In with inn crowd? Britney, Hub hotel harmonize

Britney Spears may be a little overexposed on her new, worldwide Onyx Hotel Tour, but she's generating some valuable exposure for the real thing.

The 112-room Onyx Hotel opens on Portland Street in Boston in mid-May, to be operated by Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group LLC, a San Francisco company with three dozen flashy boutique properties.

Imagine the thrill that Kimpton executives felt about three months ago when they read that Britney had chosen "Onyx Hotel" for the theme of her 68-date international tour -- the very name Kimpton had come up with two years before for their second location in the Boston area.

After an initial "Oops," Britney's camp and the Kimpton group agreed it could be a marketing match made in heaven, and a website linking the two -- www.britneyspears.com/tour-real.php -- went up after MTV ran an item in January about the naming overlap.

Now the Onyx is planning to feature a VIP room that will bear the pop star's name. The Britney Spears Foundation Room will be located on a top floor and designed -- possibly by Spears' mother, Lynne -- to the pop star's tastes and reflecting her personality, according to Andrew Freeman, vice president of public relations for Kimpton.

A portion of the Britney room fee -- which hasn't been set yet -- will go to the Britney Spears Foundation, which operates a performing arts camp for children and creates playrooms for kids on extended hospital stays.

Freeman said he didn't know exactly what the room would look like, but suggested that, "Any Britney Spears fan I'm sure will go ga-ga to stay there."

The singer's representatives and hotel executives met face to face for the first time this week and details are only now being worked out. The Britney room won't be ready until late June, about six weeks after the hotel opens its doors at 155 Portland St., in the historic Bulfinch Triangle.

The architecture and interior design were done by Group One Inc. of Boston, and the project is being developed by David Leatherwood, managing member of Norwich Partners LLC. Kimpton opened the Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge last year.

Spears will be at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield on June 23, but it's undetermined whether she will spend the night at the hotel.

Her website defines the imaginary hotel of her tour as: ". . . a vibrant, whimsical place where wondrous dreams are realized, and the darkest of secrets are revealed."

A Kimpton press release described the real Onyx Hotel as having "curvy shapes and jewel tones of teal, red, lavender, and vibrant green play against a backdrop of subdued black and taupe with red accents."

Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com.