BoHo Hotel Prague – When Modern Hotels Lose Their Soul
hotels journal
BoHo Prague — when advantage goes unused
Staying at BoHo Hotel, what strikes me most is not what is missing, but what is wasted.
This hotel has a competitive advantage that many large lifestyle brands would envy:
it is small, central, refined, and part of Small Luxury Hotels of the World.
And yet, it behaves as if it were trying to blend in.
Across the square, Andaz Prague plays the predictable game of scale: big gestures, large spaces, modernity amplified to fill volume. That strategy makes sense — it has to. Size forces neutrality.
BoHo doesn’t have that excuse.
Smallness should allow intimacy.
Precision.
Character.
Instead, the hotel often chooses the same visual language as much larger brands — only compressed.
The library that doesn’t want to be used
The library room should be the soul of a hotel like this.
A refuge. A pause. A place for couples, for silence, for warmth.
Instead, it feels over-lit, over-scaled, and emotionally distant.
The shelves are too large.
The long table recalls a Fifth Avenue law firm conference room.
The fireplace, paradoxically, adds coldness rather than warmth — because it is treated as an object, not a mood.
This is a BoHo hotel.
You hear the name and expect softness, shadows, romance, imperfection.
Low light. Smaller groupings. Chairs turned toward each other. Lamps that create pockets of intimacy.
A fireplace should glow.
Not perform.
Modernity is not a concept
The same happens in the staircases and hallways.
Bare modernity. Clean lines. Nothing held back. Mystery is absent.
Even the decorative gestures feel unresolved. Old cameras displayed along corridors suggest a concept — but what is it? Memory? Observation? Museum? Or simply a way to fill space? Filling space is not the same as giving it meaning.
Hotels don’t gain soul by adding objects.They gain soul by deciding what not to say.
Why small luxury hotels need a point of view
What is most surprising is that BoHo doesn’t need to compete with anyone.It already occupies the right category.
Being small is not a limitation — it is leverage.This is where boutique hotels win:
by choosing atmosphere over efficiency,
by creating places people want to stay inside, not just sleep in.
Imitating the visual neutrality of big brands is the fastest way to disappear.
When modern design becomes a short cut
This is not a design critique.It’s a reflection on process, before architects, before designers, before furniture.
A hotel needs a point of view, a clear brand direction is essential. A brand director’s role is not to decorate — it is to define the emotional contract. To write the brief that allows architects and designers to work with intention, not speed.That is where competitive advantage is born.
And where ADR quietly follows. Modern hotels are easy to build today.
Hotels with soul are not.
And in a city like Prague, the difference is everything.
