Have you ever had a pleasantly memorable stay at an airport hotel? Thought not. Such on-site hotels are typically utilitarian affairs catering to stranded travelers -- and as such, not usually notable examples of contemporary hotel design.
Looking to change all that is the Langham Hotels International, which plans to open a 373-key luxury hotel next month at Beijing’s Capital Airport that it boasts will be the envy of guests staying at rival city-center hotels. The new Langham Place hotel was designed by the hotelier’s in-house team, in cooperation with the Beijing Design Institute, and sports hospitality interior designs that include loft-style suites and a 24-hour bar/internet hub. “We are not just creating a convenient stopover hotel but one of the most fun places to be in the capital of the world’s largest nation.” said General Manager Mark Francis. “We aim to make staying at the airport in Beijing an exciting thing to do.”
Only time will tell whether Langham will make good on that goal. But I give credit to the company -- a 145-year-old luxury hotel chain with properties operating under The Langham, Langham Place and Eaton flags -- for spicing things up in an often-uninspiring sector of hotel architecture and design.
Okay, so your inbox probably isn't over its limit because of an inpouring of RFPs. But, as our publisher Michael Schneider learned at last week's New York University International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference, there's a consensus among hotel investors that the worst is over.
What that means short term is a lot of small projects that have to deliver hospitality design trends on a budget. Watch for the jobs that can affect multiple revenue streams--like hotel restaurant design and lounge design.
And watch for hotel renovation work from aggressive owning companies such as Shaner Hotel Group, which has funds in place to acquire up to $500 million in hotel assets. Look beyond major markets. New build hotel architecture may be rarity in New York or Miami, but Tucson will soon have 13 hotels coming out of the ground. That's a lot of hospitality interior work for companies looking to ride this first wave in the upturn.
Given the current renovation trends, if you don't have some piece of an atrium lobby or big-box public spaces on your boards now, you probably will in the near future. Some renewed signs of life in the MICE market are persuading owners of conference hotels to spruce up the offer near-term. The challenge is going to be how to make these caverns into appealing, third place destinations.
EDG Interior Architecture + Design's Jennifer Johanson is using movement to get rid of the dead zones in the atrium lobby of the Hilton Anatole Dallas. Her piazza concept, with its gardens, restaurants and small town center vibe, is intended to draw conference attendees and guests into the new gathering space. But even the coolest restaurant design or lounge seating isn't going to keep people in motion in the lobby 24/7.
Johanson and her team turned to kinetic art for a solution. Here's a sampling of what impressed them:
Above is a work by Reuben Margolin, a San Francisco bay area kinetic artist known for making motion with complex constructs of materials from wood to cardboad.
So take that inspiration and set some hospitality design trends--and, if you have time before the holiday weekend, send in a project to compete in the European Hotel Design Awards.
Award categories include the best architecture of a hotel, both conversion and newbuild. Interior design categories for various spaces including guestrooms, bar, restaurant and lobby areas. Other awards celebrate innovation, sustainability and the two final awards recognize outstanding contribution to the industry and the European Hotel Design of the Year. They will be announced November 23 as a kick-off to this year's Sleep Event Exhibition in London. The deadline for entries is the 28th May 2010. Get entry guidelines here.
Do the hospitality market and design industry need yet another themed restaurant/ entertainment concept? Mark Advent, the guy behind the New York New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, thinks so. For that reason, Advent’s company has acquired the exclusive international licensing rights to develop, own and operate Orange County Choppers Roadhouse, a full-service restaurant/ bar/microbrewery/gaming/hospitality/ retail/entertainment experience.
The venue takes its name from the custom motorcycle brand that’s featured in the reality cable TV show, “American Chopper.” The restaurant design for the first outlet, an 8,500-sq.-ft. creation of Washington, D.C.-based CORE architecture + design, will feature a hospitality interior with a center bar and keg room, along with indoor/outdoor seating. That flagship will open this summer in Orange County Choppers’ hometown of Newburgh, N.Y. After that, locales are planned for Miami, Orlando, Las Vegas and Dubai. And how’s this for free advertising -- the construction, opening and ongoing business of Orange County Choppers Roadhouse will be highlighted in “American Chopper,” beginning in the show’s 2010-2011 season.
I like the fact that both hotel restaurant design and concepts for freestanding restaurants continue to the blur the line between what's hot and what's haute. The latest example is San Francisco's Barbacco Eno Trattoria.
Its co-owners, Umberto Gibin and executive chef Staggan Terje, initially saw the new venture as a complementary offer to their award-winning Perbacco Ristorante + Bar just two doors away. Given the Financial District setting, the idea was that Perbacco would draw the CEOs and dealmakers while its new little sister projected the right attitude to attract mid-level managers and mid-spend foodies. But as The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle's online SFgate.com and other reviewers have reported, Barbacco's combination of Terje's creative Northern Italian food and CCS Architecture's edgy style have made this 66-seat eatery a popular choice for power brokers as well as their staffs.
Cass Calder Smith and his design team created a look that would fit Barbacco into Gibin and Terje's expanding brand family without just knocking off their flagship--also designed by CCS. The Italian accent was obvious, given the menu. What wasn't is the choice of the sexy side of Italian culture as inspiration--particularly, the yellow of the Ferrari emblem, lots of chrome, mirrors and elements angled as if they're ready to put pedal to the metal. Smith's not afraid to use marble alongside high density fiberboard, or polished chrome with rustic brick.
