Business travelers often land in Amsterdam en route to different destinations in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. However, it’s impossible to resist a 24- or 48-hour layover in Amsterdam when the city center is an easy commute from Schiphol Airport. With so much to do in so little time, a five-star luxury property may not be a priority if you’re planning to spend most of your time exploring the city, shopping, doing a food tour, or taking a cultural deep dive in the Museumplein. For these reasons and more, the Avani Museum Quarter Hotel and the Corendon Amsterdam Schiphol Airport are perfect for a layover or as a base camp if traveling to Amsterdam for a conference.
The Avani Museum Quarter Hotel feels like a cozy pied-a-terre even for an overnight or 48-hour stay. The 163-room canal-side hotel is nestled into a picturesque residential section of the Oud-Zuid neighborhood. Amsterdam’s current lifestyle trends and the Stedelijk Museum inspire interior design. An intermingling of brick, light woods, geometric lines, and floor-to-ceiling windows in many places frame the interplay of Dutch architecture through the centuries and the canal just outside.
Bright, cheerful patterns in the carpets, tiles, and soft furnishings in public areas are nods to the country’s best-known 20th-century artists, including Piet Mondrian, Anni Albers, Gunta Stolzl, and Sophie Taeuber. Guest rooms and suites are dressed in the Dutch Mid-Century modern palate, including terracotta, mustard yellow, and deep browns. In-room amenities include Chromecast TV, in-room yoga mats, a sound system with Bluetooth speakers.
The Avani Museum Quarter Amsterdam has several meeting and conference rooms on the property, along with a boardroom with picturesque floor-to-ceiling views of the canal and row houses. The latest audiovisual equipment and planners are on hand to organize work lunches and mixers, coffee breaks, and other business gatherings. Other on-site facilities include an open 24-7 AvaniFit gym with weights and cardio machines a breakfast dining room that offers a handful of made-to-order dishes and a buffet with an impressive number of vegetarian and vegan options. A cheerful grab-and-go pantry and a living room area with a fireplace and books add extra comfort to the property.
Off the clock, the hotel’s location has much to offer visitors who embrace the “live-like-a-local” style of travel. Cross the bridge over the canal, and you are in De Pijp, a neighborhood best known for the Albert Cuyper Market, running Tuesday through Saturday along shopping street PC Hooftstraat. The market is lined with vendors selling a festive and hearty cross-section of Dutch comfort food and Asian and African street food. Numerous arts-and-crafts booths are interspersed between the food vendors, brimming with interesting souvenir alternatives to refrigerator magnets and mugs. At night, the stylish up-and-coming neighborhood milieu is further defined with several pocket-sized restaurants and trendy wine bars tucked into alleys and side streets.
A ten-minute walk through residential streets in the other direction gets you to Museumplein, encompassing the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum, and Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art on the other. Vondelpark’s walking and jogging trails, along with prime people-watching, are also minutes away on foot. Trams and busses to other parts of the city, including the Jordaan and the Nine Streets, are readily accessible from different points of Museumplein and Oud Zeid.
Built into a former Sony office building, the Corendon Amsterdam Schiphol Airport embraces aviation and Dutch culture in a way that allows it to steer clear of familiar business hotel tropes. Schiphol Airport’s design and flair lend themselves to being “the gateway to Europe” and elsewhere. The Corendon Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, meanwhile, concentrates on being a “Gateway to the Netherlands,” communicated clearly through decor from Dutch design firm D/DOCK. Beginning with its “The Windows of Holland” tagline and the atrium lobby’s airport hangar feel, one immediately gets a sense of place. The surroundings integrate Dutch cultural heritage motifs, maritime scenes on furniture and carpeting, and wall accents with Delft blue china patterns.
The property scores extra coolness points through the integration of actual aircraft as well as recycled aircraft parts. A former KLM Boeing 747-400 with 30 years of service is parked in its backyard, while the rooftop Mondi Skybar 747 features a bar partially crafted from airplane wings and live music from the house band fronted by Juni Juliet. The vibe, cocktails (rum-based Dushi Vibes and Samphire Breeze, with the hotel’s own branded gin), and imaginative bar snacks and plates such as vegetarian options Pimientos (peppers) de Patron alla Paria and Mushroom Hasa, beef Lomito Masa, and Don’t Be a Jerk Chicken) taps into the Dutch’s historical relationships with Curacao and other Caribbean islands.
Just off the lobby a few yards from the restaurants, guests can take advantage of a cinema showing current movie releases. The Corendon Bar & Bistro, which general manager Evegny Vreijling stresses is popular among residents working in the area, encompasses a grab-and-go concept stocking sandwiches, salads, and sweets made with traditional Dutch ingredients and produce from the area. The sit-down dining restaurant features a well-maintained buffet stocked with a good selection of traditional European breakfast staples. Later in the day, the buffet is Mediterranean-inspired and includes Japanese, Thai, and Indonesian dishes interspersed into the mix.
Other conversation-starting features include its visual nods to sustainability: 60% of the existing furniture in the revitalized rooms is carried over from the previous hotel configuration. Rooms are stocked with Antwerp-based fashion and lifestyle brand SCAPA luxury skin and haircare amenities, and a few edible surprises such as tins of stroopwafels and packets of classic Dutch hard candies alongside the Nespresso machines. The hotel’s spirit and themes carry over into its many boardrooms and meeting rooms The hotel’s in-house events team is ready to help plan meetings, mixers, training sessions, presentations, lectures, and lunch and dinner events of every size, from core executive group to a large delegation or staff.
