Unique luxury hotels, fashionable travel and much more

The experience of travel is all about experiencing something new and different. Vacation destinations should be memorable, and so should the hotel, for all the right reasons of course. Luxury hotels can be found in castles and forts as well as on boats. There are themed hotels all over the world based on art, pop music, Marilyn Monroe, the Wild West or whatever else you might dream of. If all this has aroused your curiosity, here are three themed hotels to get you started:

Ice Hotel in Sweden
The Ice Hotel in Jukkasjarvi in Sweden has to be the coolest hotel on the planet! Created from slabs of ice, this magical palace-cum-igloo is built fresh every year. It includes ice chandeliers lit with fiber optics, an ice bar and evenice beds piled high with reindeer hides and high-tech sleeping bags. This Land of the Midnight Sun location also offers unlimited snow sports including cross-country skiing, dog sleds and snowmobiles as well as helicopter tours to Lapland and if you’re really lucky, the spectacular aurora borealis. Voted the ‘Best Experience in Sweden’ the Ice Hotel continues to draw an eclectic crowd every year from royalty and celebrities to hardy honeymoon couples.

Aria Hotel in Prague
Located in Prague, a city renowned for its classical music, the Aria Hotel is conveniently located between the State Opera House and Rudolfinum, the home of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra. Follow the Gregorian chants set in the mosaic footpath, which leads from the wrought iron gate right into reception. Every floor of this luxury hotel in Prague is dedicated to a different category of music, from contemporary and classic to opera and jazz. Delightfully furnished guest rooms are predictably named after a composer or musician, but that’s not all. The rooms are a shrine to individual artists with original artwork, biographies, books and even an iPod loaded with their music so that you can totally immerse yourself in your chosen favorite. You get round-the-clock Mozart, Elvis or even Billie Holliday, so choose your room with care! The Aria Hotel even has its own Director of Music to advice and enhance your musical vacation.

Pelican Hotel in Miami

For those who want more from a luxury hotel in Miami’s South Beach than Art Deco features, the Diesel-owned Pelican offers a choice of wacky rooms. The only condition is that you must like neon, and lots of it. Themed rooms range from the garish to the glitzy, based on such themes as Best Whorehouse, Cubarean Islands and Psychedelic Girl. The Pelican Café, spilling out onto the terrace and sidewalk, is considered THE place to be seen having breakfast.

A hotel with rooms as small as 50 sq ft. (15 sq m) is to be built as part of the redevelopment of a famous London tourist spot.

Plans have been approved for the 495–room hotel at the Trocadero in Piccadilly Circus. It will take its inspiration from Japanese ‘pod’ hotels, which have capsules for rooms to make use of space in crowded cities.

The Trocadero, originally built as a restaurant, is an entertainment space with shops and a cinema. The hotel will be located over seven floors behind its Grade II listed facade. Corridors will run round the building and rooms grouped around internal courtyards. Rates are expected to be £20–40 ($32–65) a night.

Wan Yau, director of architects Dexter Moren Associates, said:

“The lighting, temperature and even TV channels can be pre-programmed, enabling every guest to have a personalised ‘pod’ experience. We wanted to create an oasis away from the bustling activity [of London].”

When work starts on the site later this year, two neighbouring theatres – the Apollo and the Lyric – have asked for extra soundproofing so their productions aren’t ruined. It’s hoped to have the Trocadero Hotel ready in time for the London 2012 Olympics.

by Andy Moreton

Luxique has a hand-picked selection of the finest luxury London hotels – some large and traditional, some small and chic (but not that small!)

When you’re choosing a hotel, you probably don’t willingly go for one next to a railway track.

But some places in Japan are turning a potential disadvantage into a business opportunity and wooing some of the country’s 20,000 railway buffs.

The Hotel Mets Akabane in Tokyo has a scheme guaranteeing rooms with a view of the tracks on the fourth floor or above. The manager says some train-spotter customers return again and again.

The Odakyu Hotel Century Southern Tower overlooks Shinjuku station, one of the busiest in the world, and has a ‘Train View Stay Plan.’ As well as a good look at the many trains that enter and leave the station, guests get the latest timetable and a paperweight made from a piece of track.

by Andy Moreton, with the BBC’s Roland Buerk

Luxique offers five hand-picked luxury hotels in Tokyo, with stunning views of everything but trains.

When a luxury hotel is built in three years’ time on the island of Solta off Croatia, the one thing that guests will not be able to complain about is the view from their bedroom windows.

That’s because the view will be constantly changing in the world’s first revolving hotel.

The British architect behind the building, Richard Hywel Evans, is keen to stress that prospective guests need not worry about becoming dizzy. The rotating section will turn very, very slowly – 1.3 times every 24 hours – and guests will not actually feel it move.

The hotel, costing around £70 million ($114 million) to build, will have 50 suites on three storeys and will stand in the middle of a purpose-built lake. There’ll be a marina and yacht club alongside.

A static reception area will be situated across the lake and an underground entrance will escort guests to the hotel. For those who wish to remain ‘unmoved’ during their vacation, luxury villas will also be provided.

by Andy Moreton

The Croatian capital, Zagreb, is now competing with Prague and Budapest as the most popular city in central Europe for foreign visitors. Luxique offers the most competitive rates at one of the best luxury hotels in the city – the Starwood-owned Westin Zagreb.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve featured some weird and wonderful hotels – among them hay barns, former prisons, a converted nuclear bunker and an old jumbo jet.

Now, travel journalist and photographer Bettina Kowalewski has produced a book featuring 27 of her favourite wacky places to stay. It’s called Bed In A Tree (DK Eyewitness Travel). It has that title because that was one of the accommodation options she found in South Africa.

