If you book a room in a boutique hotel hoping to leave with a trendy fluffy bath towel that you like or a wonderful abstract design canvas that would be so beautiful in your bedroom, you have the wrong notion of this type of hotel. Indeed, the boutique hotel is to a hotel chain, what a small trade store is to a big box store; it hopes to offer its visitors an intimate atmosphere and personalized service in a trendy decor and an urban living environment.
The first boutique hotels emerged in the 1980's. Primarily located in the United States, these hotels did not take long in generating excitement and the trend quickly spread around the world. Unlike the larger hotel chains with its uniformity and standardization, boutique hotels are trying to compete by means of original features. A stay in a boutique hotel offers you a unique experience, different from the common and anonymous guest status of a chain hotel, and where you can enjoy all the benefits suited to your needs. What gives the boutique hotel its unusual character, is a willingness to be independent from the biggest names in the hotel industry but also a desire to participate in the enhancement of its host city. To do this, the owners favor the historic character of the building, which, when possible, it matches the modern trend of the urban environment.
Hotel Oui Go! is the first boutique hotel in downtown Trois-Rivières and is located in the Balcer building. It was once a fur shop that was later replaced by a branch of the Bank of Montreal. Located not far from the river, the building constructed in 1909 was restored, with keen consideration of its’ past, in the historical part of the second-oldest French-speaking city in America. While retaining the charm of this centennial building, the modernization of the edifice allows the boutique Hotel Oui Go! to offer its’ guests a stay in a decor that is both chic and relaxed in the heart of a dynamic city where tourists are, year after year, more and more numerous.
Melissa Doucet