Breakfast in bed
Room service – especially breakfast – is one of the great joys of a hotel stay and now the Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge plans to recreate it with its “breakfast in bed” doorstep deliveries within an eight-mile radius of London. Wake up to freshly baked pastries, juiced-up healthy options or brunch-minded lie-ins, including Scottish smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, and granola with Greek yoghurt. For celebrations, there’s also cake and champagne, delivered in some postcodes by branded Berkeley bicycles.
• From £15 a head, the-berkeley.co.uk
Arts and crafts
Kit Kemp’s hotels – including London’s Ham Yard Hotel and Covent Garden Hotel, and the Whitby and Crosby Street in New York – all feature her particular modern style, a brilliant juxtaposition of pattern and colour, folk art and crafts. Recently, more of Kemp’s designs have become available to buy, including furniture, crockery and especially textiles, from luxurious headboards to throws and cushions. The latter include a collaboration with the prison charity Fine Cell Work.
• Cushions from £105, firmdalehotels.com
Waxing lyrical
From luxury hideouts in Bali and Thailand to a palazzo in Venice, Aman Resorts aren’t cheap but their newly released candles are much easier to justify, bringing a little bit of hotel spa atmosphere into your home for just a fraction of the price of staying there. Made with suitably Aman-ish black wax, each candle comes in a hand-blown black glass in three aromatic scents, and has a burn time of 40 hours.
• £65, shop.aman.com
Earthly delights
In normal times, the Newt in Somerset, wraps you in a sense of luxurious wellbeing with its beautifully designed gardens, restaurant, spa and fabulously proportioned rooms. While we’re waiting for hotels to fling open their doors again, you can join the Newt in its virtual programme of seasonal tours and workshops, along with kits created by their chefs and gardeners, delivered to your home. There’s an apple-grafting workshop with four different apple trees sent beforehand by post, as well as a bottle of the Newt’s end result from one of the varieties: the No 3 Yarlington Mill cider. And it’s all wrapped up with an online session from expert Andy Lewis.
• £95, thenewtinsomerset.com
Highland fling
With its tartan walls and eclectic art collection, the fabulous Fife Arms in Braemar is a contemporary take on a typical Highland hotel. And it has some very stylish online offerings. For a taste of Cairngorms comfort, curl up in some cosy and supersoft grey cashmere bed socks from Johnstons of Elgin.
• £69, shop.thefifearms.com
Perfect scents
Based around a biodynamic farm, Heckfield Place in Hampshire has brought a similar rigour to its own line of Wildsmith toiletries. There is a full range of skincare available, but the handwash and lotion set has a scent that is grounded in the hotel’s ethos and location, and contains linden blossom, camomile and cedarwood. In addition, all the containers and packaging used are fully compostable.
• £50, wildsmithskin
Local heroes
Overlooking the beach at Porth Mawgan in Cornwall, the Scarlet and its family-friendly sibling, Bedruthan, next door, share a belief in showcasing local crafts and artists. The art on show in the hotel is also for sale through its online shop, Create Cornwall, as well as brass planters, hampers with Cornish-made candles, blankets, and even short stories by local writers.
• Brass planter, £17, createcornwall.com
Tea for two
The French hotel brand Mama Shelter brings a certain urban chic and well-priced conviviality to the scene. The unlimited Sunday brunch at its hotels, including the one in Shoreditch, east London, has an enthusiastic local following. They take care with the details, too, including the hotel crockery. The Latin Mug from the Los Angeles-based designer Julia Luke has simple lines and a classical profile, as well as a sense of fun.
• Mugs, £10 each, mamalovesyou.com
Bon appetit
Simon Rogan’s gamechanging hotel in the heart of the Lake District is sending out some of its most desirable condiments for those wanting to up their culinary game. All made in L’Enclume kitchens, hampers include the hotel’s signature, suitably smoky Coal Oil, meadowsweet and woodruff sugars and elderflower vinegar, rounded off by both garlic salt and salt-and-vinegar salt, plus a stylish and covetable L’Enclume tea towel.
• Foodie Hamper £40, simonrogan.co.uk
Making history
Scent is a potent weapon for a hotel, and Cliveden House, leased from the NT, has created a fragrance to channel Nancy Astor, one of its former owners. With jasmine harking back to Astor’s childhood home in Virginia, alongside wild mint and lily, it is used around the hotel and in its spa products, including bath salts and body oil by organic skincare range Oskia.
• Nancy Reviving Antioxidant Body Oil, £63, clivedenhouse.co.uk