Go Niche

As befits a hotel so associated with creativity, New York’s Algonquin has a way with innovation. The oldest operating hotel in NYC, it was the first to have electronic key locks and the first to welcome single ladies travelling alone.

Over the years Gertrude Stein, Simone de Beauvoir and Maya Angelou have all stayed here. It was also here that Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe wrote My Fair Ladyand here that the annual Thurber Prize for best book of American humour is given. Harold Ross secured funding for his New Yorkermagazine from a fellow poker player here, and Orson Welles honeymooned here.

These days the hotel is the home of the €10,000 martini – also known as a Martini on the Rock. It comes with a single piece of ice in which sits a diamond from the hotel’s in-house jeweller, Bader Garrin. And you can forget about boring old three-for-two offers. Instead the idiosyncratic hotel offers discounts to pet lovers of up to 20 per cent. The deal includes a welcome gift from the hotel cat. It also has a “writer’s block” rate, offering tortured artists with nothing left to say a 25 per cent discount, in the hopes that the hotel’s literary heritage might kick-start the creative process.

algonquinhotel.com