Thanks to the Thompson Hotels PR folks we were able to get a copy of the new in-room magazine Room 100 done in collaboration with Black Book magazine, which we mentioned the other week had an ad for the soon-to-be-opened Six Columbus.
Flipping through, there were a few more ads for Thompson Hotels including the Tribeca outpost, Smyth, and established properties such as 60 Thompson and Lindsay Lohan's favorite joint (or should we say stall?) the Hollywood Roosevelt.
With a feature on cover boy Adrien Brody and inside stories on Hunter S. Thompson, the music scene in the LES, the jazz culture in New Orleans and the fast-food landscape of Los Angeles, the issue was intended to be about great American nomads and their favorite haunts--a perfect topic for a hotel's first magazine.
Yet it certainly seems like a magazine for the nouveaux rich, beautiful blondes, loaded hipsters, and trustafarians. Don't get us wrong, there are some good articles in here (we liked the Whiskey a Go Go story, with interviews from Joan Jett and Ray Manzarek). Still there seems to be a disconnect with the articles about "modern-day nomads" and bits on $600 Bottega Veneta home pillows, and $275 salt and pepper shakers from Tiffany.
We know Thompson hotel guests can shell out $400 a night for a hotel room and thus, perhaps $275 salt and pepper shakers are common housewarming gifts amongst nomads of the modern day? Either way, it totally beats what you normally find in a hotel's in-room magazine--cheesy ads for Hooter's and The Ninety Nine.
Yesterday, we saw an ad in the Blackbook magazine for the eternally unopened Six Columbus Hotel. Which also reminded us of Thompson Hotels own magazine venture, Room 100.
We've been having trouble locating any info about the magazine since we saw it mentioned in a new publications newsletter, but eventually we ran across this posting from Stephen Brandman on the Kiwi Collection's blog. There's a photo of the Thompson co-owner Brandman mixing it up at the Grammy awards, then after he goes on about the April 16 opening of Six Columbus (oops), he gives us the scoop on the magazine:
"Our new magazine is called 'Room 100', the current issue has Adrian Brody on the cover and inside it features such people as Justin Chambers, Olivia Wilde, Theodora Richards (daughter of Rolling Stones legend Keith Richards) and Lydia Hearst Shaw (daughter of kidnap victim Patty Hearst and heir to that media empire).
Why Room 100? Well, that is what we call the fantastic good-time room next to the Tropicana club at the Hollywood Roosevelt in Los Angeles - it is the opposite of George Orwell's Room 101 torture room in his book 1984. We will have 'Room 100' invitation-only lounges in all our luxury hotels.
Room 100 is stuffed full of advertising names of the caliber of Tiffany and Valentino."
We've got to wonder about a magazine that judges its first issue by who they have talked into taking out an ad, but our irony meter really picked up with that line about "Room 100 invitation-only lounges." Because here's a quote from earlier in the same article:
"The difference between Thompson Hotels and its competitors is that the others roll out the red carpet for celebrities. We treat regular people as rock stars and rock stars as regular people and as a result we are crammed with big names. There you go."
So if you're a regular person, you'll be treated like a rock star, well, unless you want to go to Room 100. They can't let just anybody in there you know. Feel free to read all about it in the magazine though, in your room, away from the rock stars.
While a magazine with a name like Sleeper might make some of us think of overnight trains before hotels, it is in fact a British mag covering the area of hotel design, development and architecture. Its quarterly issues in lavish "coffee table" style give updates on the design of hotels currently being built or renovated, highlights a few cities and gives a broad rundown on their hotel situation, and then reviews a handful of hotels, too--with a heavy focus on elements of design and style, of course.
It covers the big and the small: from new boutique hotels to full 5-star luxury 500+ room hotels. Whether or not it can help you decide where you want to stay depends rather on your priorities, but if good style or unique design is high on your list, then Sleeper's opinions should help you out. Unfortunately, though, having only four issues a year limits both how current the news is and how many hotels can be covered.
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by juliana
