How Boutique Hotels Changed the Way We Design Hotels
Photo Caption: The Dwell Hotel in Chattanooga, Tenn. Design played an influential role in distinguishing the earliest boutique hotels, and that tradition continues today. Design Hotels
Skift Take
Design was just one ingredient, albeit an essential one, for creating a boutique hotel both then and now.
On March 20, we published a 60,000-word account of the early days and evolution of the boutique hotel industry in the United States, the Complete Oral History of Boutique Hotels.
The story featured interviews with over two dozen key players, and took us from fledgling brands in San Francisco and New York in the early 1980s to the biggest brands in hospitality in the modern era. We'll be running a series of related stories over the coming weeks.
In compiling the story, one major defining thread among all the boutique hotel companies we profiled was design. Design became the signature calling card for these new hotels, the primary way for these properties to set themselves apart from the big-box, no-frills, and standard hotels of the day.
What follows are excerpts from the Complete Oral History of Boutique Hotels that demonstrate what kind of design influence boutique hotels had on the hospitality industry as a whole.
Design Distinguishes the Earliest Boutique Hotels from
