acapulco

Hotel Design: Comfort versus Boredom at Grupo Habita Hotels

Would you rather be entirely bored but very comfortable in a luxury hotel, or slightly less comfortable while having a unique hotel experience?

To me, this is the central question that Grupo Habita's hotels raise, and it's a good one.

Habita is a Mexico-based boutique hotel company owns nine properties in Mexico, from its namesake Habita in Mexico City, to the ultra-sceney Condesa df, also in Mexico City, to its latest hotel, Boca Chica, in Acapulco. Its Monterrey Hotel, Habita MTY won a 2010 *Wallpaper Design award, which you don't get for being fusty or forgettable.

None of these adjectives can be used in connection with Habita's properties. In an interview on Hotel Management Network, co-owners Carlos Couturier and Moises Micha said "Our mission is to impose a certain philosophy on society. We are not here only to create hotels, we are here to make people understand that creativity is good for society. We don't only build hotels. We build experiences."

I've stayed at Habita's property in Puebla, La Purificadora, and I also stayed at Condesa df, and I'm glad I read that interview, because I can now evaluate the properties on their own terms. Condesa is a fun, trendy neighborhood in D.F., and the hotel is just that -- the qualities that I'd count as strikes against in a traditional hotel -- smallish rooms, slightly noisy -- are actually part of the experience of being in that neighborhood. You don't go there for a retreat, you go there to be in the middle of things. As I mentioned in my review of La Purificadora, I thought that form sometimes trumped function, but I never once forgot that I was in a hotel that was making use of its space in a former water purification factory.

Gallery: Condesa DF and Boca Chica

Condesa df Rooftop Bar, Around the Corner

Tags: acapulco, boutique hotel, grupo habita hotels, habita hotel, mexican hotels, Mexico, Mexico City, mexico hotels, monterrey

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Iconic Las Brisas Acapulco Gets $20 Million Makeover

by Tracy Chait (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels

The famed pink and white 1960s Acapulco hotel Las Brisas has just pronounced its $20 million makeover complete. Perched high above Acapulco Bay, the renovated hotel now boasts glass ceilings in guest rooms, new outdoor seating French-terrace style and various interior updates like new flat screen tvs and plush linens.

Many guest rooms have sweeping ocean views, which have kept the place popular over the years. That and the cute pink and white Jeeps they use to ferry guests back and forth from the hotel.

Check out the changes and many of the original '60s details in the gallery.

Gallery: Images of the Las Brisas Hotel, Acapulco

Source

Tags: acapulco, hotels, jeep, las brisas, LasBrisas, mexican pacific, MexicanPacific, mexico, ocean views, OceanViews, renovation

Villa Eden, Estate of the Day

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Estates

I first heard about this estate a year ago after the Wall Street Journal reported that media billionaire Haim Saban was putting his Acapulco, Mexico vacation home on the market. A year later and the home is still on the market for the same price. The three-acre gated compound in the Las Brisas community is the estate that Warner Communications (which became Time Warner) used to entertain clients and celebrities. In the late 1990s, Time Warner needed to cut costs and sold the home known as Villa Eden to Saban for around $7 million in 2001. The home has 12 bedrooms (plus five bedrooms in the servant quarters), 17 bathrooms, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, two pools, five massage rooms and a wine cellar. The expansive home has jetliner views of the Acapulco bay. It is listed at $12 million.

For more prime properties and lush locations, see Luxury Homes and Mansions.

Gallery: The Warner Retreat