Press Articles
Daily Mail, 13 December 2003
All I want is a fabulous room somewhere
What makes a truly great hotel? And how much wil is cost you to stay there? Victoria Mather, editor af the Tatler Travel Guide 2004, selects the best
" How do you tell a fabulous roomhotel from a frightful dump? The five-star factor, as opposed to the five cock-roach rating, is all to do with attention to detail. A hotel does not have to be stratospherically expensive to be special;the smallest establishment can be run with the love and passion that makes a guest feel like a prince. The X factor of excellence is a subte synergy between comfort, unobtrusive but immaculate service and making one feel like the guest for which the hotel has been waiting.
Whatever you are paying, you are paying to be made to feel unique, in a special place. To feel ordinary in a run of the mill dive you might as well have stayed at home. A hotel is a fantasy , the lifestyle which you dream of living, where the bedroom is perfect, with-out the clutter of the imperfect life from which you are escaping. In a fabulous hotel there's no such word as 'no'.
BEST FOR ROMANTICS
JK Place, Florence
UK reservations Bellini Travel
Doubles from £150/night
Scent is the new enhancer of romance. The new JK Place, 20 individually designed rooms on the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, is heady with fragrant candles, sensuous with the smell of lillies. High on the roof terrace is low level seating; get up close and personal with flisckering hurricane lamps and view over the renaissance domes and cupolas. This is modern, relaxed romance. The library is full of DVDs, you can help yourself to wicked cakes in the lobby and the service is terrific but never pompous. There's all that culture within walking distance - and fab shops. Go on, foget the Uffizi, get someone to buy you a present in the softest leather.