Shanghai’s boutique hotel trend has reached its apogee with the opening of Quintet, a bed & breakfast in the French Concession which boasts all of five rooms. Jia, Ivy, URBN and 88 look positively bloated with rooms by comparison. Located above Closed Door, Eduardo Vargas’ new reservation-only restaurant, in a classic lane house built in 1939, Quintet is as charming as you can get. Each of the rooms is named and themed after a Shanghai landmark dating from the colonial age, such as Bubbling Well which is designed to capture Buddhist wisdom and Chinese mythology. Each room also comes equipped with ultra-modern amenities like foam-core mattresses, flat-screen TVs and wireless. Surprisingly the prices aren’t too bad, with the smallest room listed at RMB800 a night, and if you’re after a truly unique and completely local experience, Quintet is it. Quintet, and other hoteliers who’ve bet a bundle on the booming Shanghai market, will get a boost from the Shanghai government which recently announced that inbound tourism will be a focus of overseas promotion efforts and domestic integration strategies leading up to the World Expo. Verbiage aside, they are saying tourism will provide 10 percent of the city’s GDP by 2010 so you should expect to see five star properties popping up like bamboo shoots after the rain. Look for a Conrad, Peninsula and a Jumeirah to open next year. 2009 is shaping up to be a Shanghai’s five-star year.