In 2005, the boutique hotel business boomed due to the flow of international tourists drawn to Argentina as a consequence of its attractive exchange rates. And over the last two years, the number of boutique hotels has doubled both in Buenos Aires and in other provinces. It seems that they are no longer a passing trend or a fad, but they are filling an important niche in the hospitality market.

There is an ever-increasing trend of these cultural, themed, eco-friendly and design hotels all over the country.

But how should we identify an authentic boutique hotel from the wide range of offerings, namely: small hotels, lodgings, rural hotels, enthralling estancias or posadas?

TheBBH—the first Quality Club of Boutique Hotels in Argentina—has created the boutiquier service, an innovative concept aimed at identifying the main standards  that every authentic boutique hotel should have: top quality service, fine food, infrastructure, technology, design, decor, training and human resources.

For further information, visit their site: www.thebbh.com

TheBBH talked with Réport about the flourishing boutique hotel segment, the future of the boutique hotels in Argentina, and the boutique hotel guest type.

TheBBH– the first Quality Club of Boutique Hotels in Argentina– brings together only high-standard boutique hotels in the country. With this aim in mind, their founders created an innovative concept known as boutiquier, aservice proposal to evaluate and measure genuine boutique hotels in terms of gastronomy, infrastructure and design.

Can you tell us the main benefits for TheBBH members?
First and most important of all is that the Club is a good referral for other demanding boutique hotel guests. Besides, all members must comply with 85% of TheBBH parameters to provide a boutiquier service, a distinctive and innovative proposal for authentic boutique hotels.

And the most important parameters for you?
For us, room size is a key parameter, together with disabled facilities. In many “claim-to-be” boutique hotels, the rooms are so small that there’s no space for a single night table. We also pay a lot of attention to details, such as pampering guests with an expresso and some cookies or a glass of wine and a cheese plate at the lounge, or offering them to have breakfast whenever they want, or a free mini-bar with some drinks and chocolate bars in the room, considering they are paying USD250 a day.

What’s a boutique hotel guest like?
Curious, refined, well-traveled, low profile, literate, and technologically and gastronomically demanding.

What steps should a hotel follow to become a member?
We schedule an initial meeting with the prospective member. We make it clear that we are not a reservations company and that our goal is to promote the Club and TheBBH members both in Europe and the United States. After that, we conduct an evaluation of the hotel and give them a TheBBH plaque for use in their business cards and website. And finally, we schedule a biannual evaluation to check if they are complying with TheBBH quality standards. Although we know that a good infrastructure is very important, for us top-notch service takes priority.

What’s ahead for Boutique hotels?
I think the boutique hotel industry is getting bigger and bigger as more customers turn to this type of offerings. Nowadays, all hotels look to differentiate themselves from their competitors either by improving their food proposals and technology or by continuously training their staff. I’m sure they’ll do whatever it takes to make their guests’ experience special and unique.

For further information, visit their site: www.thebbh.com

Almost half of the boutique hotels in Buenos Aires are located in Palermo. They all have less than 20 rooms, and offer a combination of customized service, design, comfort and an intimate ambience to their demanding guests. A room costs between US$ 150 and US$ 330 a day. And three new boutique hotels are due to be opened in 2009.

Why would a guest choose to pay almost the same price (US$ 200, on average) for a five-star hotel room as for a boutique hotel room? The answer is simple: this special guest doesn’t want to be just a room number at a huge hotel chain. They want to feel at home, even if they are far away from home, they want to enjoy the cozy lobby as if they were at their own living-room, and they want to be taken care of. It looks as though this trend is here to stay. In 2005, there were only ten boutique hotels in the city of Buenos Aires. Today, the business is booming: there are around sixty-five, and three developments in the pipeline.

Although the French word boutique means a place where you can find specialized products and services, it is now being used as a qualifier to characterize a boutique hotel: few rooms (no more than twenty), designer furniture, avant-garde, thematic or unconventional interior design, top quality services, such as free international calls, fine food, and well travelled hotel owners with a worldly flair—impossible to find at a five-star hotel, equipped with five hundred rooms.

There are few cities in the world with so many boutique hotel offerings. What I like most is the intimate ambience they create and the special services they provide, such as free Wi-Fi. At a five-star hotel, for instance, you have to pay a fortune to be connected. And something else that is really very attractive: you can have breakfast until midday. “C’est magnifique!,” says Serge, a French guest at the lobby of Krista Boutique Hotel.

