Author(s): Margit J. Mayer

Travel Guides

Rooms with a view. A hotel is a hotel is a hotel? Not in this collection of 100 heavenly hideaways. When travelling for business, modern man and woman often prefer hotel rooms of the same type in London, Paris, or Shanghai. It's just more convenient. A different set of rules applies when they search for a place to celebrate a special family holiday, a weekend with a new lover, or a few days of blissful solitude with some great books. Suddenly a balcony with postcard-worthy views counts more than the number of TV channels, a sumptuous bed with a heavenly mattress and hand-ironed linens more than Wi-Fi connection in every nook and cranny of the hotel building. That's where this new Taschen collection comes in. A compilation of 100 hotels on all continents, in countries from Argentina to Vietnam, the two volumes make it a breeze to choose where to relax next. The gamut runs from dream castles like Villa Feltrinelli on Lake Garda (right) to the glass-fronted hipster chic of Juvet Hotel in Norway; from Mediterranean pensiones with nostalgic flair and moderate rates to the pricy-yet-worthy desert glamour of Amangiri resort in Utah's canyon county (top).
Even dedicated web scouts will be tempted by this book to cuddle up on their sofa for a round of paper travelling. While fans of interior design might use it as an inspiring global selection of splendid sofas, beds, lights, and bathroom features. Features: 100 very special hotels and guest houses all over the world; from bed breakfast basic to six-star luxurious; selected by Taschen's style and travel department according to criteria like stylistic harmony, location, service, and cost-performance ratio; each hotel comes with a reader-friendly chart listing the number of rooms, current prices, type of cuisine, amenities, plus the all important X-factor: the feature that makes staying there a truly unique experience; and the full scope of contemporary travel in two neat volumes, co eetable-sized and with countless glossy photographs.