Tings Is Not the best hotel in Lisbon. Just a nice place to stay.
You don’t need papers from the best Hotel Management Schools to run a hotel in Lisbon.
When we decided to leave Denmark to start-up a small business the best idea we could come up with was making a small hotel. Not because we’re experienced in hospitality – but because we already played with the idea of buying a small hotel in Hanoi back in 1995, and because it’s easy to start-up and run. You basically only need two things:
Rooms and space you can furnish & Good and friendly hosts aka Staff
As Annette is an interior designer with a style our friends and our international guests in Kathmandu like, the furnishing part isn’t a problem. And if you remove all the science from the hotel management schools, the rest is basically down to one thing: To be a good host, that treat the guest like you would treat family and friends at home. After a lifetime with a lot of social activities for family and friends and with hundreds of employees, teaching the staff these basic things can’t be rocket science.
How will Tings Lisbon be?
We have traveled around the world the previous 20 years as Business travellers, back packers, leisure travelers, spiritual travelers, weekend travelers, culture travelers etc. And having stayed in more than 1,000 Guest houses, Inns, Bed and Breakfasts, Air BnB, hostels, in door, out-door, couch surfing, 5 Star Business hotels, Super Luxury Places, Out-of-category-places or private homes – you name it. We may not be experienced hotel entrepreneurs, but we are very experienced hotel guests. Still we could only name a handful of places we really loved – none of them had any stars or a category we could remember. There have been nothing wrong with all the other places we’ve stayed in. But the places we liked, had something that is very important to us – and it wasn’t TV, Air-con, Hair Dryer, Mini Bar, elevator or any of the other services you need to get Stars: They only had comfortable spaces where we relaxed, met and exchanged experiences with fellow travelers, or just did nothing. Just nice and cozy places. And that’s the kind of place we have created in Kathmandu, and the kind of place we are working on in Lisbon.One of the many charmless & expensive Multi-Star-Hotels in the world.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etaXxcvxGDE?rel=0&controls=0&showinfo=0&w=640&h=360]
No two travelers are the same – all are different. So will our rooms at Tings Lisbon be.
Our house in Rua da Senhora do Monte is still under construction. So we can’t show you a room. BUT Annette has been living in all the rooms the past many months and has – reluctantly – shared her sketches. [gallery ids="22033,22034,22035,22036,22037,22038,22039,22040,22041,22042,22043,22044,22026,22027,22028,22029,22030,22031,22032" type="slideshow"] The naked rooms already have a kind of life depending on the light, view, shape and size. This ‘life’ inspirers Annette to creates individual ambiances for each room. The rooms materialze along the way when she gather and compile all the things and ideas she has bought and brought from our travels and adding things she produces herself here in Portugal, Nepal and elsewhere. Its work in progress. We have loads of original art from all over the world that will add to the ambiance in the rooms. We just brought lots of stuff from Nepal, we have more stored away in Denmark and God knows where…Creating the interior for Tings Lisbon is not only like a huge 3D puzzle. It’s a 3D puzzle with bricks a spread all over the wold.
[gallery ids="23143,23144,23147,23148,23150,23151,23152,23153,23154,23155,23156,23157" type="square" columns="4"]Annette has been driving me crazy – but now everything makes sense. It’s all in the details 🙂
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