Glowing showers, shrinking desks and curved TVs may soon be in your hotel future. With new hotels sprouting like spring flowers, the hotel industry is working hard to create unique cronuts instead of cookie-cutter donuts. That’s why hoteliers and designers say changes are being considered for every facet of every room.
According to architect Richard DeMarco, principal at Montroy Andersen DeMarco (MADGI), when making decisions for any hotel, the key components are the operator and hotel brand. “They each have very specific identity and branding,” he said.
Starwood starts its guest experience by providing a downloadable app that allows guests to not only make reservations, but to bypass the desk and check in through the phone. When a guest arrives at their room, the phone works as the “key” (think mobile boarding pass when flying).
“We are rolling that out to the Aloft and W, and will have it in 10 hotels by Nov. 5, including the Aloft in Harlem and the W Downtown,” said Michael Tiedy, senior vice president of Global Brand Design for Starwood’s nine brands, which also include Le Meridian, St. Regis and Sheraton.
To make better use of space in bathrooms, certain brands are rearranging them entirely. Some have sinks that are returning to rooms just like in the olden days when toilets and showers were down the halls.
“Before, the bathrooms got bigger, but we are now dissecting them,” said David Ashen, founder of dash design who works with Marriott. “Now the luxury is in the fixture and not the size.”
Other brands are going in the opposite direction and enlarging their bathrooms. Starwood moved the bathroom walls in its Westins, for instance, to make them 10 inches bigger.
Still others are focusing on unusual designs. The first citizenM in the US, at 218 W. 50th St. — developed along with Brack Capital Real Estate and designed by Concrete, with architecture by DeMarco — has a bathroom designed like a pod within a pod. The smaller pod holds the toilet and shower inside a translucent enclosure. “It’s a high-density plastic enclosure that allows light to emanate from it so it glows,” DeMarco said of the multi-colored nightclub-like lighting.
Hotel showers, as a rule, are getitng more tricked out — as well as larger — so expect more from your showerheads than just massages. “There’s a lot of competition in showerheads,” Ashen noted.
To give executives more elbow room, curved shower curtain rods, which give older tubs more elbow room, have become the norm. But newly built hotels are taking things even further by dumping bathtubs entirely for large walk-in showers, some with floor-to-near-ceiling glass doors.
Nevertheless, Starwood’s Tiedy noted, “While there’s a general trend to move away from tubs, in the suites you have the luxurious tub experience and we are building more towards a spa direction.”
“These are more aspirational bathrooms as people want their homes like this,” dash’s Ashen explained.
Sinks now often have an under-cabinet shelf to hide the plumbing and provide space for stacks of extra towels.
The AC, the contemporary Spanish brand now owned by Marriott, also has a component pod for bathrooms that allows more than one person to use it at a time. “The sink does double duty and is large enough to put things on the counter,” Ashen said. “You have to make sure cool doesn’t outweigh functionality.”
Even the complimentary products on sink counters are being rethought, with some becoming more spa-like. Gel soaps have gone full circle back to bars at the sinks, but body washes are often still available for showers. Starwood’s Aloft is going the green route and adding multi-choice dispensers in its showers.
Changing rooms
Of course, more than bathrooms are changing.
The drapes and wall patterns in Westin rooms have been designed in some cases with patterns of lightning bolts or leaves.
“It gives the room a biofilia influence, which is more of a reference to nature and leads to a calming effect,” explained Tiedy. “We also took the typical layout and tried to offset some of the angles so everything is not so square.” This was achieved by angling beds toward the center of rooms, for instance.
Some hotels, thanks to complaints about mini-bar charges, are leaving mini-fridges empty so guests can put in their own eats and treats, while offering vending options in their halls and lobbies.
“We are discussing doing pantries on every floor,” said Ashen of one hotel company. Of course, those happy to crack open a cold beer without calling room service may feel abandoned, but not as much as guests at the “full-service” Hilton New York, which is abandoning room service completely.
Closets and drawers are also getting a rethink. Marriott’s upcoming rooms won’t have doors on the closets or even chests of drawers in an acknowledgement that people stay just one to three days — and often use drawers solely for dirty laundry. But Ashen, who is working on the designs for Marriott, said there will be “a great place” to lay out the suitcase.
Starwood is dumping the skimpy drape it uses to hide Aloft closets and adding barn doors after guests complained that the drape looked messy and exposed their things to passersby when housekeepers propped open room doors.
At Starwood, some brands have closets with pull-out shelves so suitcases can be kept open and easily used.
At the W, said Tiedy, where guests might be traveling for longer periods of time and have brought clothes for fancy dinners or events, “we looked at the closets as another experience, with mirrors and a full dressing room, and are making it a much more elaborate experience.”
