Modern Hotel Design

They say you have to spend money to make money. InterContinental Hotels Group is putting that axiom to the test, twice over, with its Holiday Inn unit. First, IHG is plowing $1 billion into upgrading the contemporary hotel designs of more than 3,300 Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express hotels worldwide. (Thus far, more than 2,200 hotels have relaunched under the new look, which includes updated hotel guestroom and bathroom designs, as well as new exterior signage. The remaining 1,100 properties under the two flags are slated to be updated by the end of this year.) And now, the company is launching a $100 million “Stay You” ad campaign in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Mexico, Latin America, Asia and Australia to tout the benefits of its modern hotel design to consumers.

“‘Stay You’ is the biggest advertising campaign in the 58-year history of Holiday Inn,” said IHG ceo Andy Cosslett. “The level of support behind this campaign reinforces our confidence in the Holiday Inn relaunch which positions us well for the upturn in the economy when it comes.” It looks like IHG’s timing may be good – several signs point to an uptick in the hotel industry – so their big bet on reinventing the Holiday Inn brands may pay off big, as well.

For the latest hospitality design trends by other big-name hotel brands, check out HospitalityStyle and its print edition.
 

Luxury hotel design, development and operations are jobs for specialists.

The decision by Carlson and Rezidor Hotel Group to sell their luxury Regent International brand to Formosa International Hotels Corp. (FIHC) says a lot about where the luxury hotel sector and high-end hospitality design are headed. It's a clear message that this field is being turned over to experts who understand the high-spend lifestyle. FIHC isn't just thinking about hotels per se. This diversified hospitality/retail giant based in Taiwan is taking a holistic look at fitting Regent into developments plans that include residences, shopping areas, restaurants and other features.

So, if you want to play in the five-star end of resort design and urban hotel design, it's time to dust off your residential and retail skills. But, if volume's the goal, forget the luxe market and start marketing modern hotel design solutions that work mid-tier to upscale. Just think about Carlson's goal of adding 1,500 hotels in those categories within five years, a plan detailed on Hospitality Style.

 

When it comes to luxury travel, is “slow the new fast?” Seymourpowell, a London-based design/innovation company, thinks that could be the case. Hence the firm has created the Aircruise, a giant, vertical airship that would house a luxury hotel and ferry passengers at a leisurely 65-to-90 miles per hour (as compared with the 500-600 mph cruising speed of today’s jet liners).

“The Aircruise concept questions whether the future of luxury travel should be based around space-constrained, resource hungry, and all-too-often stressful airline travel,” says Nick Talbot, Seymourpowell’s design director. “A more serene transport experience will appeal to people looking for a more reflective journey, where the experience of travel itself is more important than getting from A to B quickly. The physics of the airship requires a gigantic volume of lifting gas, yet simultaneously demands a relatively limited amount of weight. This allows for a potentially large amount of space with relatively few people onboard -- a luxury for any traveler."

This is not just some pie-in-the-sky concept in hospitality design trends. The Aircruise idea captured the imagination of Korean giant Samsung Construction and Trading (C&T). Driven by its interest in new materials for building, Samsung C&T hired Seymourpowell to refine the idea and produce a detailed computer animation of the hydrogen-filled, solar-powered airship and its modern hotel design concepts to illustrate this visionary approach to travel of the future. “This was a dream concept project for us, helping to realize a future of sustainable buildings combined with innovative and luxury lifestyle,” said Seung Min Kim, Samsung C&T’s design director at Samsung C&T.





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Four new examples of contemporary hotel design will open their doors in coming months in Toronto. First up is the Thompson Toronto Hotel (shown at left), which is slated to open this spring. In addition to 102 luxury guestrooms, the property will feature a rooftop bar lounge, swimming pool with private cabanas. Then, in August, the Le Germain Maple Leaf Square hotelwill open. Located adjacent to the Air Canada Centre, a major-league sports and concert venue, the eight-story luxury boutique-hotel will have 171 guest rooms, 5,000 square feet of meeting space, 8,000 square feet of fitness facilities and a 2,000-square-foot hotel café.

