Boutique Hotel vs. Normal Hotel

When most people think of a hotel, they think about getting a room for the night that has a bed, bathroom and television. This is what is called a normal hotel. These kinds of hotels range from providing standard amenities to their guests to providing more luxurious services. These luxury accommodating hotels are known as 5-star hotels and boutique hotels. But, there is actually quite a difference between boutique hotels and 5-star hotels that offer similar amenities. Many people confuse the two because they both seem high class. They are right, except that the function of the hotels is different.

Boutique hotels are kind of individualized because they tend to have a specific theme to their facilities. Like for example, there are hotels that cater to couples on their honeymoon or couples simply looking for a romantic getaway. With these hotels, you can expect the rooms to have many heart shaped designs and themes to them. Then there are resort hotels, which are also boutique hotels because they cater to people on vacation or looking for a relaxing getaway. Some resort hotels even sell their rooms as vacation property, which is also referred to as timeshares. The way it works is people can purchase a specific time period during the year to stay in a particular room of the hotel. This time period is usually referred to by the week number of the year, like week 26 or week 40. Then the guest will actually receive a timeshare deed of ownership for that room in the resort hotel for their specified week. This means nobody else will be able to stay in that room during their week except for them. You may be wondering, “How do these boutique hotels make money from doing this?” Well they usually have very high association and annual fees that they charge to their timeshare owners. Sometimes these fees can be many thousands of dollars per year, which makes up for the hotel’s expense of not being able to rent that room out to anyone else. A normal 5-star hotel doesn’t do things like this because they take reservations like any other hotel.

There are many other themed style boutique hotels around the world. You can find themes for lovers of music, movies and more. But these hotels aren’t just for anybody looking for a place to sleep for the night. That is what normal hotels are for. Boutique hotels require very early notice when booking a room because they usually have a very limited number of vacancies available at all times. That is because most of the rooms are either timeshare owned or already booked way in advanced. You may even have to book your room six months to a year in advance because that is how high the popularity is for booking these hotels.

What’s So Special About Boutique Hotels?

With only a limited section of the population, the boutique hotel industry has been steadily growing for the last several years. Boutique hotels are generally not affiliated with a major hotel chain, though this has been changing somewhat over the last few years. They are an excellent choice, whether you’re traveling for business, vacation with the family, or on a romantic honeymoon or couple’s getaway. There are a number of ways these hotels distinguish themselves, but they truly excel in two major areas.

Design/Theme

Most boutique hotels are designed with a specific target market, demographic, or theme in mind. While some specialize in catering to the business and management professionals, others chose to design themselves around personal luxury or health and wellness. This theme extends well beyond the décor, and often influences the type of restaurant or room service, as well as various amenities that you have available. You can be sure that when you choose a boutique hotel, it will be designed specifically to cater to the needs and personality of guests like yourself. These hotels are designed to provide a more intimate experience, and will often be somewhat smaller than larger five star hotels.

Service and Amenities

Luxury boutique hotels pride themselves on providing their patrons with superior quality service, hospitality, and amenities. A tech-savvy boutique may offer things like DVD players or gaming consoles in the room along with a superior internet connection, while a boutique designed to be a calm getaway may offer services such as massage or aromatherapy. Certain boutique hotels may also offer gourmet dining experiences or luxury shopping within the hotel. Those geared towards health and wellness may offer an on-call fitness and wellness coach, as well as superior gym and pool facilities. Everything in a boutique hotel is designed for higher quality – from the service staff to the furniture, decorations, and linens. If you’re looking for a stay that promises the best in comfort, service, and amenities, you really can’t beat all that a boutique hotel has to offer.

The Boutique Hotel VS The Chain Hotel

Boutique hotel is slowly gaining popularity during these recent years. A lot of them have emerged from the shadows with new types of identities that are definitely better than ever. As of the moment, they can be considered as competition for the big chain hotels even if their numbers are not rising quickly. It may be because people are looking into staying somewhere more comforting, closer to home, somewhere with character and etc. They will be able to find all of those in boutique hotels.

But, what main differences does these kind of hotels have in comparison with the bigger chain hotel? Is choosing a boutique hotel a better option than choosing a chain hotel? To get all of the answers to these questions, let’s take a look at the differences between the two so you can see for yourself.

Amounts of Rooms

Because of its size, boutique hotel will have lesser rooms (let’s say around 50-60) while the chain hotel will have more. Lesser rooms can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. The upside is, you’ll be able to get your privacy and stay in place that’s not too crowded. The downside is that room availability might be lower.

Design

When you take a look at pictures of it, you’ll notice that it has a theme to it. This theme may extend to the design of each room while still maintaining the individuality of each. Generally with boutique hotels, the theme design alongside the uniqueness of every room is the gimmick. The opposite is to be said with the big chain hotels. They tend to have all rooms look similar, uniform, or identical.

 

Design is always a preference so if you’re on the minimalist side, then you’ll probably consider just staying in a big chain hotel but if you want a different experience then you could go the other way and stay in these unique design hotel.

Location

Some boutique hotels can be easy to find, especially those that are of a newer breed of boutique hotels. But some, sad to say, are not that mainstream, thus making it less visible. You need to do your research so you can find a good one on the place that you’re vacationing to. It’s obvious that big chain hotels are everywhere (that’s why they’re called chain hotels) so you can definitely get easier access to those compared with boutique hotels.

Furniture/Luxury

You’ll be able to find more vintage furniture when staying at the boutique hotel. This may not be true with all boutique hotels but in some, the furniture do have history behind them. This may add to the luxurious feel and ambiance of the boutique hotel.

 

The bigger chain hotels also have luxurious, expensive furniture but most of them were bought new and they have very little character to them, apart from the way that they were designed.

Which one is best for you?

It’s up to you whether you’d rather stay at a boutique hotel or stay in one of the bigger chain hotels of the city that you’re visiting on. To really get the most out of your stay, you’d have to do some research and make more comparisons aside from the ones that we’ve already mentioned.