Hotels With Soul
Hotel Marcel: Let the Old Building Keep Working
A New Haven landmark becomes a hotel whose most interesting design choices include the systems a guest may never see.
An editorial series by Rob Urban
Hotels
With Soul.
Some places stay with you.
The people behind them are worth knowing.
104 hotel stories across five regional essays.
Plus closer looks at Explora Torres del Paine and Fogo Island Inn.
Great hotels
leave an idea
behind.
A view can be beautiful at first glance.
A place becomes interesting as you learn who helped make it.
I want to know why somebody kept the old door. Who knew how to repair it. Whether the person who made the table gets a mention when a guest asks about it.
Hotels offer an unusually rich way to follow that curiosity. Architecture becomes somewhere to sleep. A cook’s knowledge becomes dinner. A guide’s years of attention can change what a stranger notices in a single afternoon. Ideas have to survive contact with ordinary human needs, which is a useful test of how good they are.
The places gathered here have very different resources, histories and ambitions. Some announce themselves across a skyline. Others begin with a family home or an affection for a particular stretch of coast. What draws me in is the care that makes each one difficult to imagine anywhere else.
These stories are an invitation to look more closely. The room may be lovely. The reason it exists, and the people who keep its promise, can be just as memorable.
7hotel stories
Latin America
A private enthusiasm becomes a generous place.
An art lover makes room for other people to sit beneath the sky. A restored house gives its courtyard another chapter of daily life. A boat helps a visitor understand an archipelago from the water. These seven stories begin with people finding something worth caring about, then giving that interest a hospitable form.
There is a particular pleasure in a hotel whose central idea changes what you do with the day. You might spend longer looking, ask another question, or discover the person who made the object beside your bed. Across Mexico, Peru, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil, the welcome grows more interesting as the setting becomes more specific.
Read the 7 stories →17hotel stories
United States, Canada & the Caribbean
The weather, the memory and the work of keeping a place itself.
The Pacific coast has its own ideas about a winter holiday. Coconut Grove has room for an exuberant building. An old Florida inn depends on the decidedly practical work that allows its traditions to continue. The places in this essay become distinctive by taking their surroundings and their histories seriously.
That can mean preserving a maker’s work, welcoming a new generation of artists, or organizing a remote stay around the realities of getting there. The grandeur varies, from Hollywood to Alaska and the Caribbean. The more durable interest is in the choices that allow each hotel to offer something recognizably its own.
Read the 17 stories →Something I keep returning to
Comfort can make curiosity easier.
A good place to come back to gives a person confidence to go further. A patient guide makes an unfamiliar question easier to ask. A generous host can introduce a city without making a visitor feel foolish for knowing so little about it.
That is a quality I admire in hospitality: the care that helps someone become more open to the world.
28hotel stories
Europe & the United Kingdom
A place can carry its history and still have something new to say.
Old buildings need people willing to imagine their next use. At some of these hotels, that work happens through engineering or restoration. At others, a garden, a meal or a work of contemporary art opens another conversation with the past. There is considerable imagination inside the apparently simple act of keeping a beloved place alive.
The twenty-eight stories move from city institutions to family houses, working estates and coastlines. What interests me is the relationship between continuity and surprise. Familiar rooms can hold unfamiliar work. A view can become more legible when someone explains it. A grand hotel can keep learning how to welcome people.
Read the 28 stories →30hotel stories
Asia & the Pacific
Hospitality has room for wonder, and for ordinary human needs.
A rescued piece of carved wood can lead to a lifetime’s work. A family’s memory can find its way onto a menu. A beautiful room can become more welcoming because somebody thought about what traveling with children actually involves. The scale of the gesture has little to do with the care inside it.
These thirty stories range from private homes and island retreats to major city hotels. Some invite you further outdoors; others give a city a place to gather. Throughout them, makers, chefs, families and guides contribute different kinds of intelligence. Their work helps explain why a place can feel memorable long after its most spectacular view has become familiar.
Read the 30 stories →22hotel stories
Africa & the Middle East
There is someone behind that beautiful detail.
The story may begin with a collector, a guide or a designer. Follow it further and more people appear: a craftsperson translating an ambitious drawing, a neighbor explaining what is needed, someone tending a nursery whose real achievement will become visible years later. The hotel gives a traveler a way to encounter work that extends beyond the stay.
