The Gramercy Park Hotel endures as a New York City hot spot.
When boutique hotelier Ian Schraeger reopened The Gramercy Park Hotel in 2006, it quickly emerged as the new hot spot for New York’s rich and glamorous. With a bohemian-inspired design seamlessly blending the old (velvet, wood, antiques) and the new (artworks by Warhol, Basquiat and Haring; celebrities mingling in the Rose Bar), the Gramercy Park Hotel reestablished itself as a New York City institution. (Decades ago, Humphrey Bogart was married here, and the bar was a favorite haunt of Babe Ruth). Today, it continues to draw New York’s notables. Not only is The Rose Bar still popular with a see-and-be-seen crowd — a party here in April drew the likes of Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson, Lucy Liu, Penn Badgley and Susan Sarandon — but the new Danny Meyer restaurant Maialino, which opened this year, is currently one of the hottest restaurants and the city (you’ll have to wait weeks for a reservation).
Curious to take a peek behind the velvet curtain? Oyster is currently offering rooms for 20% off, with rates starting as low as $340/night.
See our exclusive photos after the jump. Read More »
Some hotels, as we learned last month, charge five figures for a single cocktail. Others, which shall remain nameless — OK, it’s the Four Seasons Maui — deploy poolside staffers to cool down sunbathing guests with spritzes of Evian. And then there’s the Peninsula Beverly Hills, a hotel so exclusive that its true VIPs don’t even bother with the ho-hum 425-square-foot — and $425+ per night — standard rooms. Instead they stay in one of the Peninsula’s 16 villas, each of which has its own private entrance — and each of which costs between $885 and $6,000 a night. (In 2007, Britney Spears hid out from the paparazzi in one after she lost custody of her children to K-Fed.)
In honor of Sunday’s Academy Awards, the Peninsula Beverly Hills, or “PBH” as we in the biz (that would be the hotel biz) call it, has introduced something called “Recapture Classic Hollywood Glamor.” For a mere $950, guests can enjoy the “opportunity to be photographed in a style that brings back the famous black-and-white studio publicity portraits of movie stars in the 1930s and 40s.” Award-winning celebrity photographer Roger G. James “will set up a portrait studio in the guest’s room, complete with makeup, costumes, props and lighting. Within one to two hours, he will transform the guest into a glamorous star from the past, à la Lana Turner, Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable or Greta Garbo and capture the look on black-and-white film.” One such Garbo is pictured above. Not bad, as you can see here.
The charming, French B&B-style Hotel Elysee was home to Marlon Brando and writer Tennessee Williams (who died in the Sunset suite), among other movie stars, authors, and musicians.
For those of us who grew up reading the adventures of Eloise, the mischievous little girl who grew up at The Plaza, living in a hotel – with daily maid service and pampering – represents the ultimate fantasy. But it’s been a reality for many notables over the years, from the starving, not-yet-famous artists who stayed at flophouse dives to bona fide stars like Marilyn Monroe, who shacked up at one of Beverly Hills’ nicest hotels. Read on to find out which celebrities lived where, and what it might cost in 21st century dollars to live for a year in their hotels of choice. Read More »
The Studio Suite, the standard room type, at the Setai in South Beach, Miami
At just under $800 for the average night, a guest room at the Setai is about the most expensive hotel room in South Beach. What do you get for this extraordinary splurge? Mood-lit style; an extraordinary restaurant; a beachfront location; large suites — all this you can find elsewhere, and for a lot less cash. Largely, you’re paying for a slight but not impossible chance of spotting Giselle lounging by the pool. For most people — anyone without an uncommonly thriving multinational corporation, a blockbuster film, or a royal family — spending this kind of cash for a hotel room is out of the question.
L.A. is a bit of a celebrity-spotting safari. And even though plenty of celebs call the City of Angels home, the area’s hotels are still teeming with famous faces (sometimes drunken, messy faces). For the glitziest, go-home-and-brag-to-your-friends celeb stalkage, we’d like you to know that there’s quite a bit more to the Los Angeles star-studded hotel scene than the ol’ Lindsay Lohan standby, the Chateau Marmont.
We’ve compiled the ultimate guide to who’s been seen where — and where you may have the best shot at an A-list sighting. Here are our picks for the best celebrity hot spot hotels in Los Angeles.
Chateau Marmont, a discreet movie star hideaway since it opened in 1929, attracts celebrities to its popular Bar Marmont, see-and-be-seen restaurant, and private guest bungalows (John Belushi overdosed in one in 1982). An Oyster reporter spotted both Stevie Wonder and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke at coveted patio tables. Jennifer Aniston, John Mayer, and Billy Crudup have been spotted together in the courtyard, Eva Longoria and Christina Applegate were seen on the patio, and Sienna Miller and Josh Hartnett cozied up in the restaurant’s living room. And Lindsay Lohan, Charlize Theron, Mary-Kate Olsen graced Chateau’s halls on a single night.
In case you didn’t catch it, Oyster’s Senior Editor, Will Begeny, was on TV again. This time, he chatted with Better TV about the most popular hotels for celebrities in New York City.
Privacy, discreet service, and fancypants amenities are the major factors that the rich and famous consider when selecting a hotel — and we dish the dirt on the fanciest under-the-radar Big Apple properties that have seen the most famous faces.
Check out the video above, and be sure to take a peek at our lists of Celebrity Hotspot Hotels in New York, Las Vegas, and Miami.
What do you get when you combine W Hotels with the cast of HBO’s “Entourage”? Apparently, a match made in cross-marketing heaven.
Starting July 27 and running until September 27, these two iconic brands are teaming up to launch a national campaign that will offer hotels guests the opportunity to slip into Vinny and E’s shoes for (a minimum of) two nights. The promotion kicked off last Thursday at the newly opened W South Beach, with Adrian Grenier onsite to unveil the official “Entourage Bungalow” at the hotel’s outdoor pool, WET.
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