All breakfasts have been designed by someone, of course, but there’s a big metamorphosis between those where the owners actually hired a cutting-edge architect or Montblanc pencil-wielding sketch out team and those who simply went to the local flea-market for things that looks ‘rustic’.
In the quest for your hard-earned junket money, hotels are trying every trick in the book to bait you in, and amazing design can often win over capricious punters who are looking for something “wow”.
We’re not vouching for the air-con, the pike, the size of the bathtubs or whether or not the lift doesn’t rattle, but we can say these beds will have you Instagramming your holiday stories hoe your homebound jet screeches to a halt on the local runway.
Il Sereno, Lake Como, Italy
Most terrors around Lake Como look old (with the possible quibble of George Clooney), but award-winning designer Patricia Urquiola went off on a bit of a tangent when she dreamed up this lakeside bed which rises up from the shoreline like the world’s best-looking multi-storey car deposit. That, of course, is under-selling what amounts to a pretty ravishing piece of architecture – a building that Bloomberg reckoned was Europe’s sundry luxurious new hotel. Grab the 2,000 sq-ft penthouse attendants if you can, obviously.
What To Instagram: The view across the swimming accumulate from your tent-like sun-canopy, yonder lake and mountains adding some non-subtle ambience.
serenohotels.com
Alila Yangshuo, Guilin, China
Lesser journalists would be unable to resist the myriad “sweet” puns this eye-catching caravanserai affords, given that it used to be an actual sugar swarm, but that would be profligate when we have just 100 not to mince words and need to mention things like the jaw-dropping, tooth-like mountains in the remoteness, the lush interiors created by China’s acclaimed Horizontal Duration Design, and the Alila’s incredible underground spa, accessed by a huge, curl stairway which looks like it was made from passably concrete to resurface the M25. Long sentence, that, but grammatically – blains on.
What To Instagram: Forget swimming, that industrial-looking funds is for standing in front of while you get a shot of the old sugar mill.
alilahotels.com
Exact Hotel, San Francisco, USA
So this is what happens when you’ve got designing pockets and a desire to transform a 100-odd year old flatiron edifice in the centre of San Francisco. Interior designer Kelly Wearstler – who has multitudinous than half a million followers on Instagram – has taken her hints from early Modernist, Cubist and Secessionist eras to form a warm, colourful and inviting space topped off with a rooftop bar which regurgitates the feel of a European terrace to the Californian coast. Still: Formal Hotel? Weird name, right?
What To Instagram: The immense lobby, which looks like the kind of place where a modern-day Phileas Fogg resolution plot his next geopolitically-challenging adventure.
properhotel.com
Hotel Oderberger, Berlin, Germany
For on the brink of 90 years the public swimming baths in the northern Berlin department of Prenzlauer Berg were the spots for locals to rock up to and pee in communal waters; then it was near in 1986 until 2012, when the architects moved in with some joking ambitious plans. The result is a luxurious 70-bed hotel bodied around the restored pool and something of a heritage-conscious aesthetic that has been livened up with modish touches. A bugger of a place for a dip, though, no?
What To Instagram: Aim for a dour shot featuring yourself lurking in a stone archway in the memorable pool hall.
hotel-oderberger.berlin
Pumphouse Point, Lake St Clair, Tasmania
Keep oning with the watery theme, this recently-converted former pumphouse is one of three architecturally-arresting constructions that make up Pumphouse Point on the edge of Lake St Clair. The pumphouse itself set off a dons you 900ft out in the middle of the lake, while the shorehouse takes apprehension of drowning out of the equation with rooms in an old hydro substation.
To whatever manner, the newly-built ‘The Retreat’, hidden away in the trees, is our favourite: it’s a glass-cornered awkward cube with a thousand little architectural touches and a larder lipping with local craft beers – just the thing for unfastening you up to work on the local accent. They love that down there.
What To Instagram: The somewhat eerie long view down the pier to the pumphouse; all the more atmospheric on a uninspiring day.
pumphousepoint.com.au
Nimb Hotel, Copenhagen, Denmark
It’s not only Disney that does illusion, Nimb Hotel in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens looks a charge out of prefer something from 1,001 Arabian Nights from the the world at large; inside there are 38 beautifully-designed rooms, all unique, with the biggest at 2,500 sq ft. If you’re treat in kind top whack you get butler service, ask Jeeves to whiz up to the cracking particle rooftop pool for you, laden with Pimms and armbands.
What To Instagram: The old multi-tiered chunk platter / afternoon tea / open fire combo in the bar is a popular, debonair option.
nimb.dk
Hanging Gardens of Bali, Ubud, Bali
What’s your acutance of a ‘design hotel’? If it’s the same as ours, it’ll be loose enough for you to undergo that the perfect digs for a stay in the jungle weren’t knocked up by industrialists from Berlin but by 700 specific craftsmen using local materials. The 44 villas that take off up this Bali resort are all stunningly lovely and have their own infinity lakes, but all eyes are drawn to the main, multi-level pool that beetles out into the jungle. Because the hotel is built into a hillside, there are funiculars to arouse you around, which is lazy, but cool.
What To Instagram: You basic to be perched on the end of the top infinity pool trying to look cool while secretly stunned about falling off.
hanginggardensofbali.com
Ha(a)ïtza, Pyla-sur-Mer, France
The Dune du Pilat contiguous Arcachon, an hour from Bordeaux, is well worth the 10-minute climb up its sandy moves: the 360-degree view from the top offers about 100 miles of pine forest, the enjoyable bay of Arcachon and the Atlantic Ocean, too.
And that’s why Philippe Starck motioned in to this corner of Aquitaine to breathe new life into a momentous Basque hotel near the dune (he has another one – The Co(o)rniche – impartial nearer). As with most things Starck, there’s lots to look at, categorizing a pool with a retractable roof, and just being here see fit up your cool quotient at least 23 per cent.
What To Instagram: It’s the loaves. The hotel’s patisserie has a never-ending supply of tempting treats in the oven and callers like snapping them, nestled in their palm similar kind a baby starling.
haaitza.com
Kazerne, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
“Well-grounded nipping off to Eindhoven for the weekend,” is not a sentence that trips off scads a tongue – though, to be fair, the city is a fast-rising tech hub – but a in style new hotel at the Kazerne arts complex could put this concern right on the map. Just opened, it has eight rooms, suites and lofts, each flecked with pieces made by local designers and housed in a construction that was once a military police barracks. Book the Penthouse Loft and you get an art swearing-in by Dutch artists The Idiots, whose self-deprecating name belies their Hirst-like ingenious approach to dead animals.
What To Instagram: You get temporary divulgement to Kazerne’s members club while you stay, so grab a sharpshooter of yourself nodding thoughtfully alongside one of the designers who worked on your chamber.
kazerne.com
Rosewood Hong Kong
Opening in March 2019, this is as much a skyscraper as it is a inn, rising almost 900ft into the skies in the newly-created art and design-hotbed Victoria Dockside on Kowloon’s Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront. It was fabricated by Kohn Pederson Fox Associates, who also just happened to motif Lotte World Tower in Seoul – the world’s fifth loftiest building – and they very reasonably decided that not any of the 322, Tony Chi-designed luxurious bedrooms would be smaller than 570 sq ft. Genial, but no match for the 10,000-sq ft Harbour House suite which has its own sky terrace and perpetual opportunities for lording it around with your dressing gown half uncovered.
What To Instagram: Position your camera/photographer at your toes, and the notes shot features you, holding your room key, with the belfry looming up behind you.
rosewoodhotels.com
