Go Niche

WHEN WAS the last time a hotel made you smile? If the answer is never, then you haven’t yet come across the Inntel Hotel in Zaandam, The Netherlands.

Best described by ratings website Hotel Chatter as a Sylvanian Families house come to life, the 12-storey structure is indeed like something straight out of a fairy-tale, or a cartoon.

It’s as if someone had piled up a bunch of traditional Dutch houses, higgledy-piggledy fashion, in order to vacuum underneath.

Designed by architect Wilfried van Winden, it takes as its inspiration the traditional green houses of the Zaan region, from the lawyer’s high-eaved home to the factory worker’s cottage.

In among them all is the Blue House, inspired by a painting Claude Monet completed here in the late 19th century.

Inside, too, the rooms are designed so that guests feel as if they are staying in a little house rather than in a bland hotel room. As such it gives a definite physicality to the “home from home” theme so often spouted by the hospitality industry.

Opened earlier this year the €15 million hotel has 160 bedrooms. There is also a bar and restaurant, swimming pool and a wellness centre with Turkish bath and Finnish sauna.

Zaandam promotes itself as being the world’s first industrial zone and, as part of a current regeneration initiative, is seeing its traditional streetscapes restored along with its canals, warehouses and windmills.

Located beside the train station, the journey to the centre of Amsterdam takes just 12 minutes. Average room prices range from €110 to €220 a night, depending on whether you choose a craft worker’s cottage or one of the suites dedicated to the city founders.

* inntelhotelsamsterdamzaan dam.nl