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For some visitors to New York when it comes to hotels there is something to be said for traditional elegance, no matter how un-chic it may feel. At the Carlyle Hotel, for example, rooms have not been renovated in years but at least they are designed for normal-sized people with enough space for more than one piece of hand luggage and a bed. You may not be the coolest kid on the block but at least you do not have to wade through well-heeled mobs of media types scrambling to get into the city's hottest new hotel bar. Nor will you have to beg for service from the black-clad staff who are more suited to the runway than the concierge desk.
On her last trip to New York City, Liz Scarlett tried something new. She booked a room at the one-year-old, ultra-chic, Adam Tihany- designed Time Hotel, where every room is awash in one of the three primary colours. She spent the night in a "happy" yellow room, surrounded by the scents of citrus. But it didn't have quite the right effect.
"I felt like I was in a hospital room," says Scarlett, a Philadelphia shop- owner who comes to the city 12 times a year or more. "It was one of those typical New York hotels that concentrates too much on the design and ignores basic comforts."
The Time certainly isn't the only place in town setting new - and often outlandish - standards in hotel fashion. Take, for example, the W chain, Starwood's fast-growing boutique-hotel brand. At each of the city's three (soon to be four) new properties, just about everything in your room is for sale - including the mattress. Queen-size beds sell for $150 (pounds 96); leather wastebaskets for $90; and silver-...