Mark Sabino's Wellness Check: An Unexpected Airport Hotel Respite

Zurich is seemingly becoming a Soft Serve favorite.

While I’ve been to plenty of hotels pools and prioritized checking out all of the amenities when available, just serving what I like would be a disservice when there are so many well-traveled, high taste friends of SS.

Mark Sabino is a New York City-based product designer and cultural critic. (He just offered his thoughts for my last story about how taste impacts our love lives). And, his ads for Mark Sabino Designs are better than anything I’ve seen from an agency or in-house team out there right now.

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When traveling, he said one of his biggest priorities is that the area he chooses to stay is walkable and affords him easy access for things to do and see. “I hate feeling trapped in a hotel room, and having even a convenience store or something nearby helps with peace of mind in case there's some type of problem that randomly arises,” he told me over email.

I love functional recommendations most — beyond simply, “this is good.” Mark’s is by definition an unexpected, hidden gem. He says:

“The thing that I keep returning to, that sticks out the most in my memory isn't even a hotel I planned on booking. A few years ago, on my way back from Italy, I had around a 12 hour layover in Zurich because my flight got delayed for some reason. Rather than trying to survive in the terminal for that long, I bit the bullet and just booked a room for the night in the Hyatt Regency connected to the Zurich airport. I'd be able to get a decent night's sleep before the long flight home, and I wouldn't have to worry about my stuff getting stolen, or finding an outlet to camp out next to.

I expected the American standard of a hotel airport. Dank, cigarette perfumed, dirty rooms. But I got the exact opposite. Clean sheets, fluffy bathrobes, free slippers, and all the swag I could ask for in one night of sleep.

The amenity I remember the most though was the large, central outdoor area in the center of the hotel, connecting the rooms to restaurants, shopping, and a Design Within Reach in case you needed an impulse Noguchi coffee table for your trip home. This sprawling middle ground turned out to be a series of hiking trails which snaked around mini hills, all with the real Swiss mountains looming in the background. There were plenty of well-designed chairs to relax on, as well as a large fountain at the peak.

This outdoor area is my favorite hotel amenity ever. An emphasis put on relaxing, fresh air, and going for a quick hike all contained within an airport hotel. Nothing like this could ever exist in America because our values just aren't the same. This wasn't a destination resort, it was quite literally made for travellers in transition from one place to another. Business class commuters on their way to the next country. But yet it felt so overwhelmingly human that it's forever stuck with me.”

You can follow Mark here on Twitter, here on IG and subscribe to his newsletter here. You can also buy his clothes. This bike jersey I wear constantly is from him.