For further information, visit their site: www.thebbh.com

ADRIANA KÜCHLER da Revista da Folha, em Buenos Aires

Se Buenos Aires deu a volta por cima e voltou a ser a Paris latino-americana após a grave crise econômica que atingiu o país no começo dos anos 2000, a recuperação também permitiu à cidade reinventar suas hospedagens de luxo.

Eles foram pipocando em Buenos Aires e em outras cidades do país. E, de repente, eram tantos que decidiram formar um clube. Eis que surgiu, no final do ano passado, o "Best Boutique Hotels", uma espécie de selo de garantia para quem ostenta o nome de "boutique".

Os requisitos para participar do clube são oferecer atendimento personalizado, ter até 30 quartos e investir no design, na ambientação e na gastronomia.

Extensão de casa

Quando decidiu deixar a parceria com a Endemol, criadora do programa "Big Brother", o produtor de TV argentino Marcelo Kohen sabia exatamente o que queria fazer. E inaugurou, em fevereiro de 2008, o Mine Hotel, com seus 20 quartos.

"Como turista, eu já gostava de me alojar nesse tipo de hotel, mais personalizado, há anos. Não gosto das grandes cadeias, em que você é só mais um número. Onde há muita formalidade e muitos botões", diz Marcelo. "Prefiro um lugar que seja como a extensão da minha casa."

Por isso, explica, os funcionários do Mine evitam o "senhor" e "senhora" e, no máximo no segundo dia, já devem chamar o hóspede pelo nome, saber sua nacionalidade etc.

As the market has of late been flooded by hotels that claim to be boutique hotels but aren`t, nine well known properties in Buenos Aires, Corrientes, Salta and Santa Cruz have formed a club ,that will guarantee boutique service.

According to them, a boutique hotel should have a least three and no more than 30 rooms, offer personalized service, and serve fine food.It should also have a “magnificent”, “refined” or classic décor, technology such as Wi Fi, professional personnel, and a infrastructure that makes it possible to enjoy the hotel as a unique, special place. The Best Boutique Hotels (The BBH Club) thus formed hopes to attract additional like-thinking members. Until then they will be just Home,Mine, Legado Mìtico, Ultra Hotel and La Cayetana Buenos Aires; Eolo in Calafate, Posada de la Laguna in Corrientes and Hacienda de Molinos and Legado Mitico in Salta. For further information, visit their site: www.thebbh.com

With the tourism boom and the advent of new “so-called” boutique hotels with few rooms and high rates, the term “boutique,” originally a made-to-measure service, has now turned into an off-the-shelf attribute, since many of them do not comply with genuine boutique hotel standards.

This was one of the reasons why a group of nine prestigious boutique hotels created TheBBH—The Best Boutique Hotel—club in Argentina. To become a member, hotels should have at least three and no more than 30 rooms, and offer a boutiquier service, a distinctive and innovative proposal for authentic boutique hotels. The club, launched yesterday, aims to offer their demanding guests the upscale design, excellent customer service and fine food they expect to find, while assuring that its members comply with a set of quality, style and service standards.

In 2008, the city of Buenos Aires experienced an incredible real estate expansion with the opening of 19 boutique hotels accounting for more than US$40 million worth of investment. Due to this, the number of boutique hotels doubled. Until 2006, there were 15 boutique hotels and at present there are 34 and seven developments in the pipeline.

This increase was not only seen in Buenos Aires but it expanded to some provinces. There are over 80 new boutique hotels mainly in Patagonia and in the northern area, called lodgings, inns, estancias and posadas, which offer a boutiquier service.

Presence of Boutique Hotels in Argentine Provinces

• Mendoza and Salta: 14 each
• Neuquén: 10
• Buenos Aires: 8
• Misiones: 7
• Corrientes and Santa Cruz: 5
• Córdoba, Jujuy, Río Negro and Tierra del Fuego: 4
• Chubut: 3
• Entre Ríos and La Pampa: 1 each

Some of the boutique hotels in Buenos Aires are fully refurbished oldtime mansions and others are modern design buildings.

