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Hoteliers Still Loving Their Boutique Hotels

June 3, 2008 at 9:20 AM | 1 Comment

The NYT has an article today on the boutique hotel business in which they interviewed several hotel execs and got them to sound off on why boutique hotels are so successful these days.

Yes, it's 2008. No, you are not reading a post from 2004 that we mistakenly put up.

There's not much of interest in the article except the paper managed to interview a few big hoteliers like Ian Schrager (who is ok with selling out to Marriott), Jason Pomeranc and Michael Achenbaum of the Gansevoort Hotel Group, along with Thomas F. O'Toole, chief marketing officer for Hyatt Hotels.

However we did like Achenbaum's description of what his hotels aim to do:

“I want guests to think, ‘I got five-star service, but it was a fun version of five-star service,’ ” Mr. Achenbaum said. That means providing ample meeting space, free Internet access and staff that is responsive whether a guest needs dinner reservations or a computer cable, he said. It also means offering signature touches like a rooftop pool and wow factors like the 50-foot shark tank in the lobby in Miami.

Shark tanks! We're so easy to please over here.

As we write, all the big hotels and hoteliers are wrapping up the final day of the Tisch Center Hospitality Conference taking place at a non-boutique hotel, the Waldorf-Astoria.

[Photo: NY Times]