Buenos Aires’ new-look love hotels: book ardor by the hour.

A diplodocus-size steak, a live football match, a late-night tango lesson: it’s the classic Buenos Aires tourist tick list. But for a really authentic experience, no visit to the Argentine capital – if you are travelling as a couple – is complete without a cheeky visit to a “telo”.

Found in every neighbourhood, the ubiquitous by-the-hour love hotel (telo is a botched anagram of hotel) occupies an intrinsic place in the lives and lusts of the city’s inhabitants. “Other countries have drive-in motels and cheap hotels on the highway, but few places have telos like ours that are oriented explicitly for couples looking to enjoy an ‘intimate experience’ in private,” says José Rosell, manager of Faraón, a well-known love hotel.

While short-stay hotels are prevalent elsewhere in Latin America, few offer the five-star treatment that has emerged in Buenos Aires since the late-noughties. Gone are the garish lighting and grubby sheets of old. For the new-look telos, it’s now all slick minimalist furniture, plasma TVs and free mini-bars. Not that they’ve lost their kitsch, of course: expect faux fur and sparkly erotica aplenty.

Their client list is slowly changing too, says Daniel Fridman, owner of the Albergues Transitorios, an online directory of over 150 telos in the city. Couples enjoying an extramarital fling still make up a good portion of the telo market (forget trying to get a room on Day of the Secretary – celebrated every year on September 4 – as every telo is booked).

But the capital’s short-stay hotels are becoming increasingly popular with married couples looking to spice things up a bit or simply wanting to escape the kids for a few hours. “In response to public demand, there’s a good number of love hotels that are modernising and adopting new styles. The spaces are bigger, they have more natural light and the carpets are being replaced by wooden floors,” Fridman says.

Discretion is one element of the telo experience that isn’t about to change soon though. There are no namechecks. No requests for documentation. And definitely no communal bar or restaurant where you could bump into a neighbour (or, worse still, a spouse). Just drive in off the street, collect you key and, well, get on with it.

Buenos Aires’ love hotels are gay-friendly in legal terms. Age (over 18), not gender, is the single stipulation under municipal law. Oh, and no staying over 24 hours, however much fun you’re having.

At: http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/feb/14/buenos-aires-love-hotels-telos-argentina