Occasionally when we shack up in a hotel and are confronted with gaudy brocade galore or minimalism a la copious black leather, we find ourself thinking...."whoa, we are totally not in the demographic this place had in mind."

Feeling this way in a space which is to be a temporary home is more than uncomfortable, it can be downright stunting.

To address this issue among women travelers, the Cologne International School of Design did a very awesome thing by conducting a study to discover what is needed to create a "new hotel culture" which successfully melds the design demands of both sexes.

We were pretty excited about the Kimpton Hotels range of robes--remember the giraffe? Neat ideas haven't stopped there, and it seems like Kimpton throws a lot of money and time into coming up with creative ideas that actually sound worthwhile for travelers. Of course, it might be that there's so much emphasis on doing even better than a giraffe robe that they forget to clean the rooms--no, we have no evidence of that, we're just wondering.

Anyhow, the latest swathe of new ideas all fit into Kimpton's Women InTouch plan, a bunch of ways in which the chain is "committed to women travelers".