Design
He further pointed out that this can come from dealing with people within the hotel industry who bring their character and personality to specific projects. “We deal with owners whose background is often in business and they’re successful and affluent,” he noted. “They’ve decided to own hotels – because they love hotels – and they are driven and brilliant in different fields, which brings another angle. Hotels are becoming infused with the personality of the owners, who are passionate about this industry.” “You go to places like Georgia or Iceland and you find people who are not hotel people, but they own it and it will be somehow twisted a bit and infused with what their passion is and I like meeting people who are passionate about hotels.” For Dilley, each project is the chance of a lifetime – an opportunity to create something unique, and the relationship with the owner is key to bringing that unique vision to life. “You go to some locations, like Marrakech, which has just got layers and layers of context and inspiration, and culture that you’re blessed with,” he explained. There’s so much stuff to work with, then you get an insane owner who puts another layer of interest on to that. And then you get a brand like W that does certain things, which you can’t do with other brands. You put part of your soul into it, otherwise it doesn’t work.”
“We have to give people something that is different to their normal life – something that is memorable and special, which means that they shouldn’t know what they’re getting. You have to fi nd something that can surprise people, but that has an aura and a pull to it.”
James Dilley
Chemistry, Covid-19 and questions The delegates in the room recognised the need for lifestyle brands to have some kind of chemistry between the owner, the interior designer and the operator if they are truly to come to fruition. One likened a lifestyle hotel project to making a Hollywood blockbuster – driven by profit but needing the collaboration of everybody in the studio to give it a unique edge and make it a success. Then the discussion turned, inevitably to the impact of Covid-19 on hotel design. Around the room, the resounding consensus was that the effect will be minimal. “I don’t think that we’re designing differently,” remarked Van Malder. “The guestrooms are not going to become bigger because the real estate is too expensive. That’s not going to make a developer money. So we don’t change the size of the rooms. We might change the air ventilation in the guest rooms
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and maybe in the restaurants the seats will be a little bit further apart. But I think as soon as this is over, we will stomp the hotels and restaurants full of people again, as many as we can.”
When the recovery fully happens, part of what lifestyle hotels will be able to offer is a sense of escapism, a route away from the pressures of daily life, from lockdowns and travel restrictions, in which everyone’s world seemed to shrink. There is an onus on hotels to provide some escape, whether that is in the form of increased comfort and security, or whether it is through providing more social spaces where people can meet, mix and make connections. More pressing was the question of how to make a lifestyle brand stand out when that time comes. Van Malder remarked that, rather than designing to a specific demographic, it is important to look across the whole portfolio to see how it meets different states of a guest’s life. “We have to look at what kinds of hotels attract the most people, whether they are of a younger generation that finds something challenging like a Moxy more popular, and then they will move to W as they get older and have more disposable income,” he remarked. “What makes a hotel distinctive, I think, is when there is a particular story to that hotel that makes it different from what we understand to be an ordinary hotel,” he added. “Westin is so focused on wellness and that, I think, makes it distinctive from ordinary brands. W is distinctive because it’s everything that every other hotel is not.”
Dilley agreed that it is not about designing to a specific customer profile. Any criterion soon becomes a cliché, so you have to think about designing for an experience.
“That comes back to my point about sanctuaries and playgrounds,” he remarked. “We have to give people something that is different to their normal life – something that is memorable and special, which means that they shouldn’t know what they’re getting. You have to find something that can surprise people, but that has an aura and a pull to it.” “Once you put uniqueness and surprise together, you then have to do things which are somewhat disruptive to what people already like,” Dilley adds. “There are certain brands that are provocative and confrontational, and they don’t mind that 20% of people will stay there once and say, I knew what I was getting into, didn’t like it, won’t come back again. But it’s still a point of memory in a public conversation, and it’s relatable. So for us, we try not to stereotype people that might stay at hotels.”
Lifestyle, it seems, is about telling a story, creating something out of the ordinary. From the attitude of the delegates, the desire for storytelling as a way to build the industry back up from the pandemic will see the lifestyle sector endure, thrive and innovate. ●
Hotel Management International /
www.hmi-online.com
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