Hotel libraries are being curated with the same care as art collections
A growing number of hotels are treating their book collections as seriously as their art, with literary consultants and designers choosing titles that reflect a sense of place.
Illustration: AI-generated image
At Brown’s Hotel in London, the Kipling Suite features a shelf of Rudyard Kipling’s works – fitting, since he wrote The Jungle Book in the building. That deliberate selection is the work of Lady Olga Polizzi, director of design and deputy chairman of Rocco Forte Hotels, who personally builds the collections for each of the group’s properties.
Polizzi says she always researches the locations of the group’s hotels and chooses books that reflect them, often by famous local writers, so guests can get a feel for where they are. At Villa Igiea in Palermo, for example, visitors will find The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, a novel widely regarded as capturing the spirit of Sicily.
In the Gulf, Shadi Moazami has turned the same conviction into a business. The founder of Chapter, a newly launched literary consultancy that works with hotels to build and programme book collections, spent years in hospitality communications and noticed that books were often an afterthought. She recalls visiting beautiful hotels with extraordinary architecture and art collections, yet the books were sometimes chosen for their covers or to fill a shelf rather than to enhance the guest experience.
Chapter’s process begins with understanding the hotel’s story, location and the people behind it. The team selects books to strike a balance between well-known and surprising choices, mixing recent releases with older classics and editions that look beautiful while also inviting real reading. Sourcing is complex, involving local and international booksellers, careful handling of Arabic titles around publisher and translation, and managing the Gulf’s heat, humidity and direct sunlight, which can damage older editions.
A strong regional voice matters, but so does openness. Moazami believes a hotel library should offer a strong sense of place while avoiding anything too literal. The Middle East has a rich history of storytelling and an international audience, so Arabic literature and regional voices should be part of the story, while the joy of a library comes from connections between cultures, periods and ideas.
Placement is also key. If a book is placed somewhere inviting rather than on an inaccessible shelf, people are far more likely to pick it up, Moazami notes. For Polizzi, the approach is more instinctive and practical: she tends to choose shorter books that guests can enjoy for half an hour. Both agree that books add a personal, comfortable touch that no digital experience can replace.
