Hip, Gay-Friendly Hotel Chains
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A smaller, more regional chain that has also captured the fancy of gay travelers in recent years is San Francisco's Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which runs 28 hotels and inns in the Bay Area, with properties in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Marin County, and the Napa Wine Country (there's also one property, the Hotel Angeleno, in the tony Brentwood section of Los Angeles). A great hallmark of Joie de Vivre is that the company offers a tremendous range of prices, with both affordable budget options like the Commodore and the Phoenix, and more upscale ones such as Pacific Heights' snazzy Hotel Drisco and the Embarcadero's stunning Hotel Vitale. In the middle, you might try the Hotel Rex (themed after the literary salons of the 1920s and '30s) or the charming Spanish Colonial-inspired Hotel Adagio, with its terrific Cortez restaurant. But all of these places offer plenty of value and distinctive decor.

One of the originators of the boutique-hotel trend was Ian Schrager, who is still well-known today for having opened such shrines to high design as New York City's Royalton, Miami's Delano, and the Mondrian in West Hollywood. He designs his hotels with Philippe Starck, and they are all now branded as part of the Morgans Hotel Group. Other Morgans hotels worth checking out are the Hudson and Morgans in New York City, the Clift in San Francisco, the Shore Club and soon-to-open Mondrian in Miami, and the St. Martins Lane and Sanderson hotels in London.

Even some of the world's larger hotel chains have developed intriguing boutique-style properties over the years. Many of the properties in the Marriott's Courtyard group are fairly typical mid-price business-travel hotels with interchangeable looks, but Marriott has also installed a number of its Courtyard hotels inside distinctive, historic buildings with cool, urban locales. These properties tend to offer comparatively reasonable rates along with rooms, restaurants, and even bars with distinctive decor and amenities. Some great examples include the downtown Courtyard by Marriotts in Pittsburgh, Providence, Omaha, San Diego, Denver, Columbus (Ohio), New Haven, New York City, Philadelphia, Nashville, St. Petersburg, Fort Worth, and Houston, as well as the Boston Tremont Courtyard.

Marriott's Renaissance chain, which is more upmarket than Courtyard, also operates a number of relatively smaller properties with swank, boutique-y ambiences. In New Orleans, there's the Renaissance Pere Marquette and the Renaissance Arts Hotel - the latter occupies a 1910 warehouse. Opened in 2005, the Renaissance Las Vegas pays homage to the Rat Pack with stylish retro-fabulous rooms and a super restaurant, ENVY Steakhouse. The hotel has no casino but is within a short drive of several that do, and it's located right beside a monorail station. Renaissance also has several distinctive historic properties of note, among them the Renaissance Mayflower in Washington, D.C., Renaissance Cleveland, Renaissance Pittsburgh, Renaissance Providence (to open in March 2007), Renaissance Battle House in Mobile, Ala., and the Renaissance St. Louis Suites.
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