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Amsterdam's Lloyd Hotel To Create a New Fashion 'Catwalk' Hotel

January 25, 2010 at 3:16 PM | by Heidi Atwal | 0 Comments

A room at the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam.

Touristy trappings and neon signs currently welcome visitors to Amsterdam, none of which say "chic." According to design.nl, the city is hoping to banish the kitsch and turn its entrance into a veritable catwalk, offering a sleeker "Hallo!" to its international friends.

Introducing a high style hotel is a part of the city's makeover scheme, a collaborative project between The Lloyd Hotel Cultural Embassy, AMFI-Amsterdam Fashion Institute and NV Stadsgoed. The Lloyd reflects some of Amsterdam's most forward-thinking design, with cheeky messages about global warming emblazoned on bedding and "fold-away" bathrooms among some of its quirky touches.

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New Year's in Amsterdam Can Be Way More Civilized Than You Thought

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  Site Where: Keizersgracht 384, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1016
December 29, 2009 at 11:14 AM | by juliab | 0 Comments

The view at midnight from the Blauwbrug

Looking to say goodbye to the craptastic year that was 2009 and still in need of a hotel room somewhere? We've already told you where to book in Miami, New York and the important timezones but we'll be hitting up more cities today for New Year's Eve. Did we miss a city? Want a better deal? Let us know and we'll help you out.

Amsterdam's so famously louche that spending Thursday there would be a New Year's to end all New Year's, right?

Kind of. You can get stoned as you like, obvs, but the Dutch actually make it a rather civilised do, with fireworks going off left right and centre. If you want fireworks and impromptu street parties, you need one of the main squares - like Nieuwmarkt or Dam Square - or stand on any of the central canals.

But if you want a full-on partay, try Jimmy Woo - reputation has this place down as the best club in the city, and Caspar the owner is a riot (we met him the other week). Expect a classy affair - Moet and caviar are doing the rounds - running from 11pm to 5am. Presale tickets cost €55 from here.

As for where to stay: there's swank, but it doesn't come cheap. Caspar's favourite hotel is the Dylan, and it has some superluxe suites free... but they're going for a whopping €950 (garden view) or €1050 for a canal view.

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High-Tech Room Keys at The Hotel Patou But Shame About The Noise

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  Site Where: Hooftstraat 63, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1071
November 10, 2009 at 9:44 AM | by juliab | 0 Comments

Following on from our Do Not Disturb gallery yesterday, today we present to you the funky room keys at the Hotel Patou, Amsterdam, where we stayed this summer.

The Patou is a trendy little hotel on designer haven Hooftstraat, and as befits such a stylish gaffe, it eschews actual keys (too retro) and cards (too common) for these ingenious electronic key fobs.

Ingenious? Well yes. Because they are exceptionally light, hence easy to hoof around, have a nice leash to make losing them tricky (let’s face it, you’re in Amsterdam, and losing your key will be a pretty sure thing), and they don’t deactivate if you stick them next to your phone, as cards can do.

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Do Amsterdam the Adult Way at Lute Suites

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  Site Where: Amsteldijk 54-58, Ouderkerk a/d Amstel, Netherlands, 1184 VD
May 7, 2009 at 1:56 PM | by juliab | 0 Comments

Let's get one thing straight: we're definitely not party poopers. But sometimes, the idea of Amsterdam grosses us out a little bit. Mainly because it makes us think of grubby boys feeling up the red light ladies and sucking on the whacky-baccy till their grubby little eyes fall out.

So although we'd normally scoff at the idea of staying outside of town, here's one place we might actually quite like to retreat to at the end of the day: The Lute Suites (there are seven of them) in Ouderkerk, a cutesy village outside the capital.

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Amsterdam Gets a Second CitizenM

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  Site Where: Prinses Irenestraat 30, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1077 WX
May 4, 2009 at 8:59 AM | by Jenna | 0 Comments

Last summer marked the debut of citizenM hotels, a funky new affordable boutique brand whose first property was birthed at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. We hit up the hotel's opening party, spent a night inside and watched the place closely all the way to the day it won its very first award. And now, just under a year later, we're happy to announce the debut of the world's second citizenM property: the citizenM Amsterdam City.

Located on Prinses Irenestraat in Amsterdam's financial district (between the World Trade Centre and city center), the property has a major focus on art: "an ultra large beachy image" by Dutch artist Elspeth Diederix adorns the building's façade, and Andy Warhol's portrait of Queen Beatrix is displayed in the lobby.

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Last Chance for $50 Rooms at CitizenM Amsterdam

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  Site Where: Jan Plezierweg, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1118 BB
February 9, 2009 at 4:14 PM | by jennm | 0 Comments

These days, a good deal isn't hard to find, but that doesn't mean we're going to stop pointing them out to you. Kind of like how your mom always nags you to grow up and move out already no matter how many times you tell her to back off.

Wednesday is the last day for you to take advantage of the 39 euros per night deal available from citizenM Amsterdam Airport, which equals about $50 per night and is refreshingly uncomplicated. From the hotel:

From February 4th to the 11th
25,000 rooms in the year of 2009
One room, any day of the year, is only 39 euros.

Really, there's only so much hand-holding we can do here, people. So unless you want to provide us with your credit card number (it's OK, you can trust us), you're going to have to be big kids and book this one all by yourself. Head over to CitizenM's website and get to it.

