Realizing this desire, hotels began catering to this aesthetic, renovating their spaces by applying more domestic interior design in contemporary fashion, and ensuring personal, informal service to appeal to a younger crowd. Along the way, several boutique properties began to emerge, mainly run by owners who weren’t traditional hoteliers. Many of these properties featured fewer rooms, allowing the owners to lavishly design each room distinctly and uniquely, as opposed to the redundant décor of typical hotel chains. Booking services, such as Mr. & Mrs. Smith, teamed up to help put travelers in touch with these up-and-coming boutique sites. “Our collection of hotels is extremely varied,” says Heber Percy, who is behind the monthly unveiling of more than 500 handpicked hideaways, spanning across the world. Each hotel is rigorously researched, visited and reviewed anonymously by their team of travel “detectives,” as they’re called, who also provide the inside scoop on the best rooms, top restaurants, hotspots and local activities in the area. issue two
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