The ultimate hotel showdown: grand v boutique

What's your home away from home - a grand establishment with lashings of luxury or a hip haunt with playful touches? Our experts help you decide.

By Mal Chenu

With apologies to George Orwell, some hotels are more equal than others. And I'll take a fabulous room in a distinguished hotel where fawning is an art form and tradition reigns over "hip", "funky" or "boutique" any day.

I want to stay in a hotel where getting woke means receiving a call at 8am. I don't want to carbon offset my negroni by buying a square inch of Amazonian rainforest. I don't need my pillow menu to include ethically sourced bamboo. And I certainly don't want to check into "disruptive" trendy digs where I sip a welcome kale and turmeric juice served by a dude in a Harry Styles skirt telling me to scan a QR code to book a chakra-opening, radon-enhanced salt therapy isolation tank encounter.

No, give me conventionally classy piles like The Savoy or Claridge's in London, The Plaza in New York, the Ritz Paris, Beverly Hills Hotel in LA, Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, Peninsula Hong Kong and Raffles in Singapore, along with their accommodating ilk.

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These elegant institutions conjure images of heavy doors, stately foyers, polished brass, uniformed doormen, toast triangles with caviar, ironed newspapers and beds exactingly sculpted from Egyptian linen with a thread count higher than the nightly tariff.

Establishments like these are housed in spectacular heritage buildings and their subtle superior service has stood the test of time. These are hotels of enveloping opulence; hotels you wouldn't dream of checking into with last season's luggage, darling.

Upstart boutique billets may have hosted a couple of influencers and picked up a few "likes" but they use adjectives like "intimate", "unique" and "bespoke" to try to make up for the fact they are not The Savoy. The Savoy et alia don't need adjectives.

We all long to linger in these lavish luxurious lodgings. The mere mention of their names can trigger Pavlovian responses. And if you were to have such a reaction while in residence, a white-gloved attendant would appear out of nowhere and delicately dab the corners of your mouth with a silk handkerchief.

Illustrious hotels serve up bucket-list experiences. And tipples. Like the signature Clean Dirty Martini at Bar Hemingway at Ritz Paris. Or a Singapore Sling at the legendary Long Bar with peanut shells crackling underfoot at Raffles. Or a mint julep (a-la F Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby) beneath the soaring stained-glass dome in The Palm Court at The Plaza in New York. Or the high tea with smoked salmon and dill creme fraiche on rye bread, raison scones and Laurent-Perrier La Cuvee Brut besides the Chihuly sculpture at Claridge's.

The Louvre, Merlion statue, Empire State Building and Tower of London will be all the better if you are returning to the Ritz, Raffles, Plaza or Claridge's afterwards.

By Amy Cooper

I too am a traditionalist. I cringe at hipster descriptors such as "urban sanctuary" and "digital nomad". I firmly believe that "disrupt" and "travel" have no place sharing a sentence unless we're being warned about a train drivers' strike. And while I'd like a hotel lifestyle, I've never been sure about a lifestyle hotel - or even what that is.

But I've changed my mind. Hip hotels are fun. Last week, in Manchester's Indigo Hotel, I slept beneath a wall adorned with pretty teacups and hung my jacket on a hook made from a spoon. The month before, in San Francisco's Kimpton Alton Hotel, I spun Queen on my in-room record player and cuddled a cavoodle in the lobby. These playful touches made my inner child smile, and reminded my outer grown-up that indulgence means more than grand hotel gravitas.

Travel has too many rules these days and it needs more wit and whimsy, irreverence and imagination. You'll find all these in new-gen boutique groups like Ace Hotel, The Standard, The Hoxton, Life House, Proper Hotels and their many cheeky-chic chums.

Hip hotels understand that laughter is the best luxury. I'll swap the stuffy Savoy for nhow London in Shoreditch, where rooms have a life-sized King Henry VIII mural above the toilet.

Why suffer a string quartet with some fossilised folk in a fussy foyer when you could rock out with an in-room Marshall amp at London's Ruby Lucy, or strum a Gibson ordered up from "guitar room service" in a bubblegum pink boudoir at nhow Berlin?

You always know where you are with a hip hotel. While grand dames impose their own aesthetic, their hip little sisters tune into their neighbourhoods, celebrating communities with collaborations from local artists, musicians, designers and chefs. They host exhibitions, classes and gigs.

They breathe creative life into old spaces, telling their stories anew. Those teacups at Indigo Hotel Manchester are an elegant homage to its site in a former 1860s tea warehouse. At So/ Paris, staff wear fabulous maritime-themed sweaters and sailors' berets in a so-Frenchy designer tribute to the hotel's riverside perch. Civilian, in New York's Theater District, is filled with rare Broadway show props, with decor inspired by a star's dressing room.

Thanks to eclectic hip hotels in all price ranges, you can choose digs to suit your personality, not just your budget. You'll enjoy music, art, design, hyperlocal food and history, too - except not in a big, creaky old relic that's just one snowstorm away from The Shining.