After four years as the favourite UK hotel group of Guardian and Observer readers Malmaison has to settle for the silver award, but it is still competing strongly.

The style-driven group was at the forefront of the boutique revolution that swept Britain's billets when it opened its first hotel in a converted Edinburgh seamen's lodge in 1994.

Since then it has added properties, offering a total of 700 rooms, in Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham, each in central, idiosyncratic buildings, including a church and a warehouse.

The key to its success is a pursuit of the ultimate in design and comfort. It's as if it has isolated the cause of the stuffy, over-polished, awkward feel of many top hotel chains and keeps constant watch to ensure it allows none of it to creep in.

You can have as much or as little luxury as you want. Each hotel has a brasserie with affordable French cuisine and wine, and at least one private room for champagne parties.

If you want to go the other way, however, you can try the meals or signature cocktails served at the bold, sophisticated bar, or eat room service meals while watching The Simpsons on cable TV or listening to a library of CDs.

Each Malmaison has a gym to help sweat up an appetite, while the Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle have 'Petit Spas' with relaxing, restorative therapies.

The group has already renovated the Edinburgh and Glasgow hotels, and has added new suites to all its hotels.

It is opening a new hotel in Charterhouse Square, Clerkenwell, London, in November, and has just acquired the lease to create another in the old jail section of Oxford Castle.

Malmaison doesn't sit still, so its guests can do so - in up- to-the-minute comfort.

· The group has double rooms from £125 a night.