Das Triest, 12-15 August 2005

** Hotel & history

This impressive hotel in the heart of Vienna, within only minutes walking distance from the museums and the pedestrians area of the city, lends its name from Trieste, the harbour city to which the horse coaches drove to from Vienna, back in the 17th century.
Originally, Das Triest used to be the stable for the horses riding the stage coaches between Vienna and Trieste. With the introduction of the steam trains, this coach service became abundant, leaving this classical building to the hands of another party.

In the 1990's architect Peter Lorenz took the challenge to turn the disused Stadt Hotel Trieste, as it was known before, into a design hotel, and called in the help of interior designer Sir Terence Conran, who already received lots of credit for designing shops and restaurants in London, Paris and Tokyo, amongst others.
His briefing was simple: make it modern, make it a design hotel - but not "too design".
After all, Vienna remains one of the classical historical cities in Europe, where you would expect classy, posh, overdone luxus, red velvet and gold toilet seats...

Das Triest was Conran's first hotel to design. Till 1995 he worked on the hotel, which opened its doors in 1996.
Inspired by the hotel's history, and the connection with the harbour city of Trieste, Conran based the interior design on the interior of a cruise ship. Round windows, round mirrors, natural colors (blue, green, with red and orange for the small and necessary contrasts), stairs that look like they lead you from one deck to the next - even in the entrance hall of the hotel you would expect captain Stubing to welcome you!
Rooms are decorated with design elements. Not specially designed for this hotel, but purchased with good taste. All items match flawlessly, albeit with the rooms, or with the other items in that room.
Anothyer feature in the rooms are the photographs on the walls - not your standard hotel room painting of a vase of flowers OR (like you might expect in Vienna) pictures of Strauss or Mozart... The photographs are all part of a permanent exhibition, showing Vienna as it looks from the rooftops.

A second permanent exhibition in the hotel's hallways, definitely not less interesting, is formed by a collection of photographs taken along this historic route from Vienna to Trieste.

In 1998, this hotel introduced a free wireless computer network - even for the cheapest rooms. It was the very first hotel in Europe with this unique service - and we think there are still not enough hotels that provide the same service. Normally you'd have to pay a ridiculous fee, sometimes up to 10-15 euro for 24 hours.
Being the internet junkies we are, this feature alone would already be a reason for us to visit this hotel again!

Another great feature of this hotel is the staff's appearance philosophy: no stiff costumes, high hats, ties or bending people, but dynamic, jeans-and-Puma-shoes wearing people! As explained by the hotel's general manager, Mr Stallmajer, "you don't need a costume to provide good service, and we want to prove that".
And there is enough proof that Das Triest does very well, knowing that people like Robbie Williams, David Bowie, Simply Red, Kylie and Danii Minogue and Hugh Grant keep coming back..!

** Room 601 / Standard Room
Room 601 is a standard room, and one of 72 spaceous rooms in the hotel, yet still providing all the necessities you may expect from a 4-star hotel such as Das Triest. A queen size bed, a mini bar, trouser-press, a TV with (nice feature!) integrated VCR, telephone, airco and heating systems, simply everything you need!

** Room 311 / Junior Suite
The junior suite is extra spacious, has an extra bed, extra seats, and offers a nice view over, and entrance to the hotel's garden - which, by the way, is another nice feature of the hotel. Try to find quiet a garden in the heart of a city like this...
Das Triest offers 4 rooms with a terrace, 3 rooms with a gardened terrace, and even 3 rooms with a private garden!

Junior Suite

Junior Suite

** Triest Suite
The Triest Suite does not look like a hotel room at all, unlike the most expensive suites we've seen in other hotels!! This is really one big comfortable living room, with a large dining table, some great design elements, such as a mood screen on the wall: lit from the inside, changeable color schemes, which are then reflected by the multi-facet artpiece in the middle of the room.

** Conference Rooms
There are two conference rooms, "Lipizza" (79sqm) and "Piber" (51sqm). A great advantage of these rooms are the large floor-to-ceiling windows, drowning you in daylight, instead of putting you away in a cellar far under the hotel, like we've seen before!

** Restaurants
Das Triest is home to an awarded restauarant, "Collio".
Unfortunately, at the moment of our visit, the restaurants were inaccessible due to renovation works. The breakfast buffet was temporarily served in both conference rooms. We hope to have this additional information ready for you as soon as possible.

** Café / Lounge Bar
The hotel is favourite with creative people such as DJ's, photographers, musicians and people from ad agencies. The lounge bar is famous all over and puts out its own cd collection. "Another night at the triest - urban lounging" is a cd you can listen to all day, and buy in the hotel.

What we noticed...
- Flowers, flowers, flowers (and flowers)! Fresh and colourful flowers all over the hotel give Das Triest a very nice "home" touch. We're informed that the hotel spends 70,000 euro (US$85,000) a year on fresh flowers.
- Rooms are checked 3 or 4 times a day, I believe. A nice gesture is the chocolate (delivered during the evenings) with next day's weather forecast on it.
- One of our laptop computers was connected to the power plug near the bed, and when I came back after a day in Vienna, the computer was unplugged again, leaving the battery as uncharged as it was in the morning. We'll have to check if this is part of the hotel's environment-friendly program, or if one of the housekeepers just needed that power plug (instead of the 8 others) for the vacuum cleaner ;-)
- On an un-used shelf in the bathroom I noticed a long, dark, curly hair (and believe me, it's not mine). Unfortunately, after the 3rd night, the hair was still there.

Conclusion When you come back from the city, with sore feet, exhausted and drenched in history and culture, it's a pleasure to feel the relaxing, cosy and calm atmosphere and the simple but tasteful design of Das Triest. You won't see a pretentious, florid interior, and you won't be attacked by Mozart or Strauss music coming from every corner - you'll just enter an oasis of peace and quiet, you'll feel home. The world should have more hotels like this. Highly recommended MH / CW / 2005