Hollmann Beletage

Class: Comfort

Style: Modern design

Rooms: 25

When a hotel like the Hollmann Beletage opens, skeptics reach for their calculators. Spacious rooms, high modern style, in the center of old-town Vienna, all at a relatively modest price — it couldn’t possibly add up, could it? Probably best to leave that question to the accountants. However they manage it, the Hollmann is a rare beast: a small and intimate boutique hotel, almost a bed-and-breakfast, but a thoroughly modern one, with a location that’s just about unbeatable.

Somehow they’ve managed to carve out some fairly sizeable rooms in this old townhouse. With built-in cabinetry and the occasional clever headboard, sort of halfway dividing an open space into a sleeping area and a bath area, they’ve made the most of what they’ve got. The décor is minimalist with a soft, human edge, a disciplined orange palette bringing some focused liveliness to the interiors, and while the rooms are more efficient than luxurious, they’re more than comfortable enough.

Maybe the decisive factor is the vision of Mr. Hollmann himself, a chef and a hotelier who brings an amateur’s passion to the Beletage. Over the past few years the hotel has grown from nine to twenty-five rooms, and added a small spa and gym and a proper restaurant in addition to the little breakfast room. For five-star opulence you’d have to look elsewhere, but for personality, for character, it would be hard to top the Hollmann.