market of the world of luxury, The TyWarner Mansion at Las Ventanas al Paraíso, a Rosewood project in Mexico. In this villa-hotel there is private movie theater, tequila library, private spa, and a plunge pool on the bathroom ceiling . Its price is also very high: 35,000 dollars a day. In Bhutan there is an equally excessive bet but much more subtle. ** Six Senses ** opens in the second half of 2017 a hotel in Bhutan made up of five resorts spread over five different towns. It is about the guest living different experiences in different places . Each one of them, Thimphu, Punakha, Gangtey, Bumthang and Paro It has its personality and its theme. This ambitious project may open an (expensive) door that others may want to explore.
The TyWarner Mansion
8. THE MINI-HOTELS
And in the face of these bizarre projects, we find the mini hotels . The vindication of the small is typical of our time. Hotels with few, very few rooms , find their place in a market that values the social as well as the private, the excessive as well as the contained. Mahana Villa , a spectacular wine-focused New Zealand hotel, has four guest rooms in the owner's home and two outside rooms; The Soul Soul Retreat (another commitment to the transformative journey), with three; ** Tower Suites in Reykjavík **, with eight; the newly opened Mercer in Seville , with twelve. Though, Is not this commitment to the small another form of extravagance?
Mercer Seville
9. THE HYBRIDS
The formula of hotel+residence is consolidated, just like that of private club+hotel . The new Have Trinity Square , which opens this month Four Seasons in London, bets on this mixed system: It is a hotel, club and has apartments to rent or live. It's in a 1922 building that was the headquarters of the Port of London Authority. He does not lack anything. soho-house , who has achieved enormous mastery uniting the private club system with rooms, after opening in Barcelona plans to do it again in his fiefdom, London . Nick Jones's new project is called TheNed and will be in a building by Lutyens.
The vacation rental , already consolidated as an alternative to the hotel, forces us to rethink traditional schemes. projects like Sweet Inn They combine the best of both worlds: the independence of an apartment with the services of a hotel. In Beverly Hills, the Ciprianis open a residence complex called Mr C . He lives like a star and eats like an Italian mamma. All this hodgepodge has only just begun.
10. THE FARM, MY HOTEL
Do you remember the rural hotels of the 90s and the school farms? Forget it, because this has nothing to do with it. The idea of turning farms into fantastic hotels is based in the United Kingdom : Little by little, it spreads to the rest of Europe.
**Soho Farmhouse** crystallized this trend and hotels The Pig they have made it absolutely desirable. Masseria Moroseta , in Puglia , would be another splendid example. **Deplar Farm (Eleven)**, a former sheep farm, is now a hotel located in a remote part of North Iceland. ** La Granja, in Ibiza **, was last year one of these discreet openings that we like so much. His proposal is curious: it is more a place where the members of a club called Friends of a Farmer . Here organic farming meets the desire to exchange creative ideas. La Granja is also another example of blurring and of hybrid hotel , namely, an example of things to come . We will see more initiatives like this. And this brings us to the next point.
An old sheep farm in a remote part of Iceland
eleven. SIGNATURE HOTELS
La Granja is also an author's project. His personality is that of his handyman, Claus Sendlinger . The same happens in Swatma , in Tamilnadu , where Krithika Subrahmanian he has invented an extraordinary hotel where there was none. This woman is an architect, designer and dancer in the classical Indian style called Bharatanatyam ; she endorses this hotel with her name, her character and her presence. Homoki Lodge , near Budapest, is another example of a signature hotel. Their owners, Birgit and Oliver Christen , art historian and architect, have designed an extraordinary way of living in the Hungarian countryside. But let no one be scared: this trend does not mean that guests have to have breakfast with the owners or have family life in front of the TV (trips are just the opposite), but that everything in that hotel is permeated by his personality.
In Tamil Nadu, a hotel with a lot of personality (that of Krithika Subrahmanian)
12. FULL BOARD
Also, in 2017 we will continue going to the hotels to eat , something that previous generations only did forced. and we will obsessively , that is, converting the gastronomy on the axis of the journey. The idea of not leaving a hotel and having all the meals there, something that we associate with trips that we don't want to go on, gains popularity. Above all, if the experience of doing so goes beyond mere nourishment and settles in the field of wild enjoyment.
This is what has been going on for years in places like ** The Ritz-Carlton Abama, in Tenerife, ** which with thirteen restaurants and two starred restaurants (M.B. and Kabuki) makes it unnecessary to leave the hotel. The ** Mandarin de Barcelona ** ups the gastro ante every year: after Carme Ruscalleda and Ángel León, **Gastón Acurio has now moved into The Banker’s Bar **. Thus, hotels become self-sufficient places for those inside and desirable for those outside. But one of the gastro-hotel experiences of 2017 will be the installation of Noma at Hotel La Zebra, in Tulum, from April 12 and for seven weeks. If someone is encouraged, they should do it as soon as possible. Maybe it's too late.
The future Gastón Acurio at The Banker's Bar
13. MY ROOM AND MY MOVIE PLEASE
In their obsession with being places where you don't just sleep, hotels up the ante and stand as vehicles or generators of culture. The inclusion of cinemas is no longer so strange. The hotels signdale of London and New York have a kind of film library where to see and discuss classics or premieres. The **One Aldwych in London** has a program called Film and Fizz which includes a movie, a glass of Lallier Grande Reserve Champagne and a three-course dinner at the Indigo restaurant. This action is open to all, whether or not they are guests.
Two of the hotels that we have mentioned are also allied to culture. Silo it will be literally on top of a contemporary art museum that hopes to rival the world's greats. The **21C Museum Hotel Nashville**, founded by two collectors, Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson , opens in spring wanting to be both a hotel and a museum. In Berlin he opens another curious initiative: it is called Hotel Provocateur and revolves around burlesque . Culture is a tree with many branches and hotels want to climb all of them.
And about these trends they plan two very important and of which everything has already been written. **Hotels are lived and… shared **. All those who thought that the presence of technology in hotels meant having an iPad in the rooms forgot what was important. People come to hotels to enjoy themselves to be able to tell about it either to ourselves (they are called memories) or to others. The hotels themselves spend some time each day thanking Instagram, Twitter and other social networks for helping to do so. It makes them more vulnerable, right, but also in more desirable.
14. THE MACROTREND
The other big macrotrend, the trend of trends , goes through the social function of the hotel: the contemporary hotel is relevant or it is not. That the hotels are sustainable or responsible is no longer negotiated; another topic is what degree is achieved . Now we have to go one step further: the hotels that are born in 2017 do so knowing that must have a social impact . How to do it? Ah, that's another story.
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