The White Hotel in Brussels is a truely designer hotel. Belgium designers were each given a room to create, resulting 50+ rooms with a custom look that doesn’t cut any design corners. Obviously, things that are well appointed tend to be priced quite high, but the White Hotel has worked hard to keep theirs down. Rooms start from â‚ 85 and â‚ 185. But to keep the prices low they’ve had to make some compromises — instead of six fancy shampoos in every room, they put out a noteworthy breakfast. Instead of Pay-per-view TV, free WiFi. Take your pick — we prefer breakfast/WiFi to shampoo/T.V. Their focus is on the design, giving you what you need for a comfortable stay, and leaving the rest out.

We like mixing up a bit of modern design culture with the great historic architecture. So when I heard that Hotel Josef just around the corner from Old Town Square in Prague was designed by London (though Czech nationality) architect Eva Jiricna I knew I had to stay there. The hotel had everything you would expect from a four star hotel: very helpful staff, gym, sauna, beautiful bar and breakfast — the typical amenities you can list off any given four star hotel website. But where Hotel Josef rises above the rest is in its attention to details. Beside being designed by one of the great contemporary architects of recent years, they completely cater to creative professionals: WiFi throughout the lounge and bar, high speed Internet and iPod docks in the room, and such progressive design you feel like your staying in a piece of art. If you make it to Prague we highly recommend checking out the Hotel Josef and if you are in the literary scene at all note that the Prague Writer's Festival is hosted by the hotel every year. If Hotel Josef is a little out of your budget, we wrote up the wonderfully beautiful Miss Sophie's Hostel a while back as well.

Check out some more pictures after the jump.

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When Jamie and I were in Miami for what felt like an eternity covering all of the Art Basel events, we had a tough decision to make about where to stay– While we’re young and supposedly hip, we’re not big fans of the scene (nor the prices) on South Beach. We reached out to a handful of different hoteliers with our needs and surprisingly the Conrad Group was one of the few that didn’t turn up their nose. At first blush I was hesitant to stay at the Conrad– despite it being recognized as ‘Florida’s Leading Luxury Hotel’ in 2006 it was a little off the beaten path, downtown, and owned by the Hilton Group– and I’m much more of a boutique kind of guy. It turns out staying there for the week was a life-saver, although we spent a small fortune in cab rides to and from South Beach related events, every afternoon or evening we were able to get out of the mess to our own little safe haven. When we weren’t partying with Jose Parla or eating at Atrio, we spent a fair amount of time at the rooftop pool, enjoying the hot tub– an awesome surprise for those windy nights. As far as the room, we were showed to a residence– an awesome 2 bedroom apartment with a fully furnished kitchen, living room and decks with stellar views of the ocean. While I prefer to support independent hotels, staying here definitely exceeded my expectations. If they’re all this nice, welcoming and fairly priced, I’ll be keeping my eyes out for Conrad Hotel’s around the world.

While we’re on the subject of romantic getaways, I have another one for you– but before you even consider this one, make sure your special someone doesn’t mind the cold. The photos of the Ice Hotel Quebec-Canada tell it all. While it’s not the original Ice Hotel in Sweden, it’s every bit as gorgeous. From an architectural standpoint, the Ice Hotel is dynamic in its purest form– every year, the hotel’s army of talented artists sculpt an entirely new and unique experience using stainless steel moulds that are anchored by wooden framework walls. You’re not going to find room service (or even a bathroom) in these rooms, but you will experience the extreme and unique luxury of sleeping in a cozy cocoon of ice. There are quite a few of these Ice Hotels out there, so do your research, and you’ll find the one that will accommodate you the best.

If I had a Cease and Desist order from Louis Vuitton, I’d probably be a little scared– but not the folks at The Hotel Des Arts in San Francisco. Remember that hotel? Packed full of customized rooms from floor to ceiling by some of the worlds most promising young artists. One of the painted rooms (pictured here) was done by Tim Gaskin–a mural juxtaposing a celebrity icon, Madonna, with a logo from Louis Vuitton. The work is a critique of consumer culture–and personally I think it’s great. Louis Vuitton’s “Anti-counterfeiting Director Of The Americas”, what a mouth full, ordered a cease and desist, stating the hotel needs to ““remove all infringing depictions of the LV trademark from your walls”. So what did the Hotel des Arts decide to do? They went ahead and exercised their first amendment rights and decided to have a special showing of the room, from May 2nd-May 6th. Way to go guys!

The custom boutique hotels around the world all took notice to the Hotel des Arts in the heart of San Francisco’s downtown Union Square when it launched last year. Last year they showed their project called “Painted Rooms” at the “art hotel” with 16 custom painted rooms from people like David Choe and David DeRosa, among others. This year they’ve come back adding an additional dozen more rooms including painted rooms by Josh Feldman, The Vinyl Killers, Bryan Dawson and Maya Hayuk. Their roster of top notch underground and emerging artist created rooms is totally impressive–and the sky is the limit here–they say watch out for future painted rooms from folks like Shepard Fairey (Obey), and Dalek.