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I am very conscious when writing Reviews for HotelDesigns that I am not writing travelogues. However neither can one separate off location from the interior or exterior design. Many designers seem to produce interiors that reflect their own predilections, stylistic leanings or particular foibles. Design of hotel interiors is more complex than using taste, creative judgement or knowledge of suppliers and I try to reflect this complexity in the Reviews.

The interior designer is a crucial interface between the operational team and the architectural team. The specialist knowledge that characterises the work of experienced hotel designers is marked by a deep understanding of the variables that a hotelier grapples with in establishing a successful identity for an hotel. His interior must be stylish of course, but also easy to maintain. It must be fashionable but long lasting too - this is not a fashion exercise except in a few high end city boutiques or perhaps in chains such as Missoni. Few hotels will generate the return to allow the almost annual changes of interior that must be undergone to maintain the fashion edge such an hotel must have, so for most chasing fashion is not an option.

Above all there must be a sense of place and perhaps a sense of theatre too, to give the hotel an identity that sets it apart from cloned brand hotels. Branding of itself does not deny the opportunity to create that sense of place but unthinking and uncreative design management does.

In writing about an hotel like Little Kulala, the Review these images are from and which I am in the middle of writing now, demands an appreciation of place because place itself constrains the design. So too does the operation and the philosophy of the operator, in this instance the same operator as the previous Review of Damaraland.

When I visit an hotel to write a Review I usually take over 200 photographs. I always walk around the hotel outside, and I always stay two nights because it is only on the second night that you get your eye sensitive to what you are looking at and can get through the 'shock of the new' to see the design and operational intent.

The photographs have to express the viewpoint on the design that I want to express, but also have to contain standard images so designer can make comparison visually between Reviewed hotels - so there is always a shot of a bedside unit for example. Inevitable this means many of the photographs never get used. These unused images (many of them not very good it has to be said) are added to the Gallery in the DesignClub. Whilst they may not be good photographs judged as photographs they may contain important information about the interior or the =design, and it is for this reason I do not discriminate but add all imagery.

So there you are. Not travel writing, not abstract design criticism but judgement on the effectiveness of the design against the operation. This is design not as a fine art but judged as to its ability to deliver functional but stylish solutions. OK?