Owners of boutique hostels attempt to provide guests with an experience during their stay. They desire them to feel spoiled by the service and happy with the atmosphere, but most of all, they need guests to feel comfortable.
This is tricky to achieve in a hotel environment and depends on good use of space, creative design and high service standards to be successful. Public spaces are crucial in any hotel, but need to be put to especially good use in a boutique hotel.
If the hotel is in a huge mansion or a three-storey city house, making folks feel secure in some place they’re paying to remain in is a challenge. Public areas must be open enough to permit folk their own space, without making the room feel bare or unfriendly. They also must have cozy furniture, so that guests can relax, and a selection of lighting, so that guests can read, eat or simply talk. These hostels are feted for inspiring a “shoes off” or “barefoot” angle, where guests don’t believe that they have to dress up or follow certain rituals during their stay. The things that cause you to feel at home in your room are the details. Everybody’s used to a hotel room with a bed, some drawers and some hanging space, but it is the additional details that turn a basic hotel room into a boutique hotel room. In addition, freshly-lit candles and exclusive toiletries make a sumptuous but cushy space. One of the disadvantages of giant hostels is that the staff can never know who you are, where you’ve come from or why you are visiting.
This is something that doesn’t occur in boutique hostels. The lower number of total bedrooms in hostels of this sort means there is usually more staff than guests, and this leads on to raised levels of private service.
Staff knows your name and your room number and, in some of the more exclusive boutique hostels, they discover what you like before you even get there, in order that it can be supplied on arrival. Folks who stay in a luxury boutique hotel for the 1st time are struck by how absolutely different the design, atmosphere and service is from the standard hotel. As a guest, you straight away feel more relaxed and comfy and this in turn makes a contribution to the “home-from-home” feeling that many guests remark on.