044 FOCUS
HOSPITALITY HAS never exactly been an ‘easy’ industry. Success depends on innovation, attention to detail, hard work and high levels of customer service. More recently, even those getting all of these components right have found the challenge of a global pandemic to be the biggest and most unexpected of tests. And yet, as our hotel focus shows, the sector’s resilience is clear for all to see. New hotels are opening all over the world, while existing brands are reinventing, evolving and enhancing their off erings, assisted by some of the very best design and architecture practices as they seek to deliver what guests will come to demand and expect from a post-Covid future.
Our inspiring examples include the conversion of a historic former monastery near Lake Garda, an almost-hidden London retreat just off the busy streets of the capital, and a grand bank building in the US painstakingly transformed into a luxurious and welcoming place to stay. What they all have in common is an impressive level of care and consideration for their surroundings and a real emphasis on setting their hospitality off ering some distance apart from the norm. It is not clear quite when these most turbulent of periods will give way to the altogether calmer waters that we all hope for, but there are strong signs that the future of hotels – while very diff erent – will be indeed be bright.
Q&A Todd
Lundgren, founder, and Ramsay Ritchie, associate principal, CallisonRTKL
Todd Lundgren, principal at global architecture, design and planning fi rm CallisonRTKL, and associate principal Ramsay Ritchie, both have decades of hospitality planning and design expertise across Europe, the Middle East and the US. We talked to them about some of the challenges facing the sector in these most uncertain of times.
What are some of the key elements in creating spaces that move beyond being purely functional to become more ‘experiential’ for the user? Todd Lundgren: Even prior to Covid-19, we were already experiencing a sea shift in the evolution of luxury hospitality, with designers and operators thinking about psychographics instead of demographics and focusing on creating authentic experiences. Hotels that truly connect with the unique local culture of where they are – serving as a basecamp for that connection and exploration rather than as an enclave separate from that – will be the future.
Relationships with local businesses could take off as part of a bid to repurpose valuable hotel square footage that would have once been given over to a gym, with guests instead directed to a local affi liate. Meanwhile, creating spaces within the hotel that can be activated through collaborations, events and strong partnerships is a great way to bring energy to a space and keep people engaged. Holistic wellness will also become increasingly important as people seek to totally switch off following the challenges of the past year, while sustainability as an off er is going to be expected and required in the future and it needs to be done in a meaningful way. In a recent study of luxury travellers by Stylus, nearly three-quarters believed travel should support local communities and economies. T is is something that we are seeing: I am having four diff erent conversations with hoteliers who are looking to make their properties more carbon neutral. Some are even allowing members of their loyalty programmes to use credits to off set their carbon emissions.
New hotel developers should be looking at how their development touches the land. T ey need to ask themselves, ‘if you pick up the hotel, how would the land have changed
and how do you put things back into the community and into guests both restoratively and regeneratively?’ Carbon neutral should be the new non-negotiable
baseline. T is approach will need active collaboration from all project stakeholders, which won’t happen overnight but if done successfully can benefi t people, profi ts and the planet immensely. It is an area that as a fi rm we are passionate about, and it’s an exciting space to explore.
How does the creative process typically work between you and your hotel clients? Has this client/design relationship become more collaborative over the years? Ramsay Ritchie: Due to the increase in remote working across our global practice, we now often connect with our clients several times each week and the pace of our collaborative process with all our stakeholders is a lot faster than before.
Our clients now expect their consultant teams to get things right fi rst time. We even have current clients who ask us to run mini competitions in-house, as design charettes, to facilitate their exploration of diverse ideas quickly and eff ectively. We are fi nding that time zones are fully manageable, with us able to work a 24/7 design process between our various international offi ces and tailor the best team resources for the design challenges that our clients face. Whether these are sustainability, operational, interiors or technically focused, we can rapidly assemble teams of experts to investigate and research solutions in reduced time frames. For example, we are currently working on several hospitality projects with our Dallas, Dubai, Los Angeles, Miami and New York practices on the same project work simultaneously.
In what ways have the events of the past 18 months moved the goalposts for some of the fundamental principles of hotel design? What will hotel design look like post-Covid? RR: T e London hospitality industry has been almost at a standstill over the past year while hoteliers and investors
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