Hotel Vermont

The Hotel

Hotel Vermont opened in 2013 on Cherry Street in downtown Burlington, two blocks from the Lake Champlain waterfront and one block from the Church Street pedestrian Marketplace. The property is independently owned by the Burlington-based BWC Hotels group and was conceived as a thoroughly local answer to the chain inventory that had dominated the city for two decades. The architectural shell is contemporary New England, slate, reclaimed timber, and Vermont marble; the interior package was assembled by sourcing every reasonable element from inside the state, including the Vermont oak headboards, the Lunaroma bath line out of South Burlington, and the wool blankets from Johnson Woolen Mills. The result is the most legitimately place-specific luxury hotel between Boston and Montreal.

The 125-room block runs across five categories. Cozy Kings hold a smaller footprint for shorter stays; standard Queen and King doubles run from 280 to 340 square feet; the Whirlpool Kings add a two-person tub positioned for the room's window line; suites stretch to 540 square feet with either a deeper soaking tub or a kitchenette and wet bar. The interior package leans white oak, soft grey wool, charcoal stone tile, and the city-view and lake-view inventory sits on the upper four floors. Stone-tiled showers run through every category; the bath amenities are Lunaroma's Vermont-made line; the bedding is the Hotel Vermont custom programme through American manufacturer Dewoolfson Down.

Food and beverage runs through two operations on the ground floor. Hen of the Wood is the Burlington outpost of chef Eric Warnstedt's flagship (the original sits in Waterbury), a farm-to-table operation that has held its position as the best dinner reservation in Vermont since 2003. The hotel placed it in the lobby as the property's signature gesture; the operating relationship is independent rather than concession. Juniper, the hotel's own bar and restaurant, runs the breakfast and lunch service through the day and an ambitious cocktail and small-plates programme through the evening, with the bar built around a Vermont spirits cellar and the menu sourcing through the hotel's network of local producers.

Service across the property leans warm and conversational rather than formal, calibrated to a guest mix that runs from foliage-season travellers, to Burlington-bound business, to a steady stream of return visitors who treat the hotel as their Burlington apartment. The complimentary bicycle programme is a real amenity (the bike path runs along the waterfront one block away); the no-charge pet policy with no weight limit is unusual at the four-star tier; the LEED Gold certification reflects rather than narrates an operating discipline. Hotel Vermont is listed in the Michelin Guide; it consistently ranks first among Burlington hotels in Conde Nast Traveler reader surveys; for an editorial Burlington booking, it is the only short-list answer.

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