ARC The Hotel

Class: First

Style: Modern design

Rooms: 112

Ottawa’s first design hotel is officially named ARC The.Hotel — but rest assured, it will not be the subject of any clever wordplay here on stylehotelsweb. The name, so irresistible to pun-happy journalists, is intended to evoke associations with the Canadian capital’s high-tech industry, this hotel’s target audience. Arc is a tech-friendly alternative to the existing hotels — either old-world opulent or boring and businesslike — in this stately and serious city.

“Stately” and “serious” might actually be understatements, or too polite a way of conveying the point that while Ottawa is the political capital of Canada, it is by no means the cultural or design capital. Hotels in Ottawa know their market, and cater to politicos, statesmen, bureaucrats — not the audience you would expect to see chatting up the aspiring models and actresses in the lobby bar of a Schrager hotel.

That said, while Arc is not your bureaucrat’s business hotel, it is also no Studio 54, and no Philippe Starck showcase of chic. The design is striking, certainly modern, but more centered on comfort and function than pure fashion. The lobby’s limestone floors and dark wood fittings set a tone of restrained beauty. Furnishings are simple, though not exactly minimal, and clearly meant to be used, not admired from a distance. The warm palette and richness of texture create a feeling of cozy envelopment, a contrast to the coldness of many high-design hotels.

The guest rooms are no less attractive and inviting, and their high-speed internet connections and laptop-sized safes drive home the point that this is a tech entrepreneur’s hotel. Design, again, is chic, but hospitably so — the beds are attractive, in soft grey Egyptian cotton, but clearly meant to be slept in. Deep Roman tubs replace the peep-show showers of more avant-garde design hotels.

Service is outstanding, as attentive as that at any big business hotel, though the staff are perhaps a bit more stylish in their all-black Holt Renfrew uniforms. It would be easy to awake after a night here thinking this could be Toronto or Montreal. That such a hotel exists in Ottawa is a welcome surprise, and may go some distance in rehabilitating the city’s less-than-exciting reputation.