Forum Proposal: Design Hotels
 

I'm new here so I'm sorry if I offend anybody by making suggestions so early in my Flyertalk career but I did have a thought while perusing the hotel forums. There are of course forums for every chain as well as for luxury hotels like FS and RC but there does not seem to be a place for likes of the Mondrian hotels or individual hotels like the St.Cecila in Austin or the Cooper Square Hotel in NYC. These are not really luxury hotels nor do they belong to any chain that has a forum. I just wondered what people think about starting a forum to discuss and opine about such lodging under the title "Design Hotels" Please let me know what you think. I thank all of you for a creating a great community.

Okay, I will and it's not a bad idea for such a recent arrival to FT. However I find when I have questions about boutique hotels or specialty lodging I usually just go the destination forums and ask for input there and the response is usually very informative. I'm not so sure a relatively small niche entirely needs representing on FT but no harm in tossing it out there for discussion.

:)

Thanks for your response. I appreciate that such a well thought of Flyertalker made the first reply to the first thread I have ever started. Have a great weekend.

I agree. Not a bad idea at first sight and the comment that tcook052 makes about regional fora could equally be made of luxury hotels, which have their own forum. That said, there is a potential risk of gradual hollowing out of regional fora if various categories are little by little added. So I would be pretty much in two minds about this.

There is clear merit to this proposal as boutique brands have branched out in recent years - The Standard, Mondrian, Hoteles Silken and Firmdale being a few chains that immediately spring to mind.

Grouping discussion in a dedicated forum will help us keep check of the cutting edge and changing trends.

I believe that "boutique hotels" and "design hotels" can be handled very well in the regional forums.

They are handled well where there exists a critical mass - i'm thinking the NYC forum, but in the main there is very little discussion on FT relating to boutique hotels.

The bulk of the properties I chose to stay at fall under the category of boutique or design hotels and I struggle to find a place on FT to report my experiences and share my view of these properties. The Luxury Hotels forum is an interesting point of reference. It fills a niche and does so magnificently - well trafficked and vibrant. Question is, can a boutique/design hotel forum fill a niche currently untapped and flourish as the Luxury Hotels forum has? I believe it can.

Prospero echoes my thoughts about this and why I decided to propose this forum. Whike I am generally loyal to Hilton, I find myself staying at more and more independent design/boutique hotels in markets as varied as Austin, San Diego and Savannah. I feel this is a category whose time as come and, while development of the niche has slowed in the past few years (for obvious reasons) it will continue to grow substanially in the long term.