Cultural DNA Distilling Modern Boutique Hotel

Recently, the visiting team of Hotel Elite just visited and experienced this hotel. A minimalist lobby and several exquisite restaurants and bars, together with 33 natural and ecological rooms, quietly nestled alongside the waters of the Ping River, accompanied by dense green forests and the whispers of birds on the balcony in front of the house. It‘s impossible to ignore these spacious and comfortable rooms, super fivestar bed linens, top internationally renowned brands of toiletries, plus top showers and bath facilities, which all surely meet the standards of an international positioning.

Bangkok architect Boonlert Hemvijitraphan is originally an active practitioner of the Asian minimalist style, and he has a lot of experience in the design of modern Asian villas. This is his first time designing a hotel. Finding the ”soul” of this project is more important than completing the building itself. Fortunately, the hotel‘s investment owners quickly reached an agreement with the architect to collect the excellent heritage of regional culture, extracting materials from nature, history and aboriginal life to build a true cultural boutique hotel. Chiang Mai, the cultural city of Thailand‘s oldest kingdom, connects Northern Thailand with neighboring countries and has a wide range of ethnic cultural diversity and rich traditions of life and customs, providing Raya Heritage Hotel with endless design material.

On the first day of our stay, the visiting team happened to catch up with the hotel‘s art exhibition opening of the local famous folk craftsmanship. The folk sculptors, weavers, printing and dyeing artists and ceramic artists of different ages gathered together to tell the story of the ”Heritage”, performing their skills, making the quiet hotel a lively place. Such activities undoubtedly increase the respect and love of the guests for the hotel. The power of culture make people feel close with trust and understanding. 

Of course, the boutique hotel also needs to select a unique and topgrade catering project . The KHU KHAO restaurant at Raya Heritage Hotel is designed with local travertine and logs, decorated with local folk bamboo and linen dyeing, and then with elegant and exquisite dishes made with 100 local rice, vegetables and fruits as organic ingredients, that make you love and linger.

Like most modern boutique hotels, Raya Heritage Hotel also has the necessary accessibility features: lounge, meeting room, swimming pool, gym and spa. The design of these projects is exquisite, especially the LAAN CHA open tea bar facing the stream on the second floor. The eight or nine private tea storage wooden barrels that the designer has found were turned over and hung upside down on the ceiling, instantly turning into lighting device. The girl working in the hotel said that her elders have also used such tea buckets for generations and they are still in use today, and her talk brought a cordial feeling. It can be seenthat Boon‘s ”heritage design” has been deeply rooted among the staff. Indeed, the function setting of a boutique hotel can vary from hotel to hotel, depending on local conditions; in this field, small is better than big, and sophistication is better than small, once something‘s installed, it must make the hotel the most popular and best place to stay, otherwise it is better not employed, and the Raya Heritage Hotel has been very successful at this.