College Hotel, Amsterdam

It may be called the College Hotel, but Amsterdam's most stylish new lodging is for a strictly postgraduate, designer crowd. Opened last year in a former school (hence the name), the hotel has retained the building's grand 19th-century brick facade. Inside, while the look is cool (the public rooms are lacquered a glossy black, and the reception desk is leather and mother-of-pearl), the staffers are very warm, and there are more than enough of them to help you. That's because the property is a collaboration between ROC-Amsterdam—Holland's most prestigious hotel school, which supplies the eager-to-please employees, who are also students—and the Stein Group, which owns the Durley House, in London, and the sophisticated Gran Hotel Son Net resort, in Majorca. Beyond College Hotel's lobby, a hallway with a soaring ceiling leads to a lavender-and-orange-walled bar/lounge scattered with patterned velvet chairs and couches. Here, and in the adjacent airy white restaurant (once the school's gym), old-moneyed Oud Zuid (Old South) locals mingle with in-the-know travelers. Gourmets are raving about executive chef Schilo van Coevorden's interpretation of such Dutch classics as Zeeland oysters and, for dessert, wentelteejes (sugar bread and caramel ice cream). Guests who value modern amenities and high thread counts will be pleased too: all forty rooms and suites have flat-screen TVs and sheets made by a company that manufactures shirts for Gucci and Prada. Doubles from $285 per night. 1 Roelof Hartstraat; 011-31-20-571-1511; thesteingroup.com/college.