Is what you see above: A) another nautical building sticking off the back of the Maritime Hotel? B) a homeless shelter? Or is it C) Vikram Chatwal's $70 million dollar chunk of the Meatpacking District?
As is only proper in the business of building New York hotels, ALL THREE crazy statements are very true. The property at 346 West 17th Street, formerly The Covenant House homeless shelter, was purchased by Vikram's father's company Hampshire Hotels late last year.
Looking like The Maritime in drydock, the Downtown Dream so far has a gutted interior, a fully painted mud-grey exterior and construction that appears to be moving right along...for now.
According to Vikram's company website, his Downtown Dream is due to debut in early 2009, just in time to give The Maritime a run for its summer rush. And yes, just in case you need to hear it again, the Downtown Dream is right next to the Maritime Hotel so that should be a very interesting situation when it opens.
We didn't know that hotelier Vikram Chatwal was friends with ex-Paris Hilton boy toy Stavros Niarchos but apparently he is. However, he may want to rethink hanging out with a kid ten years younger than him.
Page Six is reporting that Vik had to go to the hospital for some stitches:
At the swimming pool of Chatwal's Half Moon House in Beverly Hills, the duo were playing with Chatwal's new Labrador. "They both fell in the water," said an onlooker. "Vikram ended up in an emergency room getting a dozen stitches in his head."
Vik's rep made it sound like everything was all hunky dory when Vik returned home, telling Page Six that him and Stavros toasted each other with an appropriate drink called the Salty Dog.
Yeah, we really don't believe that bit. Or the bit about falling in the water because they were playing with Vik's new dog. This all sounds very suspicious to us.
While we have a bunch of our own theories, we would love to know what you think is the real reason behind Vik's stitches. Send your thoughts to us or better yet, comment below.
Since getting married and having a baby last year, hotelier Vikram Chatwal has been keeping quiet lately. With the exception of Dream Bangkok, we hardly heard anything from this playboy-turned-actor-turned hotelier.
That is, until now. New York mag reports that Vik will be opening two hotels in the next few years. The first, the Lamb's Club (pictured, right) will be another tourist draw in midtown at 44th Street, close to his Dream and Night hotels.
The Lamb's Club is scheduled for an August 2008 opening (way later than what we predicted) and will feature an upscale restaurant from Lotus partners. A word about the restaurant from Lotus' David Rabin:
"It's not going to be off-putting or stiff," says Rabin. "It will be very top-of-the-line food and top-of-the-line drinks à la Double Seven, but we hope it will be a place where real regulars develop." Will the hotel, with its restaurant on the ground floor and steps up to a bar on the second floor, be as over-the-top as Chatwal's Dream? "It's going to be very subdued and classic," Rabin tells us, "The designs on the restaurant are beautiful woods and stones and rich fabrics. We hope it's going to be one of those places that New Yorkers adopt."
If you're not keen on adopting a place in midtown, never fear. Vikram Chatwal tells the mag that his Dream Downtown outpost in the Meatpacking District is about a year and a half away. Looks like 2008 will be the year of the Vik.
Want proof that becoming a parent changes everything? Turn back the clock a couple years and Vikram Chatwal the hotelier was a mess--reports were, his NYC property, Dream NYC smelled like ass, staffers forgot wake up calls for VIP reporters, and the long promised guest iPods were nowhere to be found.
Dream Hotel New York quickly became one of those hotels that we would hear about being offered up to corporate travel road dogs at cut rates, which usually means the hotel has plenty of rooms available. Whether this was because of its Times Square location or its many documented early service issues, is open for debate. However, there was definitely little reason to believe that a few years later a Dream Hotel would open on the other side of the world, in Bangkok Thailand, and Dream would become a bit of a mini-franchise, but that appears to be what has happened.
Not only did Vikram open Dream Hotel when he said he would, late last summer, but the world's first Sikh billionaire-in-waiting's Dream Hotel Bangkok is getting rave review from recent guests and tipsters:
·I had stayed at the Dream Hotel in New York last year and must say that the one in Bangkok is far superior!
·I like the bar lounge area and they had 2 for 1 happy hours which made it even better.
·42'' plasma TV with many English language channels
·The staff are mostly young, good looking Thais. Some of them are quite new and one can sense that in some clumsiness and slowness in service but their friendliness and enthusiasm more than compensated for that.
·It's located in a quiet street off the bustling Sukhumvit area.
·I was a little worried about whether I would find the hotel (especially after reading previous review). However I came well preprared with an excellent map which was emailed to me from the reservations department upon request.
·The only negative I have is the lack of natural light.
Vikram Chatwal the hotelier appears to be on the upswing. Could the upcoming Lamb's Club Hotel in New York end up surprising?
According to the NYC & Company, New York City is adding nearly 5,000 new hotel rooms to its current inventory of 70,723 by the end of 2007. That is a lot of hotel rooms, right?
Regardless, we have way too much fun following all the supposed NYC hotel openings, and once in awhile these places even toss us a bone and sell rooms for half price during their opening phase--yeah, that is still about $250 a night in Manhattan. So it is time to rundown the most buzzworthy 2007 New York City hotel openings--according to us, of course. As always, these are scheduled openings, and scheduled can quickly turn into delayed or even dead projects.
Read more to get our prognostications on six Manhattan hotel openings HotelChatter will be keeping a watchful eye on in 07. We will update the story throughout the year as hoteliers open or delay their NYC openings.
Vikram Chatwal's minions over at The Dream Hotel Bangkok sent us this updated photo of the hotel's exterior.
Although we have yet to discover what the inside of this place smells like, we say that Vik did a pretty good job of turning this place around from its former life as The Somerset Hotel.
Before he won us over with his questionable hotelier skills, Vikram Chatwal was just another Page Six fixture, a man about New York City and apparently, a struggling film extra.
For no reason at all, we decided to watch Zoolander (circa 2001) over the weekend and look who we caught as a member of Hansel's entourage right before the walk-off and after Paris Hilton's cameo.
Really, there is not much to say here except to note that Paris had a speaking part and Vikram didn't. Even though he has some more film projects lined up according to his IMDB profile, like "Karma, Confessions and Holi", Vikram for the most part has decided to stick with the hotel business. Aren't we lucky?
Vikram Chatwal's hotels have not always had the best reviews.
But a recent review of Dream the hotel leaves making a pun too easy. The place turned out to be a nightmare as Picky-Chick blogs in her entry: "Nightmare on W. 55th Street."
With a name like "Picky Chick" one has to be weary of an extra fussy attitude. But based on her experience, even the most laid back of hotel patrons would have found themselves quite perturbed at Dream:
It started at check-in. It was pouring outside and when I asked the receptionist if it was suppose to rain the following day her "deer in headlights" response was, "I don't know." I stood there waiting for her to say...anything, but nope. On to my room. I won't even delve into the fact that it was 10ft x 10ft and illuminated by a disturbing neon blue light....
- Phone... a dead line...literally didn't work (used my blackberry for my alarm instead of a wake-up call). Thankfully, the phone system started working again at approximately 2am when the loudest ring I have ever heard nearly threw me out of bed. This happened two more times...no one there...just a happy-to-ring phone.
This wasn't the end of the nightmare. The room was unable to maintain a comfortable temperature and found itself stuck at either "104 degrees or 60." To top it off, the internet didn't work during Picky Chick's stay due to the lame excuse of "technical difficulties." No compensation was offered.
A suggestion to Vikram Chatwal before he expands the Dream brand further than New York and Bangkok, get it right first.
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by JetSetCD
We didn't know that hotelier 
Vikram Chatwal's hotels have not always had the best reviews. 
