Villa Dagmar, Stockholm: when a beautiful luxury hotel is one layout away from becoming exceptional There are hotels you enjoy, and then there are hotels that stay with you because they are so close to something even greater. Villa Dagmar in Stockholm belongs to that second category. Its location is almost impossible to improve upon. Set in Östermalm, on one of the district’s most
The Modernist Athens: one of the clearest lessons in how a boutique hotel should feel There are hotels you admire once, and there are hotels you keep returning to because they continue to prove a point. The Modernist Athens is that kind of hotel. Since its opening, it has been one of my homes in Athens, but also one of the most convincing examples of
A77 Suites Athens — Field Notes from a Beautiful Hotel That Has Not Yet Fully Claimed Its Power There is a lot to admire at A77 Suites Athens. Set inside a beautifully restored neoclassical building, the hotel immediately delivers one of the things Athens does best when it wants to remind you of its quieter elegance: proportion, grace, and architectural memory. The restoration is
Antwerp is an edgy city. Hotel Pilar matches that energy — but it’s not trying to prove it. Pilar has something rarer: a quiet soul. The luxury here isn’t loud, it’s lived-in. It’s taste, restraint, and a certain calm confidence that doesn’t need permission. Hotel Pilar is a boutique design hotel in Antwerp where luxury feels calm, authored, and real. I met Christophe, the
Field Notes from a Hotel Brand Director: When the Place Is the Message I almost didn’t book Twentyone. I went on the website and couldn’t feel it. No clear message. No story. No promise. And in a world where every boutique hotel sells you a narrative before you even arrive, this felt like a miss. Then I ended up in Kifisia, booked it anyway —
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,
There are hotels that try to impress.And then there are places like Monsieur Didot Hotel, which do something far more difficult: they remain a house. Tucked into a narrow, busy Kolonaki street, the building doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t perform. It simply exists — an old Athenian home, reimagined into six rooms without losing its domestic rhythm. You arrive as if you were
Let’s be clear: a hotel and a boutique hotel are two different things. People go to a hotel because they have to. People go to a boutique hotels because they want to. Since the first boutique hotel debuted in New York in 1994 — the Royalton, designed by Philippe Starck, a major innovator in lifestyle hospitality — a wave of imitators spanned
There is something quite exquisite about staying in small boutique hotels, and if you follow my blog posts on Trends, you’ll already know how passionate I am about luxury travel, that reflects an understated experience. The question is, why should you stay in a small boutique hotel, over a luxury resort? Well, as hotelier and luxury travel guru Ian Schrager once said, you
When I was growing I was telling my peers I won't live in a normal home but in a hotel! Since I sort of designed my life like a “new Nomad”. From one city to another every year in tiny apartments that I designed like Hotel suites. I was inspired to create a business that would bridge real estate and hospitality. I created the