Hybrid Work Is Already Having Long Lasting Effects on Hotel Design
A leading architect has pinpointed these emerging hotel trends, showing just how prevalent the pandemic legacy is within hospitality - Matthew Parsons
As well as working on a futuristic Atari Hotel, leading hotel architect Tom Ito is starting to see new design trends that are directly related to the pandemic.
It’s all down to remote and hybrid ways of working, but the world of design is now moving on from simply converting hotel rooms to makeshift offices.
Ito, a Gensler architect who launched and heads up the firm’s hospitality practice, has said hotels today are thinking a lot more about secondary cities and airports.
With more people moving out of major cities, more thought has to be put into the design of hotels in suburban areas. Lifestyle hotels are known to focus on local communities, but the same needs to be done for any property in a secondary city, to draw in remote workers who fled big cities during the pandemic.
“Hotels have always been thought of as a ‘third place’ outside of the office,” said Ito, who was a speaker at Skift’s Design the Future event in December last year. “It’s not necessarily in the room you want to work, but outside the room to get inspired, or meet with others.” He’s also seeing hoteliers look carefully at secondary airports because gateway airports are getting overcrowded as the travel industry recovers. “That’s creating a lot of accessibility problems,” he warned.
“You go there for convenience, and a place to sleep, but make it more of a destination place, as a hub for the community, and really embrace it,” he added. “That’s what we did for downtown Denver International Airport, and we’re planning to do that for other cities so it becomes not just convenient, but brings the community and the city in.”
The Magic Kingdom of Work
A more surprising revelation is the rise of the resort as a serious destination for remote workers. A case in point is Walt Disney World Swan Reserve, he claimed, which embraces family travel.
“We’re doing a number of projects in resort locations. Mexico’s on fire right now,” he said. “Costa Rica too.” The shift towards hybrid-work friendly hotels in resort locations was also down to time being the most important commodity. “We always knew that, so how can we make the best of it,” he added.