“Travelers today want to feel like they are home when they’re in their hotel rooms, so there is a continuous effort to make hotel rooms homey,” said Daniel Lesser of Lesser Hospitality Advisors, who works with hotel investors, buyers and sellers. “At all price points they are putting in wood floors, but the designers insist those will have area rugs that are easier to replace than wall-to-wall carpets, and many have tiled entryways.”
The Puli Hotel & Spa in Shanghai has custom scents, said Ashen, who is a big fan of the hotel. “Before I check in they email me and ask what scent I want in my room. It’s more of a refuge and a place to calm down,” he said.
At some hotels, however, the olafctory offerings may be a little too intense, with some guests unpluging the fan-driven fragrance machines and bribing maids to not spray their rooms.
As for newer hotels, design decisions are being based on attracting millenials.
Tom McConnell, head of Cushman & Wakefield Global Hospitality, said, “Every year [millenials] are becoming more dominant in the industry.”
By the end of 2015, according to NYC & Co., the city’s marketing bureau, the number of hotel rooms will have grown to a whopping 100,000 (interestingly, occupancy rates are keeping up). And the new hotels —mostly small, whether parts of chains or unique properties — are being curated to attract these modern, wealthy and younger travelers.
They “have different needs and wants,” noted Tiedy of Starwood. Millenials, he said, “like to be in public even when they are alone, and you see that adaptability in the rooms.
“They [also] want more convivial lobbies and probably less fancy food and beverage, with room design that has some panache to it, like the poured concrete at the Aloft.”
Downtown, the Crosby Street Hotel, owned by Firmdale, has become “a lightning rod” for travelers McConnell said, noting it “does a tremendous rate and demographic” thanks in part to its floor-to-ceiling windows, sophisticated design and unique fabrics and palate.
A design edge
The Refinery and the Archer Hotel New York, both newly opened on W. 38th St., have suspendered bartenders and doormen in common, with the Refinery tilting towards an industrial look and the Archer toward a sophisticated elegance.
It’s unclear what Ian Schrager’s rooms for the upcoming PUBLIC Hotel at 215 Chrystie St. will look like, as he no longer shares plans until the hotels are open due to copycats. “I’m not going to do it,” he says when pressed.
The already-open Chicago PUBLIC has a loft-style homey bed, Frette linens, wall clocks with no numbers, custom Corian sinks and mosaic bathroom floors. Desks are minimalist with no drawers.
The Greenwich, the Felix, the Viceroy and the Quin — and, of course, The Standard — are among the hotels also setting city design standards. Barry Sternlicht’s four-star brand, 1 Hotels, located near Central Park on Sixth Ave., will show its nature-oriented design sensibilities when it opens in March 2015, while the luxurious Baccarat, on Fifth Avenue and 53rd St., will tend toward sophistication.
The Park Hyatt at the base of One57 on W. 57th St. is already open to great acclaim. Silverstein Properties and Four Seasons Resorts & Hotels are still building 30 Park Place in lower Manhattan. Over half its condominiums are sold and its penthouses will overlook the Woolworth Building next door.
Work it
As millennials tend to work with their laptops on chairs and beds, full-service hotels like Marriott are even rethinking the desk in the room. At the Puli a folding desk expands to an ensuite dining table.
Starwood’s’ upcoming design think tank at 417 Fifth Ave., dubbed “Starlab,” will have motorized desks so employees can stand up or sit down, and some of their nine hotel brands may soon see the benefits.
People want “customizability … and the rooms have to adapt to that,” said Tiedy.
Recharging myriad travel devices is another area of constant review. Schrager is including USB plugs by all the outlets in the PUBLIC building.
Marriott will have bedside outlets as well as little pods to provide wireless connections. But bedside clock radios, whose wake-up alarms tend to also waken those next door, are being dumped. To hear music, guests can plug their own device into speakers.
Starwood is also concentrating on increasing the “pipe” capacity for its wireless connections.
At the citizenM New York, the mechanical and electrical engineer for the project, Matthew K. Bendix, P.E., says there is approximately two-thirds of a mile of communications and electrical wiring in each guest room, in addition to wirelessly connected equipment.
Montroy says each room is customizable by guests through touchscreen MoodPads that control the lighting, shades, music and Internet. “Through high technology embedded in the hotel it remembers you and, prior to check in, sets up the temperature, lighting and music,” he said.
Ashen recalled that it was just a few years ago that tabletop TVs were trashed in favor of flat screens that were 37 inches, and then 46 inches. “Now 46 seems small in the room,” he said, adding that curved TVs will, however, provide the next wave of upgrades.
In some Starwood hotels they are hanging the TVs on the walls, and the St. Regis even has TVs integrated into bathroom mirrors. Starwood is also upping the ante at some W’s with big-screen projector televisions.
“We’ve done some experiments where we have switched out a television and put in a projector so the TV goes across the whole wall,” said Tiedy. “We want to impress the guests with something they don’t always have in their rooms or homes.”
