The proprietors of these hotel-museums have no doubt that their displays are key to luring discerning travelers. Clifford Atkinson, the general manager of the Chambers, calls the property’s art collection the "critical success factor," ranking it above both the quality of service and the Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant. "We attribute approximately 25 percent of our business specifically to the Chambers art experience," says Atkinson, who adds that the benefit is mutual, with exposure in the hotel boosting the value of the $7 million collection.

Boutique establishments were the first to adopt the art-hotel model, but now the big chains are jumping on board to gain an edge in a crowded field. "There’s more competition for something that captures the spirit of a place and gives more of an identity," says Disend, noting that art makes a hotel "a destination in itself, a place you would go, the way you go to Marfa."

One chain currently rebranding itself in this way is Le Méridien. Eva Ziegler, the senior vice president of the parent company, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, has said that the goal is to take on other art hotels and go them one better by making the program interactive. Three years ago Ziegler, who manages marketing and operations for Le Méridien, hired Jérôme Sans, the cofounder of the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, and now the director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, in Beijing, as "cultural curator" for the chain’s 110 international locations. Sans has aestheticized nearly every aspect of the hotels, hiring artists to design key cards that "unlock art" by providing guests with free admission to participating local museums and commissioning other talents to create environmental video projections for the hotels’ entrances, which the hotel’s Web site claims are not simply lobbies but "transitional portals," and even infusing the rooms with a signature scent. "We are . . . a global platform for artists to get their works exposed in a new way to a wider audience," says Ziegler.

For proof of the importance of art to hotel brands, one need only speak with Fred Kleisner, the CEO of the Morgans Hotel Group, which in 1984 opened what many consider the first "boutique" property, Morgans, in New York, whose coolly Minimalist interiors were designed by Andrée Putman. The firm’s signature blend of art, architecture and design is evident in all its 12 locations in the U.S. and the U.K. The Manhattan flagship reopened last year after a makeover that added original Robert Mapplethorpe photographs, bought for $300 apiece back in the 1980s, to every room and on the lobby ceiling a customizable lcd-light installation by the French art/design duo Trafik. The Morgans-owned Mondrian in Los Angeles features light pieces by James Turrell, and Mondrian South Beach was designed entirely by the art and design wunderkind Marcel Wanders, who transformed it into a fairy-tale space with giant bell-shaped chandeliers and a black "floating" staircase that cost $850,000.

Why spend huge sums on such things? "Art is an extension of our design," says Kleisner. "It’s not just art going into a hotel — the hotel is art. There is an interest in customization that is pervasive in consumerism. The last bastion of personalized experience is in hotels."

Ian Schrager may not consider his Gramercy Park Hotel an art destination, but when he renovated it three years ago, he enlisted Julian Schnabel to design the public spaces — which now contain such signature Schnabel touches as the extravagant chandelier and decadent, deep red carpet in the lobby — and stocked them with a rotating display of pricey contemporary artworks by Hirst, Richard Prince and Andy Warhol, loaned by high-powered collector friends like Alberto Mugrabi and Aby Rosen.

"A person who really loves art loves the opportunity to have the art displayed here and be appreciated by lots of people," says Schrager, who sees the Gramercy as an update of New York’s famed Hotel Chelsea, with its bohemian attitude and "spontaneity and energy." Many years ago, the Chelsea let creative types pay with their works in lieu of cash.