Planning to build or make a Boutique hotel? Congratulations for taking the right decision, hopefully you are in the right city and location. Today many hoteliers or entrepreneurs are opting to go into Boutique segment. I therefore thought it timely to pen down my own experiences of creating Boutique hotels. Boutique hotels became popular in recent times as it gave an opportunity to even a small property owner with a decent house of three rooms to convert it to a Boutique property and be rightly called a "hotelier". While there is no agreed definition of a Boutique hotel, by and large the industry agrees that these are "small, independent, trendy, lifestyle hotels"; their size ranges between 3 to 150 keys. There are certain distinct characteristics that differentiate a regular hotel to a Boutique property. In the following para's I would discuss these. Boutique hotels are usually suited to the metro cities, cosmopolitan cities or popular resort destinations. This is because the clientele it attracts is by and large between 20 to 50 years age group belonging to upper middle income segment of the travelling public. Therefore it is important to select the right destination and within that a prime location with good neighbourhood. The target clientele prefers to frequent hotels in downtown or CBD. People argue that this factor is also valid for any other hotel; well there is no denying that location is one of the most important factors in the success of a hotel. Let's now come to the size of a Boutique hotel. Generally we say small and qualify it with the range of 3 to 150 keys; however some in the industry strongly feel that hotels above 100 keys should not qualify for this segment. Their argument is that 100 keys is the optimum size to have the much desired personalised relationship between the residents, guests, visitors and patrons. There is a merit to this argument as the larger the size the more impersonal is the interaction between the people. Personal yet not familiar interaction is another key character of a Boutique hotel. Selection of people with the right attitude and their training and grooming therefore assumes great significance. A Boutique hotel follows the philosophy of addressing its guests by name and not by their key number.
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