For our first evening in New York, Linda Holt and I put on our most colorful outfits from our suitcases to attend the #Blogfest2013 kick-off party at the Jonathan Adler showroom on Madison Avenue. We asked a lobby attendant at our lodging, Yotel on 10th, to snap our photo before we went back out into the rain (we had just trekked from our Manhattan bus stop to our hotel in a not-so-welcoming downpour). We weren’t sure why the guy taking our photo insisted on standing so far away from us when recording the moment on my iPhone, but after seeing his framed point of view we realized the bike hanging over our heads certainly deserved to be part of our scenery shot.
The bathroom in our hotel room, or pod as we called it, with a large Electric Mirror
(we sell them at Designer Bath) that lights up around the bordered edge.
I am fascinated with hotel design lately. Since I rarely travel, just staying away from home is an experience in itself. A trip to a concept hotel, however, is a valuable lesson in public and private space planning. Yotel was designed to be uber-efficient, making the most of every inch of space. There are no extras at Yotel, like room service and mini-bars, but it is clean and neat, and if we had watched the 2-minute video on their website we may have had more of a clue on what to expect from our hotel stay. As it was, we didn’t even realize that we had drawers for our clothing in our room, as they were tucked away near the cabin door, which we noticed as we wheeled our luggage out on the last day.
Amenities like towel warmers were a nice touch,
although ours was not heated for some reason.
For me, I prefer a warmer environment, with more textures and personality, plus design that is a little more intuitive. When you only have a short amount of time to get to know a space, the last thing you want to do is spend 15 minutes at the end of the night trying to figure out how to make the head of the bed go down flat (one of our Blogfest friends actually slept sitting up!)
Linda’s pashmina was about the size of the room.
Automated luggage storage in the lobby.
An orchid that I saw on our visit to the ICFF (I liked the lucite rods)
vaguely reminded me of our Yotel lobby luggage bot.
I sent this photo home to my lego-loving boys.
No concierge in our lobby. Just touch screens. Although a couple of
actual humans were on-hand for those of us who looked bewildered.
Saint Germaine with muddled cucumber and vodka at the lounge
The Yotel terrace is the largest outdoor hotel space in New York
I can’t show you one of the most interesting design elements that we discovered at Yotel. On the first night we heard a lot of noise coming from the lounge area. It sounded like we were in a market place or staying at a youth hostel! We were tired after our first night out meeting the other design bloggers (more on that later) and didn’t want to deal with hotel crowds, so we skipped the lounge and went to our room. The next morning we woke up and we heard chirping when we entered the lobby. No birds in sight. In the afternoon, we heard relaxing caribbean-like music. They were piping in ambient music at different times of day to set the mood! Genius!
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