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Yotel Schiphol Less Than Perfectly Peaceful

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  Site Where: Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Lounge 2, Amsterdam, Netherlands
January 27, 2009 at 2:06 PM | by amandak | 0 Comments

It's now a few months since the newest purple capsule, the Yotel Schiphol, opened up in Amsterdam’s airport. We were wondering if anybody had been able to sleep well there, because that purple approach lighting always stresses us a bit.

Well, apparently experiences have been mixed. While some guests have been perfectly happy at the newest Yotel--notably including people who had already tried the Yotel Gatwick--others obviously found Yotel's Give Bed Peace a Chance campaign quite ironic. One guest complained of being able to hear every move the guest in the next room made, despite using the complimentary earplugs, and even worse:

These guests walk up and down the narrow corridors with screaming babies. They shout at one another from room to room. It is far from restful.

Our summary? The Yotel is just what it is: a not unreasonable airport alternative. With scarily boring corridors like the one in this picture, you can't expect perfection, right?

[Photo: Casualist]

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Hotel Ads That Make You Go WTF?

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  Site Where: Kerkstraat 136, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1017 CR
December 16, 2008 at 9:00 AM | by jennm | 4 Comments

There’s nothing we enjoy more than a cheeky ad campaign, but we have to wonder, how far is too far?

Via Boing Boing we find Amsterdam’s Hans Brinker hotel, whose ad campaigns over the years have proclaimed the property to be “dirty and carry a wide variety of bacteria;” to feel “just like home” (complete with an air mattress in a sparse room); and to feature a “unique design” involving a button and some kind of thin, curly hair-like thread that we may be being perverts about.

Of course, those crazy sexy cool commenters over at Boing Boing are in love with the idea, ranging from the intellectual (“I actually agree with the intent behind this ad … I think the germophobia in the U.S. has gotten way out of hand,”), to the TripAdvisor-y (“I’ve stayed there, it was a lot of fun!”)

So now it’s your turn to fess up. Is this ad genius or god-awful? And of course, if you’ve stayed there, let us know about it in the comments below.

[Photo: Boing Boing]

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A Grand View of Glam Patio Furniture From Sofitel Amsterdam

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  Site Where: Oudezijds Voorburgwal 197, Amsterdam, Holland, Netherlands, 1012 EX
December 11, 2008 at 12:53 PM | by Jenna | 0 Comments

You know the scene. You open the door to your brand new hotel room, run over to the window, open the blinds and bam, you are hit with the anti-view. Maybe you are looking down a dirty alley, witnessing a drug deal, staring at an air shaft in the face, or seeing a brick wall. Whatever you are viewing it is not extremely pleasurable. Help out your fellow hotel mavens by uploading your anti-views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number with the not-so-easy-on-the-eyes view.

We always hesitate just a little bit when we post an Anti-View from a hotel in a big city. After all, it's a city and, with buildings right up next to each other and not a whole lotta flex room when it comes to selecting real estate, you're bound to see stuff outside your hotel room window that's not exactly Killer View material — people's houses, people having parties, people in other hotels, etc.

And yet. While the dreaded anti-views are more understandable in big cities, such conditions don't change the fact that they're still craptastic views that you don't want to see outside your expensive hotel room.

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Yotel Wants You to "Give Bed Peace a Chance"

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  Site Where: Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Lounge 2, Amsterdam, Netherlands
December 10, 2008 at 12:54 PM | by Jenna | 0 Comments

In honor of the opening of the third Yotel property this year, Gerard Greene (Yotel's CEO) and Simon Woodroffe (founder of YO!) campaigned to "Give Bed Peace a Chance" in the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (the location of the brand new Yotel Schiphol. Get it? Like John Lennon and Yoko Ono?

Forty years after John and Yoko campaigned to "Give Peace a Chance" in the Amsterdam Hilton in 1969, these dudes recrated the iconic image to market their hotel with this whole "bed peace" thing — it's cute and clever and such, but we would be remiss if we did not take a second to point you toward the real video of "Give Peace a Chance" over on YouTube.

And we assume that when the Yotel dudes use the word "peace", they are referring to the sort of peaceful sleep that results from knowing that, if you have a morning flight, you can quite literally roll out of bed and walk to your departure gate if you've spent the night here.

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CitizenM Launches Social Network Thing for Moody People

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  Site Where: Jan Plezierweg, 1118 BB, Amsterdam, Netherlands
August 1, 2008 at 10:00 AM | by Jenna | 1 Comment

Lately, we've been pondering the utility, acceptance and sketch-potential of social networks within hotels. It's not necessarily hotels' Facebook or MySpace pages we're concerned with here (although some hotels are doing good stuff with those things, and hooray for them!).

We mean hotels who set up their own networks -- sort of like the Pod Hotel's Pod Community Blog -- where people who are staying in a particular hotel at a given time can communicate with each other and find other same-time guests to meet up with, hang out with, or "et cetera" with. Will people buy into the concept? Will it turn out to be a sketchy Craiglist-esque collection of people advertising for casual anonymous "encounters?"

Well, we're still wondering. But CitizenM in Amsterdam has launched a kind of social network on their website; something new that may prove to be the guinea pig to watch for our answer.

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The Complete CitizenM Cocktails List

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  Site Where: Jan Plezierweg, 1118 BB, Amsterdam, Netherlands
July 30, 2008 at 9:45 AM | by juliana | 0 Comments

After our story the other day about the intriguing cocktails that were served at the Citizen M hotel in Amsterdam, like a Mobile Martini and a Vespa Martini, we decided we wanted more...more drink descriptions of course.

So we flagged down a hotel rep who sent over this complete list of the drinks. And it turns out the Vespa Martini is actually a Vesper Martini, a James Bond-inspired drink.

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