On my recent trip to New Zealand, one hotel left me awed. It was Hotel SO in Christchurch. It was not high class but it was high tech + high touch. I think whoever designed it is brilliant. The rooms may be small but with well-placed mirrors and space saving features like a fridge doubling as a nightstand, it felt more cozy than cramped.
The bed is slightly higher than average so luggage could be stashed underneath. There are no windows in most of the rooms. One out of the three nights I spent there however, I got a room with a window but it was facing a wall so there was zero view and zero sunlight. Funny I didn’t miss it at all. The lighting system in the room was great. The hotel took the science of sleeping into the lighting design for every room. This impressed me the most.
The first thing I noticed was a blue neon glow under the bed. Blue light is supposed to help you sleep. Then there are brighter colored lights located in the shower. With the bathroom’s opaque walls, it becomes one giant mood lamp when turned on. Couples may want to try red for a romantic mood, says the manual. There’s also the option of blue, violet and green.
The lights also act as an alarm clock. I set the alarm clock to wake me up at 4am and with less than 4 hours sleep, I thought I’d surely oversleep but I managed to get up 5 minutes before 4am – amazingly without a single alarm going off. The lights woke me up! It also had that magical ability of putting me to sleep once I set up sleep mode. I swear I didn’t know about these lights and what they could do until the last day.
I’m not one who falls asleep easily in unfamiliar places but I slept like a log at Hotel So. I wished they were in every city in New Zealand but no, only in Christchurch for now.
