Bo Bo Hotel

The self-described first boutique hotel in Buenos Aires, four-year-old Bo Bo—named in honor of American writer David Brooks’s coinage for “bourgeois bohemians”—launched the city’s design hotel boom and remains the purest expression of the form. The seven unique rooms each follow a different design theme (minimalist, Art Deco, techno); the restaurant serves a fusion of Argentine, French, and Asian cuisine; and the cleanly geometric ground-floor restaurant shows rotating art exhibits. Personal staff attention and a combination of old and new—the hotel is housed in an 85-year-old renovated mansion (modernized with a sleek glass-and-steel elevator)—keep the place from feeling too coolly chic.

Insider Tip: The Argentina suite, with its glass-roofed treehouse view and Jacuzzi bath, is the most luxurious, but the hotel’s street—like most of Palermo—has grown increasingly busy. The rooms in the back are quieter.

Room to Book: The Minimalist room isn’t nearly as sparse as it sounds—and has a private terrace on the hotel’s quiet back.