Pictured above: Kevin with Salilla Atikarnbodee at the Salil Hotel Riverside in the heart of downtown Bangkok.

Here, Kevin Flanagan delves into a question that has bemused creative thinkers and famous celebrities for as long as hotels have been around. This article is based on Kevin’s episode ‘Could You Live In A Hotel?’ on The Top Travel Destinations podcast, which you can listen to HERE

I’m going to ask a question that really has been dominating my mind: Could I live in a hotel? Hotel living is not something new. People from artists to rock bands, millionaires to mega-stars have lived in hotels since time immemorial. But what about everyone else?  Would you like to live 24/7 with a concierge and room service? Is it the sort of life that would suit you? Me? 

Well, I found the answer on a recent trip to Bangkok, where I discovered that a life lived in a hotel has plenty of pluses and few minuses. And as a travel writer and podcaster, I found that very commodious, which is another way of saying I liked it. 

First, a very short history of hotel living. The Guinness World Records officially recognised Japan’s Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, founded in 705, as the oldest hotel in the world, while during the Middle Ages, various religious orders at monasteries would offer accommodation for travellers or pilgrims. From the mid-17th century, coaching inns served as a place for lodging for coach travellers. But the great hotels as we know them proliferated throughout Western Europe and North America in the 19th century. Luxury hotels, including the 1889 Savoy Hotel in London (where I recently sampled their champagne and oysters – yumm!) catered to an ever more-wealthy clientele and offered a life of refinement. 

Many notable people have lived in hotels. Coco Chanel lived in the Ritz in Paris, while Bob Dylan stayed in that most famous of ‘live-in’ hotels, the Chelsea Hotel in New York. And then of course, you’ve got the likes of Howard Hughes, the billionaire who kept himself in splendid and insane isolation in the Beverly Hills Hotel in LA, while genius Irish writer Oscar Wilde spent his last days in the Hôtel d’Alsace, famously remarking “I am dying beyond my means!”

So what is it about living in a hotel that would turn all these creatives on? I think I’ve discovered the reason. And it goes back to being isolated while surrounded by people. 

If you’re a creative person, you do need a certain loneliness to create your art. Look at JK Rowling, who created one of the greatest stories ever written – the Harry Potter books – while she was sitting in a busy coffee shop with a young baby in a buggy. She was a single mum and had just the price of a cup of coffee. There she was writing with one hand and rocking the buggy with the other, surrounded by noise and people. And it’s interesting that later, JK Rowling – by now a multi-millionaire – went and booked herself into a hotel for six weeks to complete the final Harry Potter book. So something about hotel living works! 

I am a professional writer now on my 11th book, while producing two podcasts a week and writing a weekly column for a national newspaper. What is the environment that’s going to make me creative? 

Well, I think I found it! 

While I was in Bangkok recently, I went on two long expeditions, one to Laos and then Vietnam. But I came back from that experience exhausted and sick. I had luckily booked one week in a hotel that became my home. The hotel was the Salil Hotel Riverside – beside the broad flowing Chao Phraya River in the heart of downtown Bangkok.

I got to know the Salil Hotel Riverside from my friend Diamond, who you may have come across in my other podcasts and writings. Diamond introduced me to the Salil Hotel Riverside and its owner Salilla Atikarnbodee, an impressive entrepreneur who created the hotel and its concept. It only opened its door in October 2022, as part of the new Salil Journey Riverside, but has become one of Bangkok’s most sought after properties. Salilla explained to me her approach to creating the hotel, as she showed me around.

Art is an important part of that experience and is close to Salilla’s heart. Throughout the hotel, Thai artists and decorators have created unique design motifs – surreal, magical images of land animals and aquatic creatures both actual and mythical. I loved her artistic touch which went right down to the design of the pillows I found in my room! I asked her how she got involved in building hotels in the first place.

“I always wanted to own a business since I was young,” she tells me. “After I got married, my husband and I discussed the idea of owning a hotel. So, we looked for land to develop our own property.”

What I liked about Salilla Atikarnbodee’s new hotel is its unique look. It is quite different from the other massive 5-Star properties that hug Bangkok’s riverside, having a personal touch and feel. I found it intimate and welcoming, a hotel that you can feel comfortable in – a real home from home.

Salilla Atikarnbodee created a hotel for the ages and this would be my day living there – a day that established a comforting rhythm. Around 9am, I’d get up and go down to breakfast in shorts and flip-flops, and the sky was always the most wonderful blue with the temperature hovering in the high twenties. 

Breakfast was in this huge dining area. You have everything you want. From noodles to Bamboo soup to eggs, to coffee, to fresh fruit drinks. And I would take two hours eating and draw up a plan for the day. What am I going to write about – to podcast about? 

Then around about 11am, I’d get up and walk outside. And again, walking into that oven like heat was just so healing for the body. I’d walk the local area where there is a buzzing local street market. And the street market has the most incredible food. You can get soups, you can get noodles, you can get fish and pork dishes all for a couple of dollars. I’d come back to the hotel, find a quiet place and do another two hours of work. And then go into the pool, have a dip. Lie, float, swim and just allow the ideas to percolate.

Evening would be a combination of food and a massage with one of the highly trained Thai masseurs. A massage that would stretch away any stiffness and prepare me for sleep. So, after a walk and perhaps a drink in the Salil hotel bar down by the river, I would retire and sleep in one of the most comfortable beds I have ever experienced.

Salilla Atikarnbodee explained to me her concept for the hotel – a concept that can also be applied to hotel living. She created a place where you can: Stay, Eat, Play and Relax, Work and Shop – all in a single location. I have to say that I experienced them all. By the time I left Bangkok, I knew that hotel living was for me. Perhaps not forever but for periods of creativity, rest, rejuvenation and reflection. I’m looking forward to going back and enjoying hotel life at the Salil Hotel Riverside. 

Visit thesalilriverside.com for more information and listen to my episode ‘Could you live in a hotel?’ on the Top Travel Destinations podcast here