The refined and savvy guest looks for a home away from home, a simple but classy design and personalized service in an upscale boutique hotel. There has been a steady growth in the number of small, distinctive and homey boutique hotels in the last few years. According to TheBBH—the first boutique hotel club in Argentina, every month there is a new boutique hotel in the city of Buenos Aires.

Ana Correa, one of the press representatives of TheBBH, says “the number of boutique hotels has doubled over the last two years not only in the city of Buenos Aires but also in the provinces, which goes in line with the increasing trend worldwide.”

The sun shining and an inviting swimming-pool at Mine, one of TheBBH member hotels, located in Gorriti 4700.

A “boutique hotel” refers to a space—or rather a complex—that offers customized service, design, gastronomy, comfort and warmth to its demanding and sensitive guests.

A group of genuine boutique hotels have come together to found TheBBH, the first boutique hotel club in Argentina, to regain the prestige the boutique hotels once had and to leave out those which do not adhere to a specific set of standards.

According to the TheBBH representatives, “TheBBH guest is an experienced traveler who is intellectually and emotionally demanding, and the owners of our member hotels know their needs pretty well: homey ambience and food, top quality service, security and connectivity. Any member hotel should have no more than 30 rooms. Through our club, they now have the chance to restore the reputation they used to have in the past, and a meeting portal to keep in touch with their guests.”

The BBH is the first boutique hotel club in Argentina to provide an authentic boutiquier service, based on the combination of top service quality, gastronomy and design. Until now, when a tourist planned to visit Argentina and stay at a boutique hotel, his/her only chance to find one was through a big hotel chain or a travel agency. Not any more with TheBBH.

Apart from personalized customer service, fine food makes a difference at a true boutique hotel, together with other main standards, such as a cozy ambience, style and décor, latest technologies, highly qualified professionals and an infrastructure designed to make the guests’ experience at these hotels special and unique.

According to TheBBH, hotels will be classified into two types: Urban Boutique Hotel and Countryside Boutique Hotel, and into three categories each: Magnificent, Refined and Classic.

A group of boutique hotels have come together to form TheBBH (The Best Boutique Hotels) to increase their reputation and to offer a combination of customized service, design, gastronomy, comfort and a homey ambience to their demanding guests.

“One of the main features that distinguishes a boutique hotel is its luxurious simplicity,” said one of the originators of TheBBH, at launching in Buenos Aires yesterday.

The main objective of TheBBH is to “restore the reputation of boutique hotels in the face of the increasing number of seemingly boutique hotels, which in fact do not comply with the quality standards of an authentic boutique hotel or satisfy our guests’ expectations”.

A group of upscale Argentine boutique hotels have just founded TheBBH—the first boutique hotel club in Argentina. “The objective of the club is to offer their guests a boutiquier service, a distinctive and innovative proposal for authentic boutique hotels,” reported their founders today.

TheBBH is made up of nine distinguished hotels—five in Buenos Aires, two in Salta, one in El Calafate, and one in Corrientes, whose goal is to regain the prestige the boutique hotel had with respect to design, gastronomy and customer service.

“These hotels do not belong to an international travel agency or have shared capital, the idea was to form an alliance in order to restore and improve the reputation of the boutiquier service,” said one of the founders.

TheBBH is an organization whose purpose is to identify, select and put together all the boutique hotels in Argentina, and to help guests take their pick on their upcoming stay.

According to their philosophy, all TheBBH member hotels should have between three and thirty rooms and every detail should be associated with warmth, individuality and luxurious simplicity. They are classified into two types: Urban Boutique Hotel and Countryside Boutique Hotel, and into three categories each: Magnificent, Refined and Classic; and the main standards used are top service quality, gastronomy, technology, infrastructure, style, decor, and human resources.

For more information, visit www.thebbh.com.

Thirty-four boutique hotels all around Buenos Aires, and many sensitive and demanding tourists seeking personalized services

“At a boutique hotel, customized service is a priority. Every detail is associated with warmth, individuality and luxurious simplicity,” explains one of the originators of TheBBH, the first boutique hotel club in Argentina.

The boutique hotel market shows sustained growth in our country and in the world. While it is difficult to tell for certain how much investment has been made —since it primarily depends on the number of rooms each hotel has—, there is an estimated US$2 million investment made in every new boutique hotel.

Guests are mainly European (English, French, Spaniards, German, Italian and Dutch) and North American, and most recently, Brazilian.