Travellers' Checks | The hottest hotel and resort openings for 2019, from London to New York
- Muji Hotel spreads its ‘anti-gorgeous’ wings at home in Tokyo while Singapore braces for the return of its iconic Raffles, at long last
Having launched in Shenzhen and Beijing this year, the Muji Hotel brand will be bringing its rather opaque “anti-gorgeous, anti-cheap” concept home in April, when the 79-room Muji Hotel Ginza opens in Tokyo.
At the time of writing, the Muji Hotel website, which says reservations will open in March, was still showing only a teaser image. One of Tokyo’s biggest hotel openings of the year will be a reopening of sorts, when the late lamented Hotel Okura, or what’s left of it – after being mostly demolished and rebuilt – returns as the Okura Tokyo in September.
Japan’s Hoshino Resorts will be bringing its flagship Hoshinoya brand to the mountains above Taichung in June with what it is touting as “Taiwan’s first luxury hot spring resort”. With 50 rooms, each with a private outdoor bath, Hoshinoya Guguan should be open for reservations from April.
Urban Resort Concepts’ 116-room, Ole Scheeren-designed PuXuan Hotel and Spa should be opening in Beijing, on Wangfujing Street, in January, while closer to home, Japan’s new Prince Akatoki brand will open its second hotel, in Guangzhou, later in the year.
The first Prince Akatoki will open sometime before that in London, although exactly when is unclear. The new hotel will be a rebranding of The Arch Hotel, near Marble Arch. The nearby Cumberland Hotel, which is directly opposite Marble Arch, declared itself the largest hotel in Europe when it opened in 1933. It will be relaunching in the spring as the Hard Rock Hotel London, playing up its connection to “former residents” such as Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder.
