The New Breed of Motel

It’s not really our brand at Blue Hill Properties, where we’re focused on a more luxurious experience, but one of our favorite trends in hospitality is what we’ll call the new motel—high in style, conveniently located, typically approachably priced, and with true individuality.

Today, we’ll highlight just two near us in the northeast. The first is Tourists, located in the Berkshires just off the Mohawk Trail so it’s perfect for anyone seeking a great hike and a stylish place to sleep. On the banks of the Hoosic River, Tourists is the brainchild of Wilco bassist John Stirratt and friends, and is a kind of hip summer camp for adults. With a saltwater pool, a suspension bridge, and a Civil War-era mill, the grounds invite exploration, but it’s also great for a visit to Mass MoCA and other Berkshires destinations.

Our second featured property today is the Brentwood in Saratoga Springs. Located trackside by the legendary racecourse, the Brentwood is a remastered motel with terrific style, combining Billykirk leathers, Sharktooth textiles, period works of art, and lots of brass highlights. It’s a darker, moodier look than Tourists, but to our minds has a Madmen vibe that is perfect for the era of the original buildings. Paint colors are dark greens and blues, and the bar is impeccable. Off-season prices are insanely affordable—as I write I’m seeing a nightly rate UNDER $100. So it’s an easy discovery.

Of course, a visit to a Blue Hill Properties destination is always in order, so check out The Jackson House Inn—and book your romantic getaway now. (Yes, Yankee magazine named us Best Couples Retreat.)

Decadent Design Perfection from Jasper Conran

Our second stop today is the Hotel Marrakech, designed by the man who was once Princess Diana's favorite designer, Jasper Conran, but don't hold that against him. His Moroccan riad is a cathedral to good taste, a converted 19th-century palace containing five suites of four-posters swathed in a total of nearly a mile of white voile, set around a quadrangle of orange trees and a pretty tiled fountain.

The place radiates the sort of 1930s decadence once found in Tangiers, due in part to its private-house feel, but also the simple elegance, the pinks and greens, the oil paintings of maharajas, the period jazz emanating from a hidden radio.

A return to Marrakech and this fantastic and fantastical addition to the boutique hotel scene is high on our wanderlist for 2018.

British Inspiration

Our inspiration for creating a certain kind of locally inspired, design infused hotel in the country derives primarily from the tradition of the country house hotel in England and its Irish cousin. Not the dark country house hotels of the past, but light-infused, color-rich properties of a type you now find inhabiting the landscape in an easy-going way all across the U.K. Below are a few of our current favorites.

It must be something about Britain's small scale--and thus the relative proximity to London and its population--base that make this possible economically. Some of the finest in recent years can be found across the southwest, from Somerset to Dorset and Cornwall. Each of the best of these doesn't forget where it is in the world even as it puts forward design to savor. And great food is never lost in the equation!

A Hothouse of an Idea

Of all the memorable dining experiences I've had in recent years, one that stands out is a long, late lunch at Petersham Nursery in Greenwich, England. A long and congested ride outside of London, at first the journey seemed unpromising but then we arrived at a truly singular dining environment in the long greenhouse of an active and sought out garden nursery. Plants filled the space; the furniture was mismatched shabby chic industrial; retail offerings were interwoven with the restaurant space. The ground was basically that of a greenhouse environment, as were the slightly humid smells, but somehow it was all the perfect environment for a true farm-to-fork experience. Our vegetables might literally have come out of the hothouse next door--and probably did.

When we find the ideal country house hotel candidate that might be lacking in a properly scaled restaurant space, I'd love to try this in North America and create our own version of a hothouse restaurant.

Inspiration in the Catskills

I often say that I'm shameless about borrowing a good idea--and certainly this is true of drawing inspiration from the hospitality sector. What's inspiring me today is the work of one couple in the Catskills region of New York State who are singlehandedly transforming the lodging and restaurant scene there. Catskills native Sims Foster and his wife, Kirsten Harlow Foster, are using his hospitality smarts and an “I’ll do it” work ethic to breathe new life into the area by opening three inns: The Arnold House, which opened with a restaurant in 2014 atop a mountain just outside Livingston Manor; the Nine River Road, in a renovated old home overlooking the Delaware River in Callicoon; and the North Branch Country Inn, also with a restaurant, in North Branch, which was just named one of the “Best Bed and Breakfast Inns in America” by Time Out New York magazine. Next up is the DeBruce, set to open next month--and if it's even half as good as the beautiful trailer video produced by Bullrush Films https://vimeo.com/211406224 it should be terrific.

The best in experiential travel

I've been traveling since I was three months old--or so says my mother, who strapped me to her front and took me from the U.S. to India, with stops all through Europe en route, to rejoin my father. I doubt that was the origin of my love of travel, but it can't have hurt that travel was always a part of the tapestry of my life.

In adulthood, two or three experiences whetted a long-held desire to not only experience the world but to shape the experience of travel for others. The first was the experience of remaking a long-cherished ancestral manse into a country house hotel--one that survives (under another identity) today. But I wasn't ready yet to give up my first career path, so once the property was ready to roll I stepped aside--having shaped for it a distinct personality. The second was a kind of informal apprenticeship alongside the great food visionary Alice Waters, who reshaped my understanding of what food and a great restaurant should be and gave me a new commitment to the pathways of the food I eat (and serve). In the mid 1990s, this wasn't yet commonplace, but today's farm-to-fork concepts resonate. And I shall never forget some of the lessons I learned from Alice--from the importance of training every staff member in the art of proper tea making, to the beauty or vegetables so fresh they were still warm from the fields.

Through a 25-year career in the arts, I've had extraordinary travel experiences and discovered too many intimate hotels and restaurants to begin to name them here. But cumulatively these experiences have shaped my idea of what should define the core identity of Blue Hill Properties. I've taken a little from each experience, and more than a little from a few: The Clifton Inn outside Charlottesville, Virginia. The Hotel Fauchere in Milford, Pennsylvania. The Inn at Little Washington in Washington, Virginia. The Covent Garden Hotel in London. All of these inspire me and haunt my memory in ways small and large, and provide the foundation for the work ahead for Blue Hill Properties.