There are extraordinary buildings and landscapes in these twenty-two entries. Their human histories give the beauty more to hold. The essay moves through city hotels, deserts, mountains, wildlife country and the coast, paying attention to the decisions that make admiration specific.
Read the 22 stories →Burj Al Arab remains part of the essay during restoration and a reported temporary closure. Read its status note.
A longer read / Patagonia, Chile
Explora Torres del Paine
A room with a much bigger purpose.
A lodge beside Lake Pehoé could make a persuasive case for staying indoors and admiring the view. Explora’s more interesting proposition is to help you understand the country beyond the window.
The full story follows the Chilean idea behind the lodge, the people who make exploration possible and the relationship between a comfortable return and a more curious tomorrow. Architecture, guiding and hospitality work together around the guest’s growing familiarity with the landscape.
I like the possibility that a ridge seen at breakfast can mean something different by dinner. You have been closer. You have learned a name, noticed a relationship or understood why the route takes the turn it does. The scenery has acquired another layer.
This profile gives that idea room to develop, including the park’s longer human history and the practical work behind an apparently effortless stay.
Read the full Explora story →A closer look / Newfoundland, Canada
Fogo Island Inn
What should a hotel give back to its place?
The architecture draws attention. The fuller story asks how hospitality, local work and economic value remain connected. This essay follows the inn’s published approach and distinguishes a compelling operating idea from an independent assessment of its impact.
Read the Fogo Island Inn story →Follow an interest across borders
Another way into the stories
When a maker stays in the picture
A finished room can conceal the people who made it possible. Some hotels give those people a continuing presence. The result is a richer encounter with an object, a material and the knowledge behind it.
Begin with Raya Heritage’s work with makers, then follow the story of Henry Nolla’s woodwork at the Wickaninnish Inn.
The generous use of someone’s knowledge
A guide, a boatman and a good host have something in common. Each can lend you a little familiarity with a place they know well. You leave with better questions, which is a fine thing to bring home.
Spend time with Passalacqua’s lake story and Awasi’s approach to a day in the desert.
A welcome that creates room for others
Opening a hotel can create opportunities beyond the guest room. The most persuasive stories explain whose work develops, whose knowledge matters and who gets a say in what happens next.
Follow Beks Ndlovu’s journey to Somalisa, then read about the homes planned with the Gahinga Batwa community.
The admiration is in the details.
It is easy to call a place special. Explaining why takes more attention, and the explanation is usually where the pleasure begins. A building has a history. A familiar ritual has somebody maintaining it. A small decision can reveal a great deal about what the people running a business believe.
That is why I write these stories. I enjoy finding the thought inside an experience and giving the people responsible for it a little more room in the conversation.
If you are building something with that kind of care, I would enjoy hearing about it. Read about my work, or talk with me about writing or consulting.
About the series
A few useful answers
What is Hotels With Soul?
Hotels With Soul is Rob Urban’s editorial series about remarkable hotels and the people, design, craft and decisions that give them character. The five regional essays contain 104 hotel stories. Separate profiles explore Explora Torres del Paine in Patagonia and Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland.
Are the hotels ranked?
No. The selection follows places and ideas worth exploring. Numbering helps readers navigate the regional essays; it does not assign a competitive position or claim an objective list of the world’s best hotels.
How is the writing researched?
The stories draw on hotel histories, interviews, architects, designers, community organizations and independent reporting. Sources are linked within the essays. Rob’s interpretations focus on what the documented choices reveal about each place.
Does Latin America include the Mexican hotels?
Yes. The Latin America essay includes properties in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil. The seven stories bring together places across these five countries.
Do all included hotels currently accept bookings?
Availability varies. Burj Al Arab is retained in the Africa and Middle East essay while undergoing restoration and a reported temporary closure. Seasonal properties also have opening calendars. Check the notes in each story and confirm arrangements directly with the hotel.
Where should I start?
Choose a region, follow one of the individual story links, or begin with the longer Explora Torres del Paine profile. Each regional essay has a linked index so you can move directly to a hotel that interests you.
The Paperboat Collections / New essays
New in the collection
Further reading
La Mamounia: Reading a Hotel Through Its Garden
Before the room, the restaurant, or the famous guest list, there is a garden with a history of its own.