Hotel
Hotels are commercial establishments that provide short-term accommodation, meals, and other services for guests such as travellers and tourists.
The quality and cost of hotels varies very widely. In the UK, the Valuation Office Agency suggests that most hotels can be classified as:
- Five Star and Luxury Four Star Hotels.
- Boutique Hotels.
- Country House Hotels.
- Town House Hotels.
- Commercial 3 & 4 Star Hotels.
- Airport Hotels.
- Seaside Hotels.
- Coaching Hotels.
- Older & Historic 3 Star Hotels.
- Budget Hotels/Lodges.
- Small Independently Owned Hotels.
- Aparthotels and Serviced Apartments.
The standard of accommodation and service provided within these definitions may vary very significantly compared to similar definitions in other countries.
For the purposes of planning permission, use class C1 is 'Hotels', which includes; hotels, boarding and guest houses where no significant element of care is provided. It does not include hostels. Hostels provide non-self-contained acccomodation, and cater for an identifiable group of people, such as students, travellers, people who would otherwise be homeless and so on. They tend to be low-cost and may be self-catering, or may provide meals.
Articles about hotels on Designing Buildings Wiki include:
- US Embassy hotel plans.
- Army and Navy Hotel.
- Hilton Tallinn Park case study.
- Ryugyong Hotel, North Korea.
- North Korea hotel.
- Oasia Hotel Downtown, Singapore.
- Spring Street Hotel, LA.
- Trump International Hotel and Tower, Vancouver.
- Julian Opie Art Wall CitizenM Tower of London Hotel.
See also: The history of hotels.
[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings
- Apart-hotel.
- Bookmatched Marble for Boutique Hotel.
- Eco-hotel.
- Hostel.
- How to create a sustainable hotel.
- Julian Opie Art Wall CitizenM Tower of London Hotel
- Julian Opie Limestone & Bronze Frieze for Bermuda Hotel
- Oasia Hotel Downtown, Singapore
- Residential building.
- Ryugyong Hotel, North Korea
- Sheltered housing definition.
- Spring Street Hotel, LA.
- The history of hotels.
- Treehotel
- Trump International Hotel and Tower, Vancouver
- Types of building.
- US Embassy hotel plans
- Use class.
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