Lighting for location / Hotel shoot advice needed

[Jadis]

Hi Everybody,

A friend of mine has requsted that I take some photos of her. The shoot will most likely need to be indoors and I was thinking of renting a fancy hotel room, and possibly a studio. I lean towards a fancy hotel because I think the furniture and environment can be more interesting than your typical brick wall or seamless background studio shot.

While I am pretty experienced with outdoor and natural light shooting I have little to no experience shooting indoors with lights of any sort. I don't want to limit myself to window light as that would limit the types of shots so I am thinking I am now forced to use flash or strobes.

My question is what kind of light and light modifier would you recommend that I use? I am thinking I need something relatively simple since I'm inexperienced (so like a single light, and at most an additional reflector), easy to transport and move as I will have no assistants, and not too large since space may be limited in a hotel room (even a large-ish one). Being in a hotel room I would most likely have AC power available. I

Maybe like a single beauty dish on a stand?

Below is an example of the type of shot I am interested in achieving. (I understand the girls in the pictures are absolutely gorgeous so that helps a lot, but let's concentrate on the lighting). The first one is particularl interesting to me, the lighting seems pretty soft, yet isolated on the model, and it is shot with little DOF yet the image is not overly exposed. How was it probably done?

Any advice would be appreciated.

thanks.