Slated to open in the fall is the five-star the Ritz-Carlton, Toronto (rendering at bottom left), that flag’s only locale in Canada. This 53-story property will feature 267 rooms and 159 condominium residences. Finally, next year will bring the Donald’s first Canadian venture, when the 60-story Trump International Hotel and Tower is slated to open in Toronto’s financial district.

These new hotels are part of an overall building boom in Toronto that will also add 4 million square feet of office space and 15,000 condo units in the city’s core. All those projects follow a sustainability guideline developed by the Toronto Green Standard for New Construction. Those guidelines set out environmentally-friendly construction practices and ways to increase the energy efficiency of new buildings.

One opportunity to see all this development firsthand is by attending this year’s International Retail Design Conference, which is run by Hospitality Style’s sister publication, VMSD. That event will take place October 13-15 at Toronto’s Westin Harbour Castle. And be sure to check out other examples of modern hotel designs and hospitality interiors in cities around the globe by visiting Hospitality Style and get a copy of the relaunched print edition. While you're there be sure to sign up for a Hospitality Style subscription.

Watch for hospitality design to take a conservative turn this year as owners and lenders look for concepts that play it safe.

By Mary Scoviak

I had a chance to catch up with Jim Stapleton, FRCH Design Worldwide’s vice president, last week over lunch. The conversation started with the usual questions—how’s business (beginning to improve); what’s new (the recent debut of FRCH’s design for Home2 Suites by Hilton); what’s on the boards (a wide range of hotel projects and, maybe, a casino). But, when I asked Jim about what’s next in terms of hospitality design trends, he offered some surprising food for thought. 2010 isn’t going to be the year of Frank Gehry and Santiago Calatrava in the hotel industry, he predicts. “We’re going to see a lot more boxes,” he says. “They’ll be good boxes, but boxes nonetheless.”

The news about what constitutes modern hotel design is about what’s going on inside that box, says Stapleton. Watch for some fresh thinking on layout and space flow as franchisors shrink hotels’ footprints. Generally, you wouldn’t head to the hotel’s laundry room in hopes of finding the next hot trend—unless you were checking out a Home2 extended stay hotel. FRCH integrated the fitness center into the laundry area, giving people a reason to stay in the space rather than leaving their laundry unattended and a backlog of angry guests waiting hours for a washing machine.

Raw public space may be contracting, but Stapleton points out every square inch is going to have to multi-task. Guests will see a greater variety of destinations, even in smaller lobbies. He predicts more solutions like Home2’s “breakfast pantry.” Instead of being on display, guests can eat in this secluded, homey area just off the central portion of the lobby. Gathering spaces will be more defined, but by subtle changes in colors and textures or maybe the angle of the furniture rather than costly infrastructure.

When it comes to aesthetics, designers may not be walking on the wild side this year but they shouldn’t be using a conservative mood as an excuse to be boring. “You don’t have to put up bead board because it’s the only thing the budget allows. With all of the new surfacing materials, new lighting solutions, new fabrics out there, you can be really creative and still make the numbers work,” says Stapleton.

Okay, if you are active in hotel renovation or hotel design, you know 2009 was a bad one for U.S. hotels. Thanks to research firm STR, anyone in the hospitality design industry can now attach some specific numbers to the magnitude of that downturn. Here are the stats from STR: revenue per available room (RevPAR) fell 16.7 percent, to $53.71, for the year; occupancy fell 8.7 percent, to 55.1 percent; and the average daily rate (ADR) dropped 8.8 percent, to $97.51.

“Good riddance to 2009, a year which we believe will go down as the worst in the modern hotel industry,” said STR president Mark Lomanno. “The combination of a distressed economy in conjunction with panic pricing drove RevPARs down to levels that were virtually incomprehensible just a year and a half ago. I look for a significant improvement in the key hotel performance indicators in 2010.”

For more on which U.S. markets suffered the least in this challenging environment, click here.