Here's some info found on Wikipedia...
For wide shots of the hotel, Anderson used a 3-metre-tall (10 ft) handmade miniature model. He felt that since audiences would know that the shot was artificial, computer-generated effects or otherwise, "The particular brand of artificiality that I like to use is an old-fashioned one." He had previously used miniatures in
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and more extensively in
Fantastic Mr. Fox. In designing the hotel, Anderson and production designer Adam Stockhausen did extensive research, looking at vintage images at the Library of Congress of hotels and European vacation spots, as well as existing locales such as the pastel-pink Palace Bristol Hotel prominently featured on movie advertisements and the
Grandhotel Pupp in the spa town of
Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad), Czech Republic and the
Grandhotel Gellért in Budapest. The model used varying scales: the hotel model was 4 metres (14 ft) long and 2 metres (7 ft) deep, the tree-spotted hill on which it stood was a different scale, and finally the
funicular railway in the foreground was built to a third scale to capture it best cinematically.
Palace Bristol Hotel:
View attachment 187547
Model:
View attachment 187548
