Most people are so excited to take their next trip, that they often overlook critical areas in their pre-planning process (if they even have one at all). To a large extent, my trips are a big part of my overall lifestyle design. The result I’m after when I’m traveling is to create sexy, effortless, living while I’m abroad. That’s very different than simply “taking a vacation” and having an outcome of say, “getting away”.
From time to time I get accused of wanting to be part of the see and be seen crowd for random gratuitous reasons. That simply just isn’t true. What I want is to be around a group of people that value experiencing life and international cultures in a big sexy way. As for my accusers…. Your boring and…
That said, here’s a few tips I use when selecting a hotel using Tim Ferriss’ 80/20 rule:
The Hotel
Selecting the hotel is probably the biggest area I put my attention on first (other than selecting the destination). If you do this right you’ll be in a hip hotel, enjoying great service and a perfect location which equals an amazing trip. If it’s done wrong you will probably be stuck in a tragically bad hotel and you’ll be spending time at the pool with a nice family from Nebraska (no dis to Nebraska- I love corn).
Ian Schrager, who by all accounts is regarded as the master of the boutique hotel, calls this concept “hotel as theatre”. His brand of hotel is so widely received that the Morgans hotel group bought his company for a reported 300 million and the Marriott hotel chain has just hired him to do 100 of their new hotels (probably to compete with the W ). The trick however is finding the right hotel that can pull off the experience without it feeling contrived.
Here’s a few of my picks for helping in this process:
3. Hip Hotels
After I narrow down the list of hotels that I’m interested in, I go to Trip Advisor for the reviews on them. If you hear things like “there were topless girls at the pool all weekend- stay away! ” take it with a grain of salt.
The Concierge
When I’m satisfied with my hotel choice, I call the hotel and ask to speak with the concierge and say the following:
” I’m coming to your hotel on X day and my name is X. Here’s what I’m looking for. I need 5 restaurants, 5 lounges, and 5 clubs that fall into the following category: hip, chic, trendy, high fashion jet set type places. Please NO typical tourist destinations. Would you kindly e-mail them to me along with the website links for each so that I can check them all out and I’ll get back to you with reservation times. Thank you”. (Realize most concierges get kick-backs for sending you to certain places).
Stay with me here.
After I check out the links, I’ll then take the list and go to virtual tourist and read the reviews on the restaurants or simply type into google “reviews of (name of restaurant)” and evaluate each.
This definitely takes some time and is probably a bit anal but I rarely have a crappy trip with this system. If you want to streamline the process, just use one of our lists on our site Jet Set Life; they’re free for my subscribers. Just subscribe to the blog here and send me an e-mail for which list you want. If you want to be a part of the Jet Set Life Community go here.
70°F Sunny and Blue Skies
Next Trip: 
