ANALYSIS
Touchdown S
Airport hotels are being reinvented to attract a new wave of travellers and events bookers
URINDER ARORA MAY NOT BE AS FAMOUS AS HOTELIERS such as Sir Rocco Forte or Bill Marriott, but he is fast becoming the king of Britain’s airport hotels. His Arora Group either has built, owns, oper- ates, or manages the property assets of a dozen major hotels at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted among other airports, and it recently secured planning permission for a 298-room new property at the re- vamped Heathrow Terminal 2, the first hotel within the Central Terminal Area under development, with a direct link from hotel to terminal. Together with plans for two new hotels being built and operated at T4 – due to open in 2018 and also directly linked to the terminal – Arora has some 1,048 rooms set to come onstream within the airport over the next few years. Its crown jewel at Heathrow’s T5, of course, remains the Sofitel, the only hotel with an airbridge to the terminal that’s home to British Airways. The Sofitel at Gatwick’s North Terminal is Arora’s, too.
Arora, 58, worked for BA in his 20s as a customer services officer before building a hotel adjacent to Heathrow to house BA flight crew. He is part of a new wave of change sweeping through airport hotels, as their rather negative image as ‘last resort’ places to stay in or use is challenged.
EMBRACING MODERN DESIGN There has been a gradual shift over the past few years with the major hotel groups seeking to embrace more modern design, with greater use of natural light, upscale food and drink offerings and other ameni- ties – such as spas and fitness centres – to attract both business and leisure travellers. And already the recasting of the tradi- tional airport hotel appears to be paying off: room demand at airport locations world- wide has grown from about 55 million room
30 BBT September/October 2016
nights in 2010 to 65 million last year, accord- ing to hotel data provider STR. “Airport hotels around the world are transforming themselves into sophisti- cated destinations for business and leisure travellers alike,” says Shawn McAteer, VP for global brand management at Hilton Worldwide. “I think we’re redefining what that airport hotel concept can be.” Hilton’s showpiece attempt to rein- vigorate the airport hotel concept can be seen at Amsterdam Schiphol airport, where it opened a 433-room new-build property at the turn of the year. It is design-led (by in-vogue Dutch architects Mecanoo) with an exterior offering a striking 12-story curved cubic design white building covered by more than 5,000 grey panels and windows all set at a 45 degree angle, evoking a ‘reptile-like’ outer skin (think crocodile or alligator). Interiors are by chic London designers The Gallery HBA. Natural daylight – which is now de rigeur in new hotel designs – is provided by a glass-roof covering the 42 metre-high main atrium lobby. But Hilton does not forget that airport hotels are as much about meetings as simply a place to eat and sleep, however upmarket they may want to be: it claims the hotel is the largest for conferences near Schiphol. Next in the group’s airport pipe- line are a 357-room Hampton by Hilton at Stansted, slated for next summer, and in 2018 properties at Ankara in Turkey and Raleigh-Durham airport/Brier Creek in North Carolina. All round the globe, it seems, airports are embracing hotels in their midst: from Christchurch International airport (an Accor Novotel) later next year to Cuba’s Jose Marti International airport (a probable five-star property, although no brand has been announced yet). Most high profile, however, is likely to be a new 505-room hotel on the site of the
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