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While boutique hotels have enjoyed great popularity overseas for years now, this trend is just taking off in Seoul, where design-conscious hoteliers in a design-conscious city are establishing intimate spaces with strong doses of style, personality and charm. So charming these lodgings are, in fact, that some have become travel destinations themselves and regularly appear in music videos, advertisements and TV dramas. If the chilly winter weather's got you down, a weekend "away" at a cozy yet chic boutique hotel might just be what you need to rejuvenate and recharge.

Intimate Spaces

Boutique hotels began appearing in London, New York and other big cities in the United States and Great Britain in the 1980s. In Korea, they've taken off only over the last five or so years. While Seoul has always had major international luxury and business hotels and cheap motels and inns, what the boutique hotels have given the city are accommodations which are not just places to stay, but places where travelers enjoy staying.

Usually smaller establishments of 100 rooms or less, these hotels are all about intimacy, offering warmer, more personal stays than big luxury hotels. Often independently operated, boutique hotels relish in their personalities and one-in-a-kind charm with bold, modern design and decor, often with a dash of the brash. They also take pride in their personalized service, which adds still further to the intimate mood.

Located in the heart of the posh Gangnam district, the Hotel Sohsul defines intimate. Designed by Archigroup MA, the hotel features 52 individually crafted rooms decorated according to 12 themes. Natural stone and wood feature heavily in many of the rooms, producing an atmosphere of warmth and harmony. In the Spa & Pool Penthouse, for instance, intimate spaces of white stone and tan wood give way to an indoor swimming pool that dissipates the natural light that pours in through a large, slanted window with views of the city below and mountains beyond. Its Triple Cinema Penthouse, on the other hand, revels in the bold and brash, keeping first-time guests off-balance with a combination of strange geometric patterns and dramatic juxtapositions of light and dark. “It's a mysterious design,” says Ju Kyu-sub, the hotel's marketing manager. “Guests can experience here designs they cannot experience anywhere else in the world.”

The cafeteria is appropriately cozy, and a basement space for parties and exhibits lend a bit of culture and excitement. While a bit large to be considered a true boutique hotel per se, the new JW Marriott Dongdaemun Square Seoul also delights with its chic design and intimate service. Like many boutique hotels, it also puts guests right in the middle of it, so to speak, with fine views of the scenic Cheonggyecheon Stream, historic Heunginjimun Gate and architecturally inspired Dongdaemun Design Plaza.

Where Accommodation and Culture Meet

Boutique hotels strive to give guests more than just a bed for the night. Often works of art themselves in their architecture and design, they strive to connect their guests with the local culture. Some will even have galleries, theaters and other cultural spaces of their own.

Accordingly, boutique hotels tend to attract a more sophisticated, culturally clued-in clientèle. Hidden away in an alley in Myeong-dong, Seoul's bustling commercial center, the intriguingly named hotel Small House Big Door was planned by Seoul-based design group Design Methods as a space to share the value of design through continuous exchange between artists and designers. A renovated 1960s office building, the hotel is a work of minimalist art with stark, white rooms, plenty of exposed concrete and, most ingeniously, beautifully crafted furniture and fixtures based on open source designs and made with 3D printers. The first floor has a fine bistro with all-day dining, exhibit spaces featuring work by local artists and a sunken event space with a concrete projection wall. The unique design leaves an impact on guests, a combination of tourists, business travelers and design-related professionals. “Guests say it's quite an unusual design for the hotel,” says Kim Jungwan, Small House Big Door's general manager. “All the designs are minimalist and very white, very clean. It's kind of interesting and new, and [guests] want to know more about it.”

South of the Hangang River, near the appropriately chic Sinsa-dong district, is Hotel La Casa, another boutique hotel standing at the nexus of travel, culture and design. Operated by Casamia, one of Korea's leading furniture and decor studios, the hotel gives guests a chance to experience leading-edge Korean design with 61 rooms adorned with Casamia-crafted appointments. In keeping with the boutique spirit, rooms have a warm, intimate feel, with furnishings, lighting and colors meant to cultivate a familiar, home-like atmosphere. The beautiful lobby, which brings to mind a very well-appointed living room, features works of design and art by both Casamia designers and up-and-coming artists. In the basement, you'll find a Casamia showroom.

Creating new from the old

One of the more exciting recent trends in hospitality has been the repurposing of older structures into boutique hotels. Not only has saved some beautiful, historic structures from the wrecking ball, but it also presents designers with unique challenges as they seek to make the most of existing spaces. In a side street just off downtown Seoul's main thoroughfare of Jongno, Hotel the Designers Jongno is a former motel transformed into a creative space. The job of transforming the closed, dark spaces of the old hotel into something new was left to 19 young, mostly local designers, and the results were, in a word, spectacular. Each of the hotel's 81 uniquely designed rooms exude personality and a youthful exuberance. One suite, designed by interior designer Han Soo-jin and artistic director Ahn Rye, is seemingly ripped from the pages of Alice in Wonderland, complete with a distorting mirror for the full "down the rabbit hole" effect. Another suite, designed by restaurant interior designer Ra Hoon-young, gives would-be restaurateurs a chance to indulge their dreams. Graffiti artists, painters, stylists and other creatives participated in the project as well. Lee Su-yeon, who handles reservations, says, “Our short term guests say they wish they could stay longer to experience more of the hotel's designs.”