Communal tables create a highly social atmosphere near the frameless glass front.
Photos that suggest a glimpse of what's seen from a speeding car or Vespa are interspersed with mirrors and open cabinets. Like clients who wear Givenchy with Gap, Barbacco represents a new kind of hospitality design trend that makes creativity the real test of luxury.
How’s this for a supercharged ROI on your time? The hospitality interior design team from Wilson Associates had just 12 minutes to make its pitch to developers of a new hotel complex in Makkah (Mecca), Saudi Arabia – and came away with 19 of the 26 properties planned for the site. That translates into one contemporary hotel design for just under every 38 seconds of the pitch. Trisha Wilson, founder of the firm, says her firm won that mother lode of work by coming up with designs based on a combination of cultural and historic traditions of the past intermixed with contemporary refinements.
“We don’t have one look; we design for the client and for the market, incorporating the culture, traditions and topography of the project’s location,” says Wilson. “In Makkah, our design focus is to create a balance between contemporary elegance and strong architectural elements punctuated with luxurious finishes.” For more on Wilson Associates and its hard-charging founder, see “Moxie Lady,” a corporate profile that appeared in the November/December 2008 edition of Hospitality Style. To read more on other trendsetters in hotel design, sign up for your free subscription.
Maybe I'm just tired of bad news. But at least some of the indicators coming in from the hotel companies and consulting firms seem to point to a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for hospitality operators and designers.
Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels' Hotel Investment Outlook 2010 predicts this year's transaction volume will increase by 20 to 40 percent over 2009, the first rise in two years. In dollar figures, that could represent $11 billion to $13 billion worth of hotel purchases in 2010. Fortunately for designers, most of the new owners will be looking at hotel renovation and/or rebranding and repositioning. The most likely targets for your marketing push, whether for hotel architecture projects or hospitality interiors: Asian conglomerates seeking prime assets in key markets, especially in the U.S. and U.K.; sovereign wealth funds, primarily from the Middle East but also from Asia; public markets, thanks to a new wave of IPOs, rights issues and mortgage and equity real estate investment trusts (REITs).
Average U.S. occupancy was flat in January, according to Smith Travel Research, but there were bright spots. Markets worth focusing your business development efforts on might include: Seattle, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Miami in the U.S. Internationallly, consider Rio de Janeiro; Beijing and Shanghai; major Australian gateways; Berlin, Moscow, Athens, Milan and, not a little surprisingly, Tel Aviv. Occupancy was up 47 percent in January. The Lebanese Tourism Ministry reported a 21 percent uptick in occupancy in 2009 versus 2008.
Howard Wolff, senior vice president, WATG, says the lion's share of the firm's current hospitality projects is located outside of the U.S. Asia is number one, but the Middle East (mostly outside of Dubai) is still strong. North Africa is another region to watch. At home, he says, it's mostly about hotel renovation.
Hotel chains are taking advantage of softer occupancy figures to freshen up hotel guestroom design as well as increase the appeal of the hotel restaurant design and conference center design. InterContinental Hotels Group is just wrapping up a systemwide renovation. Hyatt's also in the race to deliver contemporary hotel design and lifestyle looks. For more, go to:
You don't have to reinvent the wheel to say something new about hotel guestroom design.
For inspiration, check out the new Hotel Le Germain Calgary. Lemay Michaud Architecture Design, Montreal, design and project architect for this urban boutique hotel, and Christiane Germain, Groupe Germain's co-president, envisioned the 143 guest rooms as "wooden treasure chests" clad in warm, natural wood. Inside, there's a trove of clever touches for both guests and the hospitality design industry at large.
Here are some of the hospitality design trends that can make even a standard bay memorable.
For example, a trio of task lights adds an edgy industrial chic to an otherwise natural guestroom environment:
Another idea likely to set hospitality design trends is the flip-down night table shown below:
As in residential design, most utilitarian items are being putting on display. For this property, that includes drinks and glasses that usually would be stored in a minibar--a nice way to merchandise products that drive in-room sales:
Even luggage storage gets "designed" thanks to the impact of a textured wall covering and the cleanly angular casegoods:
The world leaders who participated in last December's United Nations Climate Change Summit talked a lot about a greener world. But it's hotel companies such as InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) that are making it real. IHG's new 366-room Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers, the group's first property in Denmark, claims to be one of world's greenest hotels.
That's due in part to the hotel's architecture: the 279-foot-high structure has the largest solar panel park in northern Europe. It also has the first groundwater-based cooling and heating system in Denmark, which is expected to cut its energy output for heating/cooling by nearly 90 percent.
Efforts to become carbon neutral are reflected in the eco friendly lifestyle hotel design as well, right down to the low energy lighting and energy efficient hand dryers.
Looking to change all that is the Langham Hotels International, which plans to open a 373-key luxury hotel next month at Beijing’s Capital Airport that it boasts will be the envy of guests staying at rival city-center hotels. The new Langham Place hotel was designed by the hotelier’s in-house team, in cooperation with the Beijing Design Institute, and sports hospitality interior designs that include loft-style suites and a 24-hour bar/internet hub. “We are not just creating a convenient stopover hotel but one of the most fun places to be in the capital of the world’s largest nation.” said General Manager Mark Francis. “We aim to make staying at the airport in Beijing an exciting thing to do.”
etail/entertainment experience.
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