Private Mansion Hotel

The French word "hôtel," when it entered English in the 1640s, referred to a mansion, not an inn. The meaning of "inn" did not emerge until 1765. To this day, Paris still retains the term "hôtel particulier," specifically referring to the private residences of wealthy families.

The Marais district was the most prestigious area of Paris during the reign of Henry IV. In 1604, the king allocated land around the Place des Vosges for sale to lawyers, doctors, and other professionals to build their homes, with regulations prohibiting alterations to the exterior facade style. After Louis XIV, the nobility gradually moved to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and the old mansions fell into the hands of wealthy merchants. By the 18th century, Father Thomas Bouillero, a priest at the Church of Saint-Gervais, wrote something to the effect that residences once inhabited by princes and nobles had now become rental properties.

The wealthy merchants of America's Gilded Age also loved building grand mansions. Francis Silas Rodgers, a cotton merchant from Charleston, built himself a Second Empire-style house in 1886, with hand-carved marble fireplaces and chandeliers shipped from Italy. This house was converted into a hotel over 18 months in 1998 and is now called the Wentworth Mansion Hotel, with 21 guest rooms. Glenmere Mansion in New York State was built in 1911 by industrialist Robert Goelet, who fell in love with a particular Italian villa style during his travels in Europe and had it replicated upon his return, with 35 rooms and several thousand acres of surrounding land all belonging to him.

Ireland

Ballyfin Demesne

Ballyfin Demesne in Ireland belonged to the Coote family in the 1820s. It lay abandoned for many years before reopening as a hotel in 2011, with only 20 rooms on 614 acres of land.

In Stockholm, there is a hotel called Ett Hem, housed in a 1910 building with three floors and 12 rooms. The owner invited designer Ilse Crawford to renovate it, preserving the original Scandinavian antique furniture.

In 1988, Indonesian Adrian Zecha originally intended to buy a piece of land in Phuket, Thailand, to build a vacation home. When he saw a coconut grove on Pansea Beach, he had a sudden idea to build a small hotel instead. The bank refused to lend him money, saying 40 rooms was too few—at least 500 rooms would be appropriate. Zecha and his friend Anil Thadani put up $4 million of their own money, and the room rates they set were five times those of surrounding hotels. This was Amanpuri, the first Aman property.

Aman has no front desk, no lobby, no elevator. Each property's design follows the local environment, with accommodation in standalone villas featuring private pools, and staff-to-guest ratios that can reach four to one. There is a term called "Aman junkie," referring to repeat guests who stay at several Aman properties a year, reportedly accounting for half of the clientele. In 2025, Aman has 36 properties in 20 countries.

Zecha, now in his nineties, is still working on new projects. In 2021, he collaborated with Japanese entrepreneur Yuta Oka to open Azumi Setoda, located on Ikuchijima Island in Japan's Seto Inland Sea, using a 140-year-old residence of a salt merchant family. Kyoto architect Shiro Miura was responsible for the restoration, preserving materials such as wood, stone, and earth, with 22 rooms. Zecha said that the design approach of traditional Japanese architecture is not top-down, but rather listening to the voice of each material.

The U.S. boutique hotel market was valued at $33.3 billion in 2023. The global boutique hotel market was approximately $25.2 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach around $50.5 billion by 2034, with an annual growth rate of about 7%. Boutique hotels typically have 10 to 100 rooms, with over 70% of guests being leisure travelers. Boutique hotels in Paris account for more than 20% of the local hotel market share.