Chocolate Boutique Hotel goes Michelin

Bournemouth’s Chocolate Boutique Hotel is celebrating after making it into the Michelin Guide for the first time. The famed guide, which lists 120 town and city plans showing all the best places to stay and eat, included the unique chocolate-themed hotel in its Great Britain and Ireland 2013 edition. “We only found out recently that we had been included,” says chocolatier Gerry Wilton, who owns and runs the hotel with his wife Roo and children Leoni and Polly. “We’re delighted - it’s a really great honour.” All hotels included in the Michelin guide are rigorously tested by a team of professional inspectors, who constantly seek out new places. The inspectors make anonymous visits to gauge the quality of products and services offered to ordinary customers. In the 2013 guide, the Chocolate Boutique Hotel is described as a “unique chocolate themed hotel owned by a chocolatier who runs regular workshops. Fittingly named, contemporary bedrooms come in browns and creams. The small lounge-bar features an automatic cocktail machine, which even serves ‘choctails’.” The Chocolate Boutique Hotel has also been named one of the six best novelty hotels in the world by The Sunday Times Travel magazine. And in a round-up of seven "quintessential girls" getaways’ published earlier this year, CNN Travel described the hotel and its chocolate shoe making workshops as ‘double whammy heaven’, saying it was one of the best "girliest hotel getaways" in the world.