Luxury hotel chain to introduce 'minibar for the mind'

Luxury hotel chain Morgans Hotel Group is to follow the lead of several cruise lines by introducing a program to ensure that the minds of its guests are as well exercised as their bodies.

Morgans, which owns high profile hotels Sanderson and St Martins Lane in London, New York's Mondrian Soho and the Mondrian Los Angeles, among others, announced January 25 that it would partner with The School of Life, an organization that runs programs and services aimed at increasing personal fulfillment.

The first product of the collaboration will be a "Minibar for the Mind," a box available in five Morgans properties which is described as a "midnight feast of intellect, inspirations and ideas."

Contents include a box of 250 conversation starters, a volume of columns written by faculty at The School of Life, "Reading Prescriptions" designed to evoke moods of relaxation or seduction and a notebook and pencil set.

The set costs $56 (suggesting, perhaps, that minibars are extortionate whatever you put in them) but guests who don't want to shell out for the product will also be treated to a "Daily Aphorism" with their turn down, with insights from some of the world's great literary minds.

Over dinner, guests at Morgans' Hudson (New York), Ames (Boston) and Sanderson restaurants will also be offered a Conversation Menu, which features "conversation prompts" to help diners participate in a chat that "moves beyond the domain of the weather and the price of gas."

School of Life faculty members will also be conducting a series of talks in Morgans' hotels, covering topics such as conversation, reading, travel, romance and culture.

Exercising the mind as well as the body is a concept which has historically proved very popular on cruise ships, with lines regularly offering cultural enrichment activities that range from acting classes to history lectures.

Celebrity Cruises, for instance, offers guests lectures from educational tourism company Smithsonian Journeys while Holland America's ships offers the "Explorations Book Club" which hosts discussions on books selected before the ship departs, in order to give guests enough time to read them.

Last week, luxury line Silversea unveiled its 2011 enrichment program, with some 200 guest speakers lined up to deliver lectures on everything from wine tasting to international relations.

http://www.morganshotelgroup.com

http://www.theschooloflife.com/