Personal Touches Make Opus Hotel In Demand

If you're a frequent traveler, chances are that standard hotel rooms have long since ceased to impress you. Sure, you get to leave the bed unmade and the towels on the floor guilt-free, but if you're away from home long enough, even the biggest bed or the fluffiest bathrobe can't compensate for the fact that you're in a big ol' room without your stuff.

This perennial dilemma of professionals on the go has given rise in the past ten years to the concept of the “boutique” hotel, a re-think of traditional hospitality that seeks to make a visitor's stay a more intimate, tailored experience, factoring in guest's personal tastes and lifestyle in a way that transforms the generic hotel stay into a more comforting experience.

In Vancouver, the go-to boutique hotel for smart, modern, and, dare we say, hip, is the Opus Hotel, located in trendy Yaletown, amidst the neighbourhood cocktail bars and fantastically eclectic shops. Opened in 2002, Opus is, until the hordes of rooms being built for the Olympics are completed, Vancouver's newest hotel, but already it's gained a great reputation amongst international travelers, attracting celebrity guests and winning international awards.

With just 96 rooms, the hotel has customized its guest experiences by creating characters it imagines might visit the hotel, and tailoring the whole experience to those characters. There's “Billy,” an “enlightened rockstar” from Britain, whose exhibitionist tendencies are catered to with a bathroom suite featuring floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the busy streets below (don't worry, there's blinds for those who aren't so, um, proud, as Billy). On the mellower end, there's “Susan”, a Toronto-based fashion executive, whose taste for arts & culture are catered to with a cool and calm blue room, fashion and art magazines on the bookshelves and tasteful, dark wood furniture. “Pierre”, a food critic, gets a warm, French-country with a twist style suite, “Bob” and “Carol”, a couple, have a slightly more conservative room, and “Mike” a doctor from New York with an “alternative” lifestyle is in a modern and minimalist room fitted with music, books and décor that might suit his tastes. Mike, and all the guests, are also fitted with a “lifestyle concierge” - a glossy information pamphlet that makes suggestions on where someone might like to eat, dance, have their hair cut, exercise, shop – anything a guest would want to take part in in Vancouver.

Of course, not every guest fits into the personality pigeon-holes perfectly, but that's hardly the point. The recognition that guests have unique tastes and proclivities, and are longing for an insiders perspective is what makes Opus so appealing. You don't have to worry about the tired-looking concierge sending you to a noisy, crowded bar full of bridge-and-tunnelers here. With their “guestimate” approach, it's far more likely visitors will have the Vancouver experience that suits them best.

Of course, the character rooms come in different shapes and configurations, so it's possible for a guest to stay up to 20 times and have a new experience. Add to that the fact that the hotel houses one of Yaletown's most popular nightspots (Opus Bar) and a critically lauded restaurant (Elixir), and it's easy to see why Opus runs the highest occupancy rate of any hotel in the city.

The hotel is certainly not for everyone. It caters to a modern, younger clientèle, a guest for whom style is important. It may not, for example, be the best place to take a family of four. But if you're a savvy traveler for whom experience is just as important as luxury, Opus will suit you just fine.

As Annabel Hawksworth, a PR rep for the hotel, was recently told by a guest “It's less like a hotel and more like a friend handed over the keys to their really cool apartment.”

In addition to the above-noted features the hotel welcomes pets (no surprise in little dog ridden Yaletown) and a fitness centre (no surprise there either, given the neighbourhood's reputation for hot bodies). There are two penthouses (“DeDe”, their imagined occupant, is a high-maintenance method actress from L.A), 9 executive suites, 9 deluxe studios, 16 deluxe king rooms, 10 deluxe courtyard rooms (though only two have access to the leafy retreat) 42 superior rooms and 10 standard rooms. To learn more, visit OpusHotel.com.