A Cute and Colorful Little Hotel in Paris

Plus, the most in-demand golf course, Philippe Starck's lack of self awareness, payment plans as saviors of travel industry, and the return of San Francisco.

Apr 20, 2025

A war has been waging in the hotel design industry of late between the once unstoppable forces of minimalism and the resurrected ones of maximalism. For years, it seemed various hotel brands worldwide were colluding to ensure new hotel experiences were ones devoid of color and clutter. Now, personality and flair are back on the menu.

One of the faces of new maximalism is Martin Brudnizki, a Swedish architect and designer whose work at the London social club Annabel's in the late 2010s will likely be marked as the turning point. Now every new hotel project he works on draws attention. A year and a half ago, that was La Fantasie in Paris, about which I wrote the most scathing hotel review I’ve ever written. (It no longer exists, the website I wrote it for is defunct.) La Fantaisie was part of a slew of new Paris hotels that were leaning fully into the nascent desire for patterns, color, or adventurousness. They all—including a favorite of mine, Hôtel des Grands Voyageurs—got a write-up in The New York Times announcing the new era. The one in that piece that stood out to me, though, was L’Eldorado, which looked like an exciting update on the classic eccentric French boutique hotel.

I was back in Paris a couple of weeks ago and was staying with friends when I got a surprise email. One Key, the Expedia Group rewards program I’ve been brutal about, sent me a gift card for Hotels.com. I once used Hotels.com religiously as it had the best rewards program in the travel industry. But my usage has plummeted since it morphed into the laughably stingy One Key. The gift card, I’m guessing, was an attempt to get me back.

I opened up Hotels.com and as fate would have it, the first option was L’Eldorado, and at a price ($263.27) covered by the gift card. I traipsed from my friend’s place in Pigalle up and over to Batignolles where L’Eldorado is located. From the second I walked in I fell in love.

It may come as a surprise to some readers, but the French aren’t always stylish. In fact, as any of you who have stayed in a number of Paris’s small boutique hotels when on a budget, the French trying to be quirky or playful in design can yield particularly atrocious results. But at the Eldorado, it works.

The restaurant and one of the lounge areas in the lobby of the hotel

Walking through the hotel is a delight for those who appreciate non-stop visual stimulation. It’s decorated with a Victorian eye for textures and colors—walls are covered in House of Hackney velvet and linen prints—but a modern sensibility for space and sharpness. The 26 rooms are filled with furniture found in antique markets or custom-made and the bathrooms are a mix of marble and various shades of breathtaking glossy ceramics from Terres Cuites de Raujolles.

The public spaces include a sumptuous restaurant with hand-painted De Gournay murals, an intimate library entombed in velvet, and a large back garden with palm trees.

The hotel used to be a backpacker spot, but nothing except the laid-back demeanor of the staff remains from that era. In fact, I spent as much time marveling at how well they pulled off the Victorian aesthetic without being kitschy as I did on how much of a bargain it was given how, well, nice everything was.

DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES

Hypocrisy is perhaps too strong a word, but something about designer extraordinaire Philippe Starck’s interview with Dezeen lamenting how Milan Design Week and the industry in general are veering into luxury. “There is a very, very dangerous slip to luxe, a lack of ethics, a lack of culture, definitely, and too-fast rotation in the consuming of design because it's trendy,” Starck told the magazine. Later in the interview, Starck lamented the deleterious effects of fashion and luxury on something like design, declaring, “When somebody buys a skirt, it's fashionable during three months, six months [and] after she puts it in the garbage—it's ridiculous, but it's not a big problem, it's 300 grams of fabric … But when you make a sofa of four metres in the trendy colors today, it's more than ridiculous—it's toxic, because ecologically, four metres of steel and fabric and foam, it's a disaster. It's terrible, and that is happening now, it's growing in design."

Two of the largest yachts in the world, both designed by Starck for Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko

Now, Starck is absolutely correct. I’ve mentioned before the struggles in the hotel industry in keeping up with tastes that change at a far faster clip than in decades past, and how quickly a place seen as revolutionary or unique is replicated. And this acceleration is immensely wasteful. But it’s a bit ludicrous for Starck—you know, the guy who has designed some of the largest yachts in the world as well as a number of luxury hotels and residences—to be pooh-poohing luxury design.

The tourism industry in Greece, and Santorini in particular, is a bit nervous about the year ahead. In Santorini, much of the fear is a result of the dozens of earthquakes that hit the island over the last few months. While officials insist they’ve ended and it’s safe for visitors, bookings have slowed. Buried in this Travel Weekly story about the island’s angst is a general sense on the part of some Greek tourism folks that stories about crowds and overtourism at its most popular islands are taking their toll. While June and September are now popular, the once-peak months of July and August are slower.

The first 3D-printed train station is…ugly

I think we’ll start to see the effects of the decline in foreign tourism to the U.S. (and if there’s a decline in outbound travel as Americans tighten their belts and the weaker dollar makes foreign travel harder) come June. I’ll be interested to see how that plays out, because, on the one hand, it could finally rein in what I think have become ridiculous costs to traveling within the U.S. (particularly hotels). But the same cost pressures most industries are facing right now in terms of materials and labor also affect the travel industry, so it may be impossible to lower prices. A sort of death spiral could ensue. The airlines will be particularly interesting to watch. They have to think in longer time spans than a year or two because it takes so long to build up routes and so on, but if the decline in demand is a precipitous cliff, who knows?

ALTHOUGH. Given more than half of attendees are using payment plans for tickets at this year’s Coachella, the new obsession with the Klarnafication of modern life could mean American spending won’t decline all that much.

The Amazon River is becoming a red-hot destination. Abercrombie & Kent’s boat is expected to launch later this year, joining existing fleets from AquaExpeditions and Delfin. Now, andBeyond has announced its own yacht for the Peruvian portion of the famed river which will launch next year. The renderings look pretty standard, although I do find outdoor pools on these boats kind of funny because the mosquitos and intermittent rain make it nearly impossible to enjoy as an amenity. There’s plenty of room on the Amazon, but I do feel like more and more of these boats will remove the uniqueness I felt when taking this trip earlier this year.

Add Norway to the ever-growing list of destinations adding or increasing tourist taxes. The country is considering enacting a three percent tax on overnight stays and it could go into effect as early as this summer.

Who knows how organic or true it is (if we’ve learned anything from the Baldoni-Lively saga it’s that social media sentiment is easily manipulated), but I have seen a lot of posts about how nice it is to visit San Francisco now after just a few months of clean-up efforts.

Southwest is getting rid of yet another policy that made it stood out. Travel credits will now expire after one year. The airline also announced that its new extra legroom seats will debut on May 1.

Panama City has declared its era as a rowdy spring break destination is over after a season that saw shootings, misbehaving crowds, and drug seizures. I won’t be surprised if more and more cities look to Miami Beach’s success in curbing spring breakers and want to do the same. But if even Panama City—notorious for how wild spring break can get—wants to be done with it, I do wonder if there will be anywhere left for people to go wild.

For years, I felt the most obnoxiously American in Paris when I went for a run. Its citizens weren’t used to it, and so whenever I’d run by somebody they’d act like they’d just been blown past by a speeding car. (I’m not a fast runner.) And you would almost never see a French person out for a run. That all changed during COVID, when going for a run was often the only way you were allowed to go any distance from your house during lockdowns. And now the sport is one of the most popular in Paris, as this Wall Street Journal piece notes. Marathon participation is setting world records, Strava uploads have quintupled since 2019, and, since this is Paris, brands are scrambling to make sure they’re the ones everybody wants to wear while jogging.