Dining area seen from the access corridors to the bedrooms. Compare with the similar view of the Radisson and note the siilar use of the circle on plan

Bars, the second restaurant and Sports Bar, conference facilities and administration all open off the atrium and the designers have also taken the opportunity to rather shyly open the kitchen to view. The opportunity to indulge in some theatre has been grasped with timidity, and whilst the chefs seem to enjoy being on show as they go about their craft by comparison with the displays in restaurants in London or New York this is a very reserved effort, and is distanced from diners by the servery units. It works well at breakfasts as guests wait for omelettes to be cooked in front of them but is lost in the evenings. The chefs here are good too, so it is doubly disappointing not to be able to see them showing off their obvious skills. In fact the food in Poland in general was very good, and the hotels all surprised by the quality of their offerings, but none more so than here in Krakow.

Part of the restaurant area that was also busy was the wine tasting cum private dining room. Perhaps it is a hangover from a previous less indulgent regime, but the wine service in Eastern Europe is often very unsophisticated, and frequently local hotel groups are wary of doing anything other than selling wine by the glass. Ask for a bottle, particularly if you are on your own, and frequently receive some very disapproving looks. However here the wine culture has obviously gained adherents, and the staff took pride and pleasure in service.

Seating areas in the lobby (rollover)

After the atrium the bedrooms are almost disappointing. Whilst well fitted out the colour scheme seems heavy with a black outlined design motif in the carpet looking clumsy, and not lifting the dark wood of the furniture. On a grey August day typical of the wet Augusts we have endured in recent years the result was slightly gloomy with the room lighting struggling to lift everything visually. It all probably looked dramatic on the sample boards, and the drama was evident in the bathroom where the strong downlighters and generally higher lighting levels helped the sense of theatre along, but the scheme failed to create the same sense of style in the bedroom.

Part of being in a chain hotel is that there is always a small pile of sales literature in the room as the chain reminds you of its other properties in far off lands. This heap almost always sits alongside the telephone, stationery portfolio, on the writing desk. The clutter this creates is not only irritating to the user of the desk (and of dubious sales value I would think) having to be relocated before a laptop can be opened, but also helps to torpedo any sense of style the designer may be creating in the room. Putting the desk directly opposite the end of the bed also helps to create a visual compression of the space. Some hotel groups vary the amount of furniture in the room, and it may be that the villains are over prescriptive authorities enforcing abstract star rating standards, but most brands opt to go for brand standard rather than bothering with local ratings.

Technology presents the designer with challenges too. Here the heavy internet connector also sat alongside the other items, whilst the super sophisticated room phone needed a browse through an instruction manual before being able to make a call. I have previously battled whirlpool baths without instruction manuals, shampoo bottles with illegible eight point cream on brown type faces making it impossible to tell what they are (and it is not funny to discover that the reason the shampoo didn’t lather is because it was body lotion) and incomprehensible instructions as to how to access the internet, and surely for a chain the integration of all these pieces into one overall design that embraced functionality should be within reach?