hospitalitystyle.com

(January 2009) posted on Tue Feb 17, 2009 EST

Boho meets Tango: Axel’s gay-friendly hotel in Buenos Aires combines hip digs and maximum opportunities to mingle.

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The spectrum of colored light that illuminates the windows of the Axel Hotel Buenos Aires isn't just a design statement-it's a marketing message. Inspired by the gay pride rainbow, the use of diverse hues both inside and out works as an insignia for the newest link in the world's first hotel chain aimed at the gay community.

Axel features an open and spacious layout that's designed to reinforce the idea that guests don't have to hide who they are. Founder Juan P. Juliá Blanch says he started Axel to fill a void in the market-too few upscale properties catering to gay travelers. His first hotel, in Barcelona's trendy Gayxample district, was chosen as best gay hotel in the world by The Out Traveler. "We wanted the hotel to have a mix of style between Latin and European architecture, so we partnered with local architects Azpiazu y García and Íñigo Hernández Tofé, a Spanish architect who had been working on other Axel Hotels," Juliá says.

Like its sister hotel in Spain, the $6 million Axel Buenos Aires (in that city's bohemian-chic San Telmo neighborhood) features haute décor any well-traveled, fashion-forward guest can appreciate. Stylish furniture by Charles & Ray Eames, Mies van der Rohe and Eileen Gray offers relaxing reprieves, while the small groupings allow intimate conversations.

Artistic lighting components, such as the bright white spires twirling up from the floor in the Axel Bar & Chillout, contribute to the adventurous night-life atmosphere. But the lighting system also works to change the hotel's mood to match various events, like the casual Axel After Office, the boisterous Friday Predance or the elegant Axel Tea Time.

Axel's public spaces make it easy for guests to mingle. For example, the one-top tables in Axel Kitchen look out toward the Axel Sky Bar. But it doesn't get any more see-and-be-seen than the hotel's courtyard, where guests can sunbathe on the deck or take a dip in the glass-bottom pool and be observed from the restaurant and hotel rooms above, as well as the stairwells and reception area below.

The guest rooms are studies in white-white walls, white bedding, white ceilings and white floors, all designed to pull a 180 on the forlorn gay hotels of old. Designers instilled added sex appeal in the rooms' baths, in the form of oversized showers with transparent walls.

Next up for Axel is a hotel in Berlin, slated to open later this year. Like its predecessors, that property will feature the combination of boho and Bauhaus in a tolerant atmosphere that Juliá says is the cornerstone of his brand.

"We never think in terms of stereotyping when we develop an Axel project," he says. "We try to think what our guests would like to find in this particular property. If we achieve this goal-as I believe we have done in our Axel projects to date-that line disappears and you can attract the gay community without pandering to it."

--Val Hunt, associate editor

PHOTO CREDIT: MARSELO TARSITANO, BUENOS AIRES