There's a ton of new things happening with Kor Hotels this week.
First, an Abu Dhabi company bought a 50 percent stake in the company allowing Kor to expand their presence overseas opening hotels in Middle East, North Africa and Asia.
And back in the states, The Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills is getting a new look from its designer Kelly Wearstler to be completed sometime in early 2009. We initially heard this was happening from a dedicated HotelChatter reader but now we have an official statement from the designer herself after the jump.
Maybe it's your job to order peonies for the lobby flower arrangement, or perhaps you're a big shot hotelier, or is it just that you have a thing for comparing hotel carpeting; in any case, the hospitality tradeshow HD Boutique runs September 17-18 in Miami and it will be heaven for everyone in the design hotel biz.
A smaller, design-focused version of the big HD Expo held in May in Vegas, HD Boutique will host 700 vendors and artisans in cabana-like booths to facilitate the sharing of new trends and products. And if the pool at The Raleigh is good enough for Chanel, then it'll be the perfect setting for canoodling during the HD gala on September 17.
Look up there! It's a bird...it's a plane...it's graffiti on the side of a hotel!
Properties graced with chic, minimalist facades often rely on their recognizable modern architecture as a selling point. But recently, three hotels have taken the innovative step of making their concrete slabs interactive.
The nautically funky Maritime Hotel in New York was the first to get the virtual treatment several years back, when street art group Graffiti Research Lab brought their "Projection Bombing" to 9th Avenue. Using homemade projection technology, they converted the Maritime's be-portholed structure into a gigantic canvas for connect-the-dots and ambient imagery.
This stunt eventually got Graffiti Research Lab on the Museum of Modern Art's radar, who recently purchased one of their interactive projection machines for themselves (and subsequently used it to scrawl "F*ck This Museum" on the wall).
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.
Move Over Herbert Ypma's Hip Hotels and the requisite Helmut Newton tome, The Cool Hunter's new World's Coolest Hotel Rooms book is headed for coffee tables in-the-know.
Released in early June but just now making it onto local bookshelves, this first foray into print from everyone's favorite glossy trend-hunting blog is a stunner.
Slathered with ultra-colorful large images of rooms from the predictable (Buenos Aires' Hotel Home and Playa del Carmen's Básico) to the surprising (Hyatt Regency), the book is a hotel maven's wet dream.
It even goes so far as to provide in-depth room descriptions and "relevant cultural goings-on" around the destination. One hotel probably not in the book? The fugliest Days Inn ever.
When is a hotel a hotel? And when is it a piece of art, and then when is it an alien space-ship?
There's a bit of all three posing on top of Paris's Palais de Tokyo museum of modern art, although to anyone jogging past (as our Paris correspondent was) it looks simply like the latter.
The Hotel Everland is the latest in a series of arty hotels popping up and closing down in Paris - only this one's doing it deliberately. Because despite the name, it's not a hotel but rathera work of art in the shape of a bright green and white fibreglass pod with a bed and bathroom inside.
If you haven't already heard, Manhattan is going hotel crazy. The Big Apple is going to add a much-needed 20,000 rooms by 2010 but those rooms aren't going to be found in the next Andre Balazs or Ian Schrager hotel.
Nope the big box chains are doing most of the adding here and they all have the same man doing their designs: architect Gene Kaufman.
In a profile with the NY Times, Kaufman points out his renderings for Sheraton, DoubleTree and a Marriott. In all, he is designing 36 new hotels in Manhattan.. To put in perspective:
On one block near Times Square -- 39th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues -- Mr. Kaufman, 50, has five hotels under construction.
They range from Manolo-wearing fashionista "Susan", to Euro-chic "Pierre", a Parisian designer. Rounding out the roster is "Mike", a hard-working and hard-playing New York doctor; Londoner and party-boy musician "Billy"; and "Dede", the resident method-actress diva.
If your answer is yes, then you're the kind of guest who will find a happy home in the soon-to-be-transformed Opus Hotel Montreal. (To us, this sounds a lot like some other people we know--Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlet, Professor Plum, etc.)
The re-design of the old Hotel Godin has a pretty unique concept: these five fictional characters are the five "muses" who will inspire the design and vision for the Opus Hotel of the future.
Of course, while the Opus Hotel is hoping that their five character design method is going to appeal to a whole lot of customers, they're also frank enough to admit that it might not appeal to everyone. This whole not-keeping-everybody-happy theme seems to be drifting around a lot these days: think Stephen Brandman's comments on bloggers not being their customers.
While we aren't sure if we are more Euro-chic like Pierre or method-actress like Dede, we'd like to think we could fit into the Opus, but begrudgingly like the fact that they won't try to bow to absolutely everyone's desires and become a standard hotel that just anybody could check in to.
The planned transformation at the Opus will last about six months, culminating perhaps with the opening of the Opus Bar and Vodka Bar--possibly in April 2008. The five characters will apparently be inspiring the vivid color schemes and individual fabric touches in the different kinds of rooms, as well as providing the basis and inspiration for a collection of black and white photography.
Let's wait and see if decorating your hotel based on the personalities of five people who don't even exist works out.
If you haven't already heard, Manhattan is going hotel crazy. The Big Apple is going to add a much-needed 
