It was back in the 1980s that "boutique" started to be applied to hotels, as far as we recall, and actually it's a pretty apt adaptation of the term's more common use in reference to small independent clothing and accessory stores that, by definition, tend to be stand-alone businesses carrying a limited amount of exclusive designer inventory in a stylish, intimate, and often in some way "themed" setting.
As far as hotels go, it was markets like London, New York, and San Francisco where the boutique-hotel concept was born, where limited space, a prevalence of interesting and quirky historic buildings, a wealthy clientele, and a general sense of chic all contributed to the rise of the non-chain (or pretending to be non-chain) property, where the focus is on attentive personal service, opulent and characterful design and fixtures, and a sense of uniqueness. The typical boutique hotel has less than 100 rooms and may not have many more than a handful, making it the antithesis of the typical Las Vegas megaresort, where the room has traditionally been considered a necessary evil to deal with the inconvenience of having to sleep at some point, but hardly the focal point of your Sin City vacation.
Until not so many years ago, the typical rooms available in Las Vegas could range from a cheap motel, to a long-stay apartment, to a room in a hotel-casino, at the highest end, an opulent suite of some kind. The latter might come equipped with a wealth of hi-tech gadgetry, more hot tubs than your entire extended family could wallow in, and perhaps even a personal butler, but it's unlikely that the room would have much individual character, regardless of how much was spent on furnishing it. It's impossible to introduce the kind of attention-to-detail and variety that a family-run establishment can offer to 20 guests in a place that has thousands of rooms and a nightly turnover of hundreds upon hundreds of people, so things tend to end up pretty cookie-cutter, albeit sometimes a hand-baked cookie made with the most rarefied organic chocolate chips known to mankind and garnished with edible gold. In other words, you might well have experienced luxury, but seldom "character," other than of the fun-but-kitsch "atomic" or Roman or circus-themed variety.
That's how it was for a long time, but now things have changed, even in Las Vegas. The first boutique hotel in this market that we became aware of was the Artisan, which is a classic example of the genre. This hotel, located just east of the I-15 off W. Sahara, started life back in 1979 as a Travelodge but was reinvented in 2001 when the owners carried out a complete remodel and began hanging reproductions by famous artists all over the place, including on the ceilings. Today it has a funky gothic vibe, reminiscent of the Addams Family house, but with leopardskin and not as many zombies. There's a working stone outdoor-style fountain in the middle of the hotel lobby, lots of plants, that old-school studded leather seating, lashings of statuary, and the de rigueur sprinkling of arty types, drag queens, and hookers sipping martinis around the wooden-paneled bar as the night progresses. No two rooms are quite the same and they're all opulent in an upscale-bordello kind of way. Oh, and there's no gaming. We love the place!
These days, the Artisan has a sister boutique property in Rumor, the LGBT- and dog-friendly non-gaming hotel across from the Hard Rock (itself almost a qualifier in the "boutique" category, but not quite), while the concept is spreading to the Strip in the likes of The Cromwell and SLS. In a world that is increasingly homogenized, we can't help but applaud those venues that stand out from the crowd with a splash of individualism and personality and we welcome the kind of intimate service that is as much integral to the boutique-hotel concept as are the one-of-a-kind works of art and locally sourced organic bathroom products.
As an aside, Las Vegas is now also home to a thriving boutique revival in the original sense, with all kinds of funky clothing and accessory stores like Patty's Closet, Glam Squad Shop, Pink, Haute Chix, Best Kept Secret, Bad Attitude, and plenty more, many of which carry merchandise created locally, not to mention all the vintage stores (primarily, but not exclusively, located around the downtown area). So, in addition to experimenting with a boutique hotel, definitely check out the original fashion scene in Vegas next time you're at a loose end -- you might well be pleasantly surprised with both.
