The Room Mate hotels want to be your best friend. Each is branded with a personality and when you click on the web site you’ll get a fictitious rundown as if you were reading someone’s Facebook page. This approach has proved enormously successful for the group, which has five such hotels in Madrid alone. Apart from the personality marketing, the real concept behind them is affordable high design, usually accomplished by keeping some architectural elements from an older building but adding a contemporary twist. At Alicia, just outside Plaza Santa Ana, the twist is an open loft look. Some of the rooms that overlook the plaza have extremely high windows. The target audience is young travelers who stay out all night (there’s breakfast until noon), but adults past party age also like Alicia for the usually affordable rates. Room pricing is very mercurial, though, and can go up and down by 50 percent from day to day. Lock in a rate in advance.