This Designer's Hotels Score With Colorful Charm

The story of one of the world's best-known boutique hotel groups began as success stories usually do: out of a need to improve something. "My husband Tim and I really hated staying in hotels. It was always the same meaningless experience. At least in most hotels," Kit Kemp recalls of the birth of Firmdale Hotels. "We had something in mind that was different from that." The British designer never doubted for a second that it would work - even though both her and her husband had only experienced the hotel industry from a guest perspective before opening their first boutique hotel in 1985.