News

It sounded impressive at the time: "The best surprise is no surprise." And in the 1970s, when Holiday Inn launched the phrase as its official slogan, the words were a balm to North American travellers, promising a network of comforting uniformity (restaurants, air conditioning, a phone in every room) at a time when roadside motels were better known for their Norman Bates-style welcome than for luxury accommodation.

For a while, the giddy allure of standardization was enough. Travellers were thrilled to know that the same avocado wall-to-wall carpeting and the same well-lit pool awaited at any stop on their itinerary - until the boutique hotels and other independent upstarts came along, and people like Sarah Hayes began flocking to them instead.

Hayes, the chief development officer of the Banff Centre, travels regularly for work, and wherever she goes, she avoids big-chain accommodation. When she visits Toronto, for instance, she stays at the Gladstone Hotel, a funky independent on the western fringes of the ultra-hip Queen West strip that's just a 10-minute cab ride from many of the donors she meets with in the city's downtown core.

There's no fitness centre in the 118-year-old building, and most guests choose to walk up to their rooms rather than try to find an attendant to crank up the hand-operated elevator. But staying at one of the big-brand hotels doesn't interest Hayes. "I get a lot of inspiration from creative people, and at the Gladstone, when I walk in, there might be a jazz concert in one room and a book-reading in another," she says. "Even the rooms are designed by artists, so you get a lot of inspiration just being there and a sense of the local community, which is so important when you travel.

"If I stayed at a chain hotel, it'd be the same room, the same decor, the same breakfast wherever I went. It'd just be a sterile business environment."

During the late 1990s and the early years of this decade, most big chains ignored travellers like Hayes. But lately, indie-minded guests - and the sector of the hospitality industry that caters to them - have become too important to ignore. With the boutique-hotel segment growing as much as 11 per cent annually for the past few years (a third higher than the industry average), more and more big chains are developing new properties and brands that offer unique - even surprising - accommodation options. According to a study last year by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, at least 34 new hotel brands have been announced since the beginning of 2005, the highest number during a three-year period since 1989. Most are aimed at carving out new identities for the old "beige-box" brands and promoting the idea that a stay at a chain hotel doesn't have to be predictable.

"The cookie-cutter approach is dead," says John Wolf, spokesman for Marriott International, which last year announced one of the most-talked-about new initiatives in the industry: a partnership with Ian Schrager, the high-minded hotelier who is widely regarded as the creator of the boutique-hotel concept and whose excruciatingly hip, one-of-a-kind properties include the Delano in Miami, the Mondrian in Los Angeles and the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York.

The chain aims to develop as many as 100 hotels with Schrager. Details are scarce, but Wolf says the brand will launch in international gateway cities and each will be unique in terms of architecture, design and amenities. If they're anything like Schrager's own hotels, they'll draw crowds, even if they're just there to gawk at the art; the Gramercy Park Hotel distinguished itself with a rotating roster of works by Damien Hirst, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Julian Schnabel, among others.

"People are looking for individualized experiences - unique experiences," Wolf says. "You've got a global economy of people that are much more sophisticated in taste, they're more design-savvy, cuisine-savvy, tech-savvy ... so they become more demanding. Now, it's all about meeting the needs of the individual."

Hospitality consultant Bjorn Hanson, a researcher with PricewaterhouseCoopers, couldn't agree more. "The chains have been incredibly successful at creating uniformity, and that's a good thing, but what it means is that most travellers have experienced that consistency. A lot of people now are saying, 'I'm doing something different this time and I want a different kind of experience.' "

Part of what's driving the new appetite for "destination hotels" is demographics, Hanson says. Gen Xers (like Hayes) are spending more money on travel - an average of $1,295 a trip in 2003, compared with $1,153 for baby boomers - and their expectations are different than those of the previous generation.

"A baby boomer looking for a hotel would probably call a 1-800 number and call an established brand," Hanson says. "But a Gen Xer would probably go online and type in 'Toronto' and 'fitness centre,' find something and think, 'Hmm, I haven't tried that.' "

Millennials, the cohort that follows Gen Xers, share a similar taste for the new, he says. "A Millennial would pick a hotel for the first night, then maybe switch around after they arrived in a city. In general, the younger traveller has a propensity to look for an exciting lodging experience as part of an exciting trip."

Before the days of the Internet, the search for unconventional options wasn't as easy. But now, travellers looking for a hot-stone massage after an afternoon of putting practice can type in "spa" and "golf" and get a virtual tour of their prospective lodging and read guest reviews by like-minded visitors.

The search word that many are likely to type in these days is "design." Gen Xers, after all, "don't feel especially comfortable in hotels with mahogany panelling, Oriental rugs and English hunting scenes," Hanson says.

That's why the Hyatt chain's new string of ANdAZ hotels, which launched in November in London at the site of what was once the Great Eastern, lures them with the promise of cutting-edge style. (Think Eames chairs and minimalist decor.) The ANdAZ - the name comes from the Urdu word for personal style - even forgoes one of the most basic elements of the standard hotel, the front desk: When guests arrive, they're checked in by hosts wielding hand-held computers.

At the high end of the spectrum, luxury brands are discovering that Frette linens and customized room scents can become stale after a while. The Ritz-Carlton recently announced the site of the first property in its exclusive new brand, The Reserve. Molasses Reef, on the island of West Caicos in the Turks and Caicos, will be home to "a singular resort experience" - a low-density hotel and spa with a variety of accommodation options, including villas and cottages. Each property in the new brand, scheduled to debut late this year, will be unique and will showcase signature designs.

Even at the lower end, chains such as Best Western are promoting one-of-a-kind properties such as the Hotel Tomo, a recently renovated offering that caters to fans of Japanese pop culture. Located in San Francisco's Japantown, the quirky property has a lobby that screens Godzilla and a vending machine that sells kitschy anime paraphernalia. Rooms feature giant futuristic murals, and if you're willing to pay $550 a night, you can rent a gaming suite equipped with a PlayStation 3, a Wii and a six-foot LCD projection screen. Besides attracting Japanese tourists, the hotel draws everyone from young travellers who grew up watching Sailor Moon cartoons to businessmen in suits who want to try out the latest gaming technology, sales manager Sarah Ippolito says.

"People are really trying to find us, rather than us finding them," she says. "There's a big following of younger kids here in the United States who are very interested in Japanese culture. When they go on vacation, it's something for moms and dads to bring them somewhere they can be entertained."

At the Westin in Philadelphia, meanwhile, the chain focused its bespoke efforts on a single room, calling on local designers to create everything from the decor to the soap in the bathroom. The result: an authentic local experience that other chain accommodations can't match.

That's what travellers like Sarah Hayes are looking for. "The sign of a good hotel," she says, "is that I wish my family were there, and my friends were there, to share the experience.

"It's got to be more than just going up and down an elevator."

Where to stay

GLADSTONE HOTEL 1214 Queen St. W., Toronto; 416-531-4635; http://www.gladstonehotel.com

ANDAZ LONDON 40 Liverpool St., London; 1-888-725-3755; http://www.andaz.com

GRAMERCY PARK HOTEL 2 Lexington Ave., New York; 212-920-3300; http://www.gramercyparkhotel.com

HOTEL TOMO 1800 Sutter St., San Francisco; 1-888-822-8666; http://www.jdvhotels.com/tomo

THE WESTIN PHILADELPHIA 99 South 17th St. at Liberty Place, Philadelphia; 215-563-1600; http://www.Westin.com/Philadelphia