Living hotels: six boutique stays designed to feel like home

No matter how long, how far or how restful a trip away is, one of the most relaxing moments of any vacation is when you get home. When every muscle in the body relaxes as you collapse into your own chair, greeted by the comforting features of a home you didn’t previously realise you missed.

After the rise of Airbnb and other likeminded travel accommodation sites and services, providing real homes – or at least characterful spaces dressed up as them – to travellers searching for more familial home comforts, hoteliers, designers and architects are taking note, and implementing features that turn the hotel room into a home away from home.

One of the most frustrating aspects of hotel-room living, is the constant need to leave the room. Many adventuring holidaymakers assume they won’t be there much so only need a shower and a bed, but filling up the vacation itinerary with constant activities can be exhausting enough, without heading back out for every meal and service required. The Bermonds Locke Hotel in Bermondsey, London, UK, may be designed to encapsulate the dusty plains of California’s Joshua Tree National Park, but the hotel offers in-room services much closer to home. ‘Designed to be lived in,’ explain the architects, Holloway Li, ‘each individual studio is equipped with a fully functional kitchen and laundry facilities, giving guests the flexibility to live in each room undisturbed for anything from one night to three months.’

Rooms over in the Stamba Hotel in Tbilisi, Georgia, meanwhile, use the building’s former life as a publishing house as inspiration, with simple decorative and practical touches like brick walls, bookcases, comfortable sofa arrangements and in-room coffee machines making each room feel like a small studio apartment. ‘Up to 80,000 books are presented on widespread bookshelves across the hotel’s public spaces as well as in guest rooms,’ audit the architects, Adjara Arch Group.

Many hotel rooms boast of their designer-engineered multi-functionality, where writing desks become kitchenettes or beds even transform into tables. But having to tidy everything up before bed or just to leave the room isn’t the most relaxing way to live. This was the ethos behind the Leman Locke hotel’s interior in Aldgate, London, UK, where the architects Grzywinski+Pons designed all the bespoke furniture to work harmoniously with the space. ‘We wanted to avoid the transformer vibe of Murphy beds, retractable desks and flip-up tables,’ they explain, ‘our intention was to dispel the underlying sense of being unsettled, which complicates our self-imposed directive to inculcate the feeling of being at home while away.’

For single travellers or vacationing couples, a hotel room that positions everything within four walls is fine, as two competing activities are rarely enjoyed simultaneously. But families, especially those with young children, often desire a little more privacy and space away from each other, while still within the security of the suite. The home-like feature of separate living spaces is what often gives vacation home rentals the edge over hotels. The Deep C Boutique hotel, however, combines the best aspects of a luxury hotel, with its indoor and outdoor lounge and infinity pool, yoga room and sauna, alongside private apartment living with rooms that include open-plan living/dining/kitchen areas and private outdoor terraces, completely separated from up to three double bedrooms.

Another major difference between time spent holed up in a hotel room and in a more residential space, is the proximity, and therefore quality, of light and air. The bigger the hotel, the more it is inevitably forced to rely on artificial versions of both. At the Sala Samui Chaweng Beach Resort hotel in Thailand, however, ‘guests can relax in beds, larger than king-size, shaded by big trees next to the public swimming pool,’ explain the architects, onion. This is not a description of the resort’s pool and outdoor lounge, however, but instead it describes a collection of sheltered courtyards that intertwine between the resort’s rooms and other interiors. More private exterior spaces are provided too, as each room features a ‘private backyard where guests can relax on a circular outdoor bed next to a private swimming pool.’

The inoffensive, yet impersonal decor found in many hotel rooms brings forth the depressing realisation that the neighbouring room shares the exact same view in mirror-image, belittling the guest’s unique experience. Taking ‘aesthetic cues from a lexicon of references including the British country inn, retreats in the Hamptons, summer camps and southern Ontario’s farmhouses and cottages,’ introduce architects +tongtong, the Drake Devonshire Inn’s ‘guest rooms and public areas are teeming with doses of the Drake’s brand of idiosyncratic and mischievous personality.’

The Drake’s interiors balance bright, contrasting surfaces and fabrics with mismatched furniture, fixtures and accessories from vintage fairs and antique markets, with the decorative result, even if not to a guest’s individual test, giving the hotel a comforting atmosphere of an eccentric relative’s residence.

© Architonic

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