Diversity in hotels: it exists in Stockholm!
All women who travel frequently for business will recognize what I experienced: most hotels are somehow similar, ‘efficiently’ organized, coloured in white/cream combined with black or brown, in one word: predictable – which is nice -, but boring – which is a poor contribution to the joy of life. The more a hotel is ‘business’, the more urgently Pay TV is brought to the customers attention. I have no specific opinion about men watching Pay TV but I do not want to be confronted with it when I travel for work. Finding a big sign to advertise Pay TV in the middle of my bed when I enter a new hotel is an absolute minus point for me and I never return to that hotel. Why don’t they bother to just find out whether the new customer is going to be man or woman? Is that against the rules of ‘efficiency’ in business hotels?
Stockholm proves how different this can be! The Collector’s Hotels offer a completely different environment. The hotels are full of antiques in all colours, live paintings turn the walls into something special and beautiful and many details are taken care of: from a special gift to the customer arriving until little cards on the breakfast tables with interesting quiz questions about Sweden. I felt at home in this hotel from the very first minute, it is nice and comfortable to travel like this!
The Hotel info says: “we are convinced that our chain of hotels are in step with times” and “Personality and history is scarce in the hotel business; but we feel that there is a lot more that we can do to change that“. They announce they might expand outside of Stockholm and even outside of Sweden. I think their concept would be real added value in Amsterdam. When they start a hotel in my home city, I will be the first to advertise it! It’s great when you see that people in a ‘standard’ business have the vision and the courage to introduce diversity…
Other blogs you might like to read:
Forget about the rules. Be human.
Travels with Herodotus
South Korean wisdom
Japanese looters