The Toiletries, the Concierges, the Spas: For 2007, Conspicuous Luxury Is In

PLASMA screens and L’Occitane bath products no longer impress. And preloaded iPods? They’re as novel today as plastic ice buckets.

To stand out in today’s overdesigned and overhyped market, hotels in 2007 will be rolling out new twists on luxury, opening in exotic new locations (the more esoteric, the better), and dropping lots of boldface names — not just celebrity hoteliers, but celebrities-turned-hoteliers.

Tired of limousine transfers? Land your microjet outside Warapuru (www.warapuru.com), a lavish resort opening next year in Itacare, a resort town on Brazil’s jet-set Bahia coast. Designed by Anouska Hempel, best known for the Hempel and the Blakes hotels in London, the Warapuru has 40 pavilions set in a rain forest and geometric pools that overlook the Atlantic Ocean — and a private airstrip.

How about room service in the Arctic tundra? Then take a dog sled to the Other Side (www.theotherside.no), a 12-room design hotel opening in Neiden, a tiny village in the polar reaches of Norway. There’s midnight sun tanning in the summer, and gazing at the northern lights in the winter, when temperatures dip below zero Fahrenheit.

Want a big name in hotels, but not a megachain like Hilton? Then check into Nicky O South Beach, a 95-unit condo hotel in Miami from Nicky Hilton, who is branching out beyond her handbag and jewelry businesses. Expected to open next spring, the hotel promises “fashion, glamour, celebrity and an unparalleled social environment,” at least according to its Web site (www.nickyosouthbeach.com), which carries as much information about Ms. Hilton as it does about the hotel.

From the poorest backwaters of central India to the ruble-lined boulevards of central Moscow, high-end hotels are raising the bar on in-room amenities, offering stylish alternatives to cookie-cutter minimalism and charging higher and higher prices for a good night’s sleep.

Asia is again leading the way, especially in Beijing as it gears up for the 2008 Olympics. Among the 100-plus hotels under construction now is Rem Koolhaas’s highly anticipated Television Cultural Center, a public companion to his CCTV Tower, which will include a luxury hotel with 300 rooms. Ritz-Carlton (www.ritzcarlton.com), which just completed a chinoiserie-style hotel with 253 rooms on Financial Street, is opening a second 320-room hotel next year on the bustling Chang An Avenue. China’s tourism boom is by no means limited to Beijing. A Royal Meridien (www.lemeridien.com) recently opened in Shanghai, a 448-room Westin (www.westin.com) will open in Guangzhou in April, and new Shangri-La Hotel and Resorts (www.shangri-la.com) are scheduled next year for Baotou, Chengdu, Futian, Guangzhou, Huhhot and Xian — home of the famous terra-cotta warriors.

Another rising giant, India, is getting an Amanresorts (www.amanresorts.com), in New Delhi — the high-end hotelier’s first in a metropolitan area — and a Four Seasons (www.fourseasons.com), in Mumbai. Tokyo’s economic optimism can be glimpsed next year at the Peninsula Tokyo (www.peninsula.com) and at a Ritz-Carlton, which will occupy the top nine floors of the city’s tallest skyscraper.

Tsunami-stricken regions continue to rebound. More hotels are opening in Thailand, including the futuristic Library in Ko Samui (www.thelibrary.name; rooms starting at $270), and two Six Senses resorts (www.sixsenses.com) — an Evason Hideaway on the tiny island of Yao Noi (starting at about $600 a night) and Soneva Kiri and Spa on Koh Kood. Another much-anticipated resort, the Cape Yamu in Phuket (www.capeyamu.com), designed by Philippe Starck for GHM Hotels, probably won’t open until 2008.

If you can’t wait that long, head to the historic Vietnamese town of Hoi An, where GHM opened the Nam Hai (www.thenamhai.com) this month with 100 templelike villas, a half-mile stretch on China Beach and 40 private swimming pools. Rooms range from $550 to $2,300 a night.

In Europe, boutique hotels are multiplying into minichains, many of them part of the Design Hotels network (www.designhotels.com). London-based Firmdale Hotels, which owns the SoHo and five other intimate hotels around London, is adding the 55-room Haymarket (www.haymarkethotel.com) near Trafalgar Square to its portfolio this March. Elsewhere in England, Karim Rashid is lending his molded-plastic touch to the myhotel Brighton (www.myhotels.co.uk), part of a small chain that already has hotels in Bloomsbury and Chelsea.

