Rooms Hotel Kazbegi

The Original Rooms Hotel

Before there was a Rooms Hotel in Tbilisi or anywhere else, there was this one: Rooms Hotel Kazbegi was the first project of the chain, built in the Caucasus town of Stepantsminda as, in its own description, a mountain resort hotel that combines open-fire friendliness with a considerable degree of luxury. It is a specific and deliberate pairing, informal enough to feel like a mountain lodge, polished enough that the comparison stops there, and the balance between the two is the whole reason the format went on to become a chain.

Why It Works

Both the interior and exterior were designed by Rooms' own designers, Nata Janberidze and Keti Toloraia, and the result is the brand's familiar minimalism applied to a genuinely dramatic setting: pared-back rooms built around the view rather than competing with it. The hotel runs to 156 rooms, an unusual scale for somewhere this remote, backed by an indoor pool and spa that read as a real amenity rather than an afterthought bolted onto a trekking lodge. Wild horses graze on the lawn below the hotel, and bicycles are kept on hand for guests who want to cover the surrounding valley at their own pace.

Why This Location

Stepantsminda sits beneath Mount Kazbek, a dormant volcano, within sight of the Gergeti Trinity Church perched on its hillside, which is as close to a defining image of highland Georgia as exists. The town is close to the Russian border, remote even by Georgian standards, and that remoteness is less a limitation than the point: quad bike tours and heliskiing are both arranged from the hotel for guests who want the mountains at full intensity, rather than viewed from a terrace, while the church and the volcano remain visible for anyone who would rather just look.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxe

• Vibe: the original Rooms Hotel, mountain-resort luxury with open-fire informality

• Rooms: 156

• Best For: travellers who want a genuine mountain base with real spa comfort, not just a trekking lodge

• Our Favorite Thing: the view of Gergeti Trinity Church and Mount Kazbek from the grounds

• Dining: restaurant, bar, and room service

• Amenities: indoor pool, spa and wellness centre, hot tub, sauna, and a fitness centre

• Attractions: Gergeti Trinity Church, Mount Kazbek, heliskiing and quad bike tours

A Design Hotel in a Genuinely Wild Place

What separates Rooms Hotel Kazbegi from most mountain lodges is that it was designed as carefully as a city hotel, by the same team responsible for the rest of the chain's look, and still listed among international design-hotel circles for it. Minimalist rooms, exposed materials, and an emphasis on the view are easy to describe and harder to execute somewhere this far from the usual supply chains, which is part of why the hotel still gets written about years after it opened rather than being treated as a one-season novelty, the usual fate of a remote hotel once the initial press cycle around its opening fades.

Built for More Than One Kind of Traveler

The hotel splits its appeal fairly evenly: heliskiing and quad bike tours for guests who came for the mountains at full speed, and an indoor pool, spa, and fireplace for guests who would rather watch Mount Kazbek from somewhere warm. At 156 rooms, with meeting and banquet facilities besides, it can absorb a tour group or a conference without losing the lodge atmosphere that made the original Rooms concept work in the first place, which is no small thing for a hotel this far from everywhere else, closer to the Russian border than to any other sizeable town.