Bettina’s been all round the world in search of eccentric hotels and the stories behind them. One of the cutest has to be the Dog Bark Park Inn in Cottonwood, Idaho, which has been built in the shape of a giant beagle named Sweet Willy. ‘A paw-star hotel with plenty of barking!’ quipped the Sun newspaper here in the UK.

The collection also includes an ice hotel in Sweden, a stone pineapple in Scotland and a large suitcase in Germany.

This last one intrigued me, so I investigated further. The Zum Prellbock Kofftel bed and breakfast in Lunzenau is not so much a suitcase, more a large trunk. Situated next to an outdoor railway museum, the cosy case comes with two beds and a small bathroom.

by Andy Moreton

There are plans to create a five-star Titanic-themed hotel at the old headquarters of the Belfast shipyard, Harland and Woolf, where the doomed liner was built.

If the planning application goes through, there will be a 90-bedroom boutique hotel at Queen’s Island in the east of the city with a swimming pool, gym and spa facilities. It will form part of a redevelopment of 185 acres of former shipyard land.

The area is already known as the Titanic Quarter in memory of the liner which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912 with the loss of more than 1,500 lives.

A spokesman for the developers, Titanic Quarter Ltd, said: “Given the enormous global interest in the Titanic and the building’s close association with the ship, such a hotel will add to the Northern Ireland tourist experience.”

Northern Ireland’s capital, for so long blighted by sectarian violence, is now mostly at peace and welcoming tourists from all over the world. The recent Tall Ships Festival attracted 500,000 visitors in three days to the Belfast waterfront and developers believe the Titanic plan will draw around 400,000 people a year.

by Andy Moreton

Learning a foreign language can be an extremely tricky business, particularly when it seems to defy logic.

Take French, for instance. Who would imagine that hotel de ville meant a town hall?

One British tourist in the town of Dannemarie in the Alsace region certainly didn’t. The weary woman, spotting the impressive looking building and the magic word ‘hotel’, popped in to use the toilet before trying to find the check-in desk.

But as she was in the loo, officials finished a meeting, left the town hall and locked the front door. The result was that the woman spent the night on chairs in the lobby, despite shouting for help and turning the lights on and off to try to attract attention.

Her plight went unnoticed until the following morning when a passer-by spotted a notice in fractured French that she’d posted on one of the glass doors.

The woman was said to be in her thirties and a university graduate (she clearly didn’t major in French). If she’d been just over the border in Germany, she probably would have decided to avoid the town hall there – it’s called the Rathaus.

by Andy Moreton

For real luxury hotels in France, check in to Luxique’s carefully-selected list.

It brings a new meaning to the phrase ‘hitting the hay’. 

There’s a trend among some nature-lovers and spendthrifts in Germany, Austria and Switzerland to opt for accommodation where the beds are freshly raked hay. 

Hay hotels offer exactly what the name suggests.  For as little as 8 euros (£7 / $11) a night, backpackers, couples and families can rest their heads in a way nature intended, in converted barns.

Such holidays also generally include activities such as horse riding, canoeing, mountain-biking and archery, and the chance to buy fresh meat, cheese and other farm produce on site. 

The Hofgut, a hay hotel situated just outside the small town of Kassell in Germany, has been operating for some years now.  The manager, Sarah, said: “I suppose some people might find the idea unappealing, but for anyone who wishes to snuggle up close to nature it’s perfect.”

To the sceptics, she says: “Think back to when you were a child - this would be heaven! What’s changed since then?”

Apparently, hay hotels have become popular for honeymoons, although it has to be remembered that there’s a strict no-smoking-in-bed policy.

by Andy Moreton

If you prefer freshly-laundered bed linen, fluffy pillows and an alarm call that’s not a crowing cock, Luxique can offer the best deals at luxury hotels in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

This is quite the most bizarre special offer I’ve come across. A luxury resort in the United States is offering rooms for $19 (£11) a night, but you have to sleep in a tent and bring your own toilet paper.

The Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego, California has introduced what it calls its ‘survival package’. It starts at $219 (£132) a night, but as you take away each amenity, it gets cheaper. Thus the $19 tariff means no bed, towels, toiletries, loo paper or even lighting.

You’d have to be mad, wouldn’t you? Well, apparently when a similar promotion was run in June, 100 people took up the offer.

The declining economy has taken its toll on the Rancho Bernardo, which boasts three pools, a golf course, three restaurants and a spa in a 200,000-acre luxury resort.

“During a brainstorming session, we were talking about discounts and promotions and wanted to come up with something different,” said Rancho Bernardo’s General Manager, John Gates.

“We wanted to do something fun and clever. It’s a way of making the best of these bad economic times and trying to give customers an experience.”

The promotion has again proved so popular that it’s apparently been extended to September.

by Andy Moreton

There are ambitious multi-million pound plans to transform Northern Ireland’s oldest prison into a four-star hotel.

Armagh jail, which is a listed building, has stood on a prime site in Armagh city for 230 years, during which time it hosted numerous executions. It closed as a prison in 1986.

It was one of the key detention centres for women prisoners during the sectarian unrest (‘The Troubles’) that blighted Northern Ireland for more than thirty years.

Bernadette Devlin, who was jailed there for six months for her part in riots in 1969, commented: “I just hope the food is better there now.” The former Republican MP, who now works with a community group, added: “My main concern would be ensuring that such a beautiful building is maintained and that the money from the sale is put back into improving prison conditions.”

A spokesman for Armagh City Council, which owns the site, said it had chosen the developer who had converted Oxford jail into the award-winning Malmaison Hotel. The council liked the sympathetic way it had treated that project.

by Andy Moreton

With The Troubles now in the past, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board has been extolling the delights of a visit there. Luxique offers the most competitive rates at three luxury hotels in Belfast.