Hip Is Reshaping the Hotel Experience

Hip hotels are going out of the way - sometimes far out of the way - to reshape the experience for travelers.

- Harvey Chipkin

Headlines were made in New York City recently when a cab refused to take the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico to the Opera House Hotel in the Bronx, an upscale boutique hotel in a neighborhood that not long ago would have been highly unlikely to offer quality accommodations.

And in June, a $45 million boutique hotel called Hotel on North opened in downtown Pittsfield, an old industrial town in Massachusetts’s scenic Berkshires region that had seen hard times after several major companies departed in recent decades. The hotel, located in two buildings that date from the 1880’s, features an art gallery, mini-bars with Berkshires-made products, and a restaurant called Eat and Drink on North with a high profile chef.

Hotels like these represent a revolution in lodging that seeks to appeal to the lifestyles of travelers rather than their wallets or business needs. They may be called boutique, lifestyle (or even life & style) or independent, but what they share is that they are non-branded and geared to the preferences of travelers who have come a long way from consistency-seeking road warriors who found comfort knowing what to expect when checking in.

As major markets become saturated with lifestyle hotels, developers see opportunities in atypical markets like Pittsfield and The Bronx. The reasoning: If we can be the only hip game in town we can do very well. And it is frequently in these geographically out-of-the-way locations where innovations are reshaping the very nature of the hotel experience.

But geography tells only part of this story. It’s more about a traveler who is seeking a seamless transition from his or her lifestyle at home; and hotels in markets large, small and improbable emerging to meet that demand.