The Spanish minichain Hospes Hotels (www.hospes.es) is converting three palaces and convents into sumptuous guesthouses: Hospes Madrid, Palacio del Bailío in Córdoba and Palacio San Blas in Jerez. Rates will range from $180 to more than $1,400 a night. The Amsterdam design firm FG Stijl is opening a fourth hotel, the Dominican (www.fgstijl.com), this time in a former monastery in Brussels. And in Italy, a stylish outfit called Mobygest (www.mobygest.it) is transforming the seaside annex of a medieval castle in Sicily into a 70-room hotel called the Falconara Charming House and Resort.

One notable nonboutique hotel opening in 2007 is the Molino Stucky in Venice, a former flour mill on the Canale Giudecca, which is being transformed into a Hilton (www.hilton.com) with 380 rooms and a rooftop pool with sweeping views.

And in Eastern Europe, Ritz-Carlton is promising an “unheard-of level of conspicuous luxury” when it opens a 334-room hotel near Red Square in Moscow in March. Conspicuous luxury includes 30,000 pieces of solid-silver tableware by Robbe & Berking, china by Wedgwood and KPM, toiletries by Bulgari and 2,500 sets of Frette 400-thread-count bed linens.

The Middle East, by contrast, is having a relatively quiet year, but that’s because the grandest projects are more than a year away. In Dubai, where hotels bearing names like Versace, Armani and Trump are all in the works, a pyramid-shaped Raffles (www.dubai.raffles.com) is opening this summer with 248 pharaoh-chic rooms and a two-and-a-half-acre rooftop greenhouse. In Kuwait, a 200-room hotel from the fashion label Missoni is expected to open on the waterfront. And in Oman, an 82-villa Evason Hideaway opens on Zighy Bay, a remote crescent of white sand where guests can swoop in on paraglides.

New hotels in the Americas seem tame by comparison, but not by much. In addition to the Warapuru, Brazil will welcome the Fasano Hotel e Restaurante in Rio de Janiero (www.fasano.com.br), the stylish new address designed by Philippe Starck on Ipanema Beach. In the Caribbean, W Hotels (www.whotels.com) brings its martini glasses and sleek décor to Vieques, the Puerto Rican island that may be the next St. Bart’s (or worse). The Bahamas gets a bit more exclusive with the Cove Atlantis on Paradise Island (www.thecoveatlantis.com), an upscale cousin to the Las Vegas-style Atlantis, and with Starwood’s Cotton Bay Estates on the pink sands of Eleuthera (www.cottonbayeleuthera.com).

In Mexico, the Hotel Habita group is planning four new hotels including La Purificadora in the historic city of Puebla. Occupying an old factory, the 26-room hotel is being designed by Ricardo Legorreta, the celebrated Mexican architect.

On the domestic front, Miami continues to cultivate a slew of new hotels. The Royal Palm Resort in South Beach (www.royalpalmmiamibeach.com) is getting a $20 million shot of testosterone that includes a Maxim Lounge created by the night-life impresario Rande Gerber. At the other extreme is Canyon Ranch, which is opening a 150-suite hotel in Miami Beach (www.canyonranchmiamibeach.com), part of a residential complex devoted to health living. And, of course, there’s Nicky O.

But the most hyped hotel in the country may be Robert De Niro’s Downtown Hotel, scheduled to open in Manhattan next year. Unlike Ms. Hilton, the actor is tight-lipped about the $43 million hotel, a new brick and terra-cotta structure in TriBeCa at Greenwich and North Moore Streets. It will have 90 rooms, a restaurant called Ago and, probably, a taxi stand.

Other boutique hotels opening in Manhattan include 6 Columbus (www.6columbus.com), part of Thompson Hotels, which created 60 Thompson in SoHo; the Lamb Hotel on West 44th Street, the latest from the hotelier Vikram Chatwal, owner of Time, Dream and Night hotels in Midtown Manhattan; and André Balazs’s the Standard in the meatpacking district, though 2008 looks more likely.

And then there’s the fabled Plaza Hotel (www.theplazahotel.com), which is reopening next year with 130 rooms (and 152 condo-hotel units), down considerably from the original 807 hotel rooms that it had before it was purchased by Elad Properties and most of its space was turned into private residences. The hotel portion, to be managed by Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, will have HDTVs, wireless Internet access and a touch-screen device for ordering caviar, retrieving a car from the valet and making dinner reservations. What would Eloise think?