The best part about business travel, is all the places you get to visit. The worst part about business travel, is never seeing the places you get to visit.
Red-eyes, meetings, fatigue. The coolest city in the world could be honking outside that window. Yet frequent business travelers, rarely get to see it. Luxury is nothing more than a white bathrobe, Netflix and a frozen Snickers.
That is unless, you stay at a place like Hotel Lucia in Portland.
Hotel Lucia Brings The Best of Portland to Their Guests
At Hotel Lucia, that Snickers gets replaced with a pint of Salt & Straw ice cream. Thick and creamy favorites like sea salt and caramel or honey balsamic strawberry with cracked pepper, give guests a taste of Portland’s most craveable treat. Locally sources, very foodie and very Portland.
It’s not just ice-cream that signals Hotel Lucia’s ability to anticipate guests needs. Hotel Lucia’s team know, it’s not about them.
The Best Place To Stay in Portland
Hotels crave loyalty. The goal of most hotels is to send travelers away, remembering their brand name. The team behind Hotel Lucia, part of the Provenance Hotel family, thinks a little differently. They know travelers are really staying “in Portland.”
So at Hotel Lucia, Portland is the focus. What’s been carefully curated for you to remember, to experience is local Oregonian art, food, culture and yes craft beer.
Art Collections at Hotel Lucia
At Hotel Lucia what guests will remember most is likely the art. Curated to reflect regional artists, the majority of which are Oregonian.
J.D. Perkin’s haunting ceramic figure Untitled #5 does exactly what the artist intends.
“For me, an important object is something that through the force of its physical grace evokes an emotional response from the viewer.” — Artist J.D. Perkin
Crous and Uranus and Gaea #3 by Michael Spafford sits just behind Perkin’s work.
Across the room, Jay Backstrand’s Shadows and Whispers #2.
Imposing yet inviting Bathers in Milford #2 by Lester Johnson sits with guests in the lobby.
The regional art curated for the recently renovated Hotel Lucia lobby is indeed provocative, haunting work. Evidence of the human experience that invites contemplation.
The anchor of the entire Hotel Lucia art collection is the world’s largest black and white photography collection from Pulitzer prize-winning, native Oregonian, David Hume Kennerly.
A glorious, disarming body of work in perfect counterbalance, to the rest of the art on display.
Pulitzer Prize-Winning David Hume Kennerly
Hotel Lucia worked with Kennerly himself to curate the collection. Walking the halls of Hotel Lucia is to remember stories of the great visionaries of our time. Mohamed Ali, Hugh Hefner, Harvey Milk.
Diane Sawyer sticking her tongue out at the camera in the youth of her 20’s. Ansel Adams with fingers thrust through lensless glasses. A young Jodie Foster flashing a vulnerable smile. Soviet Premier Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev mugging in a moment of humor.
This is no ordinary hotel art collection. Hotel guests have the luxury to relive stories and memories of the world’s most, powerful iconic people, in unguarded moments.
Craft Beer Happy Hour at Hotel Lucia
A trip to Portland is not complete without trying one of Oregon’s craft beers. With 105 breweries in the metro area, Portland is America’s most popular city for craft beer.
Once again, Hotel Lucia brings the best of Oregon in-house. A room key and photo ID is all guests need to understand why Portland has become a destination city for craft beer lovers. Hotel Lucia’s daily happy hours tap into Portland’s rotation national mentality by regularly changing the craft beer on offer.
Come early evening, the lobby of Hotel Lucia morphs into a chill, relaxed space. Exhausted guests have to travel no further than the lobby.
Even better yet, Portland James Beard Award-winning Chef Vitaly Paley is right next door at Imperial. Imperial took home 2015’s Restaurant of the Year award from Willamette Weekly and 2016 Best Hotel Restaurant in the West award from Sunset Magazine.
Portland’s food scene is one of the best in America. Lush Willamette Valley provides chefs with top-quality regional ingredients for elevating food traditions, from all over the world. The perfect example, Imperial’s fried chicken with barrel-aged house-made hot sauce and honey direct from the roof of Hotel Lucia.
Yep, that’s right, Hotel Lucia has honeybees on the roof! Hotel Lucia partnered with local bee savior and honey maker Damian Magista of Bee Local Honey. It’s good for the environment, bee population and Chef Vitaly Paley’s team, who use the honey in dishes and cocktails.
Bee Local Honey also makes an appearance in the room’s honor bar, stocked with local offerings. Portland honey, local olive oil, Jacobson Salt, even a kitschy little bottle of harvested rainwater. In other words, Hotel Lucia even makes it easy for guests to pick up souvenir gifts that personify the best of Portland.
Speaking of the rooms, or rather, room for everyone.
A Hotel for Introverts & Extroverts Alike
Introverts who travel for business, are particularly prone to missing out on the cities they visit. At the end of a day starting at the airport, moving to cabs, rental cars or public transit, followed by hours of business meetings, we’re done.
That hotel room itself starts looking mighty attractive. After a craft beer in the lobby, dinner next door at Imperial and a gallery hop through the halls a calm retreat awaits.
Hotel Lucia is in a historic building, the rooms are cozy and quite. The ultimate salve for the traveling soul. From Simmons Black Label mattresses to get this, Rosewood furniture, relaxing at Hotel Lucia is the new easy button. Instantaneous on arrival.
Hotel Lucia enables guests to make the most out of a trip to Portland. By bringing the best examples of regional art, food, craft beer and green thinking into the hotel, they provide a direct conduit for guests to the Portland community.
At ALOR, we’re travelers. We take our hotels seriously. For us, this is a personal endorsement, not an advertisement. By anticipating and prioritizing guest needs, Hotel Lucia prioritizes the art of hospitality. For this reason, it is one of the hotels we love.
Enjoy a photo tour inside Hotel Lucia.
This week, ALOR will be rolling out more articles featuring The Best of Portland. Our focus, local Portland businesses, owners and their team.
