Business management & development
Airport hotel operators are trying to encourage guests to converse with one another during their stay.
coasters’ for guests who want to make friends before their flight. That last point is worth considering in more detail. For if Atwell Suites doubtless upgrade the standard airport hotel experience, Gilbride and her colleagues equally haven’t forgotten the aircraft buzzing overhead. With that in mind, many of the Austin hotel’s features gesture towards making the property suitable to transient visitors. To explain what she means, Gilbride returns to the question of dining, explaining how her team partly offers such a variety of food precisely because certain “airport markets have limited restaurant options, and guests may not wish to drive far or order a ride to get a drink or quick bite after a long day”.
The percentage of passengers who value closeness to the airport when choosing their departure point.
timesaerospace.aero
71% 14
As details like the starter coasters imply, meanwhile, the IHG executive is conscious that travel can be disorienting – and guests may seek kinship after hours alone in a window seat. “Travel opens doors for community and kinship,” she says, “and we’ve designed our Atwell Suites properties to inspire guests to discover more about each other and the local area. Everyone’s travel story is different. Maybe one of our guests has not spoken to many others during a long travel day. Someone else could be travelling in a different time zone and unable to connect with their friends or family.” To accommodate the human jetsam an airport inevitably accrues, Atwell properties are therefore built to allow for both privacy and partying. If, for instance, a business guest wants to work in silence, they can retreat to a small study room to take a call. If, on the other hand, they’d rather tap on their laptop with colleagues, the hotel’s two-storey lobbies feature flexible seating arrangements. Conscious, perhaps, of the work- pattern changes wrought by the pandemic, Atwell also brings something of the co-working ethos to its properties. “We’ve seen guests gravitate towards our
complimentary beverage areas as workstations,” says Gilbride, “much as they would at their favourite local coffee shop.”
Terminal velocity
Combined with other features – not least the ability to cast from laptops to in-suite TVs – and Gilbride is unsurprisingly convincing a range of customers to stay at her hotels. “We’re encouraged,” she says, “by the mix of guests – traditional longer-stay travellers, but also transient, corporate and group visitors – open to experiencing all that Atwell Suites has to offer.” That chimes with the sector at large. In 2023, to give one example, London airport hotel occupancy hit 84%. Four percent higher than the Greater London rate of 80%, it implies that Atwell Suites isn’t the only brand to boost its marketability.
Not that Gilbride is resting on her laurels. Apart from that double-figure pipeline, she’s eager to stay in close contact with owners: the people who, alongside guests, ultimately understand “the opportunities” the extended stay and suites space offers. It surely helps that air travel looks destined to dominate global travel even more than it already does. In the UK alone, an extra 127.5 million travellers will visit through 2040, even as the number of short-haul passengers could jump by almost 90 million.
Once you factor in the airport boom in developing countries – China could have 400 civilian transport airports by the end of 2035 – and Gilbride is optimistic for the future of her brand. “Travel demand remains strong,” she says, “and the industry has proven its resiliency in recent years. It’s hard to find a major city airport that isn’t under construction or renovating to accommodate additional traffic and changing traveller needs.” A fair point – and one Saarinen would surely be thrilled to hear. ●
Hotel Management International /
www.hmi-online.com
Atwell Suites
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