Saturday, June 2, 2012

Boutique Hotels on the Rise

Traveling has always been one of the most important parts of our lives and keeping this in mind the hotel industry has changed the whole concept of hotels very rapidly in the past few years. Now hotels are no longer a place where one goes because he has no immediate accommodation in that city but these hotels have become more than just a place to stay. These hotels now provide many other integrated services and luxuries like restaurants, swimming pools, gymnasiums, spas and many others.

In the last one decade the rise of boutique hotels has made a huge impression on the hotel industry and is still making it. These boutique hotels are now operating in every major or small city whether it is New York, London, San Francisco and or any part of the world. This concept of boutique hotels basically existed from 1980s. Initially, these boutique hotels were also known as "designer" or "lifestyle" hotels. Morgan hotel of New York was the first to get this label of "boutique hotel". Now days, everyone is trying to call their hotel a boutique hotel but generally, a boutique hotel is one which is comparatively smaller, and constructed with the purpose of serving their personal customers rather than others. The definition of boutique hotel as per most of the travel and tour agents and websites of this type is, it is a hotel which do not have more than 50 rooms and the aim of this hotel is to make your stay as pleasant as possible. The blast in the numbers of boutique hotels has brought confusion as more and more internal hotel owners are opening their own chain of boutique hotels. Most famous are Starwood and resorts hotels.

After the huge popularity of New York's Morgan hotel, many boutique hotels have come into existence all across the world especially in the cities that are hotspots in terms of tourism or around them. Let's take London as an example. Till some time back, it was very hard to find one boutique hotel there but now boutique hotels are seen in every second street and what's more, bigger hotels are also converting themselves into a boutique hotel. These big boutique hotels are gaining more popularity there as the rents are high and small boutique hotels are not workable often. In last five years or so, many boutique hotels have gained huge popularity in London and some of them are Guest houses in Notting Hill, Baglioni Hotel and the Soho Hotel in Soho.

In our second example, Paris, every type of boutique hotel can promise you a big success. Probably, this is the reason why there is a huge variety and quantity of boutique hotels to choose from. One of the Paris's oldest boutique hotels is called Montalembert and it is situated on the left bank. The hotels that have been inducted as boutique hotel very recently are Hotel De Sers situated at Avenue Pierre and Hotel Sezz located very near to Eiffel Tower.

The interesting fact about boutique hotels is that the boutique hotels of North America are slightly bigger than the boutique hotels all around the world and this is because of the fact that rents are higher there. But still the boutique hotels are very famous in America.

It is estimated that as the tourism sector will grow the hotel industry especially the boutique hotel industry will also grow and also the fact that the big hoteliers have initiated their expression of interest in boutique hotels, will help this industry flourish for many years to come.


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