If you would like to visit southern Ontario (specifically somewhere outside of Toronto) and stay in a cool design-forward lifestyle hotel, what are your options? The obvious ones are the Drake Devonshire, The Royal Hotel, and Wander the Resort in Prince Edward County (~2.5 hours east of Toronto).
Looking north of Toronto, The Postmark Hotel in Newmarket is a nice boutique hotel. But I can't think of any others and there aren't any lifestyle hotels in Muskoka. That's cottage country.
Moving toward the west, Elora Mill is a popular hotel and destination (with very high ADRs), but I would not call it a design forward lifestyle hotel. It's traditional luxury. So that's roughly it. Your only other options are trendy motels, such as the Beach Motel in Southhampton.
Now let's look specifically at the Niagara Peninsula (where we have proposed a design-forward lifestyle hotel). The three most popular destinations are Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and the Niagara Benchlands. And each year, this region receives over 13 million visitors, 30-40% of which are American.
But again, I would argue that there are exactly this many design-forward lifestyle hotels on the Peninsula: 0. The market is dominated by Vintage Hotels, which is not this.
But that's set to change next year. The Clayfield, which is part of Hyatt's Unbound Collection, is currently under construction across from Stratus Wines in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The design is by Sid Lee Architecture out of Montréal (which
Neat B and I were on the Bench this past long weekend. Hidden Bench Estate Winery was doing "Raclette on the Bench" and so, naturally, we went to check that out. We're suckers for Savoie-like mountain food. Anthony Bourdain was also right when he said, "you can never have too much cheese, bacon, or starch."
