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Forget grotty bed and breakfasts and gloomy motels – a new breed of hotel is coming to a city near you offering style without the sting. Sarah Turner picks a dozen of the best ‘luxury budget’ properties.
Finding a bed in a British town or city used to mean either paying the earth for a ‘proper’ hotel, slumming it in a motel on the outskirts, or taking your chances with a B&B that ‘s might turn out to be someone’s back bedroom last decorated in 1973. But now a new generation is emerging: hotels that combine decent mattresses, an eye for design and a non-frightening room rate.
Room sizes may veer between small and minute – and some even skimp on windows, replacing them with plasma televisions showing views of the outside. Room service will be noticeable by its absence, as will a gym. You won’t find hothouse flowers and bottles of champagne greeting you at check-in. But all these hotels have panache, offering a sense of occasion, Egyptian cotton sheets and flat screen televisions. The hotel industry even has a name for these genre-busting properties: ‘luxury budget’.
The first handful of such properties opened in the past couple of years, but now they are gearing up to roll out their concept around the country, and in doing so are forcing change through the entire industry.
‘Hotels such as the Dakota and the Hoxton are really forcing hoteliers like the Marriot or Hilton to raise their game, because good standards of design are becoming the norm now,’ says Matt Turner, editor of Sleeper, the hotel design magazine.
And the future looks good. The vast Starwood chain is poised to jump on the bandwagon with a new hip, cheap sub-brand called Aloft (which has been successfully trialled in online world Second Life.)
One word of warning though – with the modern furnishings often comes a modern, fluid approach to prices. Like the budget airlines, starting prices can be fabulous, but book last minute for busy periods and they may soar. Thankfully most allow you to check dates online, and so home in on the cheapest night to stay.
Hoxton Hotel, London
Owned by Sinclair Beecham, the founder of Pret a Manger, who wanted to open a hotel because the constant overcharging by the existing chains had left him so furious (‘I paid £2.50 for a Mars bar in a hotel the other day,’ he says. ‘I mean, what do they think I am?’) The Hoxton, which opened exactly a year ago with 205 rooms, is a keen proponent of the Ryanair law of supply and demand – book early enough and you’ll pay £29 a night. At least four rooms a night go for this rate, but the rooms can vary in cost from £1 (a regular promotional deal) to £169. Your money buys you free wifi, properly glamorous Frette bed linen and a distinct sense of occasion. There’s a mountain-lodge meets industrial-age feel to the hotel (neo-baronial fireplaces against bare-brick warehouse walls, corridors full of exposed metal lit in neon colours) and a great location, right in the centre of funky Hoxton, to the east of the City. The attached Hoxton Grille provides comfort food ranging from porridge to Chateaubriand, and can deliver meals to rooms until 10.30pm each day. Rather than an overpriced mini bar, there’s a 24-hour kiosk in the lobby that you can use to stock up your fridge (which comes with free milk and bottled water); breakfast (from Pret a Manger, naturally) is delivered to your room for no extra cost. Can be noisy if you open windows, but a genuine breath of fresh air nonetheless.
Double rooms cost from £29
(020 7550 1000; www.hoxtonhotels.com)
Plans to open in Manchester and Scotland.
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