Superlative hotels

Last week, however, while staying in the splendid Gravenhof outside Brussels, I realized that I have been lucky enough to stay in some excellent places. I started to think about what makes a good hotel for me.

The first thing is that the hotel should satisfy the basic levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs: like air, water, shelter, food.  Surprisingly, some hotels fail to make this grade. Once the basics are there, we can start talking about other things.

Quietness is important for me. I am learning to have a careful look round first and reject the room on the main street or next to the lift shaft. I was caught out in Orlando last year when I heard dramatic crunching noises in the night. I couldn’t work out where they were coming from until I discovered that my room was next to the ice machine.

Convenience is obviously important, in terms of both location and facilities. If I arrive jet-lagged after a long flight, I don’t want to have to spend 20 minutes working out how to turn the shower or lights on or off. I’ve never quite understood why so many hotels have a trouser press in them: have you ever felt the need to press your trousers in a hotel? Maybe it is like people drinking tomato juice on airplanes, when they normally wouldn’t touch the stuff. I would prefer an iron to prepare my shirt for the business meeting the next day.

It’s a bonus to experience good service. I had an extreme experience of this a few years ago in one of my favourite hotels, 88 Xintiandi in Shanghai. I had underestimated the humidity and ran out of clothes. Untypically for me, I sent them to the laundry and was impressed when a few hours later all washing had been returned, immaculately washed, ironed and even wrapped. The remarkable thing was a note on one of my socks which read: "This sock has a hole, should we repair?"

I like to go to unusual hotels with character, although they shouldn’t go over the top. The Malmaison in Oxford was converted from a prison. It certainly has character, but I felt uneasy sleeping there. It had a strange atmosphere and, for obvious reasons, the windows are rather small.

One of my favourite hotels is family-run and in Loutro in southern Crete, completely quiet and with a fantastic view of the small harbour. Loutro is only accessible by boat and is not really a place for the business traveller. It's where to go to recover from too much globetrotting.