Vienna - 1
Mandarin Oriental is Vienna's newest luxury hotel, but already it has the making of being the top C-suite hangout. It's got so much style. The building, for a start. It was the common law courts until 2003, and they've left the arrival experience up four steps and into a small vestibule with the original staircase ahead, turning left and right, and you feel that you are in not a residence, but a top meeting place. On each of the upper floors, you imagine you're walking through heaven. Why? Because the corridors are just so beautiful. Overall coloring of palest mushroom, palest blue, a softly patterned carpet, softly patterned walls rising to a cornice about two meters high, with hints of piano keys in the pattern. The lighting is as an excellent theatrical director would want. Thanks to the vision and spend of developers Brisen Group, from Vienna, and talent of designers Goddard Littlefair, the whole thing is sheer beauty.
Mario Habicher, the hotel GM, is Austrian and moved here from across town, from the Imperial Vienna. This is his first opening, and he had 16 months to get the hotel into spick and span shape before opening. He's got 230 employees for a total of 138 rooms - and 55 residences on the fifth and sixth floors. Americans are by far the biggest number of guests. In all, he anticipates less than 35% business-business, the rest leisure. The challenge, he sees, is in hiring staff: so far this has been most acute for housekeeping, but since the hotel’s opening last December, he's only lost 20% of his entire complement.
#435, up 101 original stone steps from ground level, is a corner suite on the top floor, and again, it's beautiful. Here the flooring is dark zigzag parquet with soft throw rugs, in through a foyer with a maxi bar, to the living area with a low round marble coffee table, different blues, and a taller table, wood, that can be used for dining. That's also round, and there are two deepest brown maroon leather chairs, and what could be called an overhanging arc light. The art here is a soft blue blend of colors, no meaning possible. There's a soft sage blue L-shaped plush sofa. Two turns to the right takes you to the bathroom. Two sinks, good lighting, shower, a Japanese washlet toilet, Diptyque toiletries.
Back into the walkway, there’s a drawer-set safe, and a two meter-long shelf, on top of cupboards, that’s perfect for opening up a wheelie. Behind are two open wardrobes. One has a clothes section for the ironing board. The other holds two pairs of wooden shoe trees. Across the corridor, there are two open storage areas - one has heavy books on Vienna, and the Austrian Secession, the first decade of 20th century art movement led by Klimt. The other unit has two folded kimonos. On into the bedroom, where there's a corner dressing table, Art Nouveau style, and a palest milk coffee leather circular dressing table chair, a cream leather box atop the dressing table, has an intricately thought-out collection of business necessities, colored felt tops, tips, and things like that. The bedhead, which is pale mole fabric and leather surrounded by beautiful pale wood, has two grey marble-topped side tables - pull their flaps open and you get two sockets, USB and USC adaptors. atop the marble is a dull copper-colored control panel for lights and curtains.
The Technogym is excellent, and back-lit ‘windows’ suggest daylight rather than being subterranean, and next to it is the 13-metre pool, with Art Nouveau surrounds…
