Hotel Design, Planning and Development

Richard H. Penner, Lawrence Adams, Walter Rutes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135140885
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Hotel Design, Planning and Development presents the most significant hotels developed internationally in the last ten years so that you can be well-informed of recent trends. The book outlines essential planning and design considerations based on the latest data, supported by technical information and illustrations, including original plans, so you can really study what works. The authors provide analysis and theory to support each of the major trends they present, highlighting how the designer's work fits into the industry's development as a whole. Extensive case studies demonstrate how a successful new concept is developed.

Hotel Design, Planning and Development gives you a thorough overview of this important and fast-growing sector of the hospitality industry.

PART 1
Hotel Types

W Dallas Victory Hotel and Residences, Dallas, Texas
With 252 guestrooms and 94 luxury residences, this 33-story hotel and condominium tower is the centerpiece of the 72 acre (29 hectare) Victory master-planned development in Dallas. Designed by HKS Architects, the hotel includes a 10,000 sq ft (925 sq m) spa, pool, and fitness facility, 11,000 sq ft (1,020 sq m) of meeting space, and Ghostbar, a sleek and stylish rooftop venue.

CHAPTER
1

Overview

Arriving in Esfahan, Iran, centuries ago, you could stay outside the city gates at a roadside caravansary now called the Sha Abbas. Or desiring better service, you might continue to the Khan, an in-town hotel. As a “frequent traveler” journeying to Rome, you could stay at a downtown mansione, a boarding house on the Appian Way, or at a spa resort.

While the quality of hotels has advanced immeasurably over several centuries, especially their services, the basic functional elements remain almost as simple and familiar as in ancient times. But with increasing guest sophistication—and imaginative development and design—we anticipate growing demand globally for increasingly diverse and customized hotels, resorts, and related leisure-time amenities for the world's largest industry. The first part of this book discusses and illustrates scores of different types of hotels and considers how their design is being refined and their markets reassessed. They range from sensible extended-stay residential units to lavish super-luxury urban suite hotels. Hotel developers are reconsidering the design and character of all hotel types, from ecotourist retreats to the adaptive reuse and restoration of existing urban infrastructure. The latter provides a variety of finely detailed hotels and entertainment amenities that dramatically upgrade inner-city environments. And family-oriented theme parks continue to serve as multi-resorts for major corporate trade exhibitions and conventions as well as for advanced leisure-park communities.

The explosive growth of our global economies has generated extravagant architectural and engineering accomplishments around the world: in the Middle East, China, India, and Russia, as well as in Europe and the United States. Such major resort destinations as the Palm Islands in Dubai have sprouted dozens of hotels featuring all the leading brands with luxury accommodations and residences. Resort World Sentosa, off the coast of Singapore, City of Dreams in Macau, and CityCenter in Las Vegas represent massive investments in multihotel, residential, retail, entertainment, gaming, and conferencing developments. Extraordinary hotel architecture continues to amaze travelers with such exceptional structures as the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore and with such iconic mixed-use developments as the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany, which includes a philharmonic hall wrapped with hotel rooms. Design hotels extend the boutique fascination by emphasizing great architecture combined with chic interiors and now include fashion designers entering the fray with their own brands, such as Armani Burj Khalifa and Missoni Edinburgh. Fashionable downtown hotels such as Hotel Gansevoort and The Standard in New York's Meatpacking district bring new vitality to dormant neighborhoods and serve as place-making destinations. Environmental responsibility has taken on new dimensions worldwide in all segments of the hotel and resort industry as new properties seek LEED certification or similar recognition by a number of other international green-design rating systems.

Other major prototype developments include hotels with themed shopping and entertainment atriums, all-villa enclaves, various types of vacation ownership resorts and spas, as well as vertically integrated mixed-use high-rise towers combining hotel functions with offices and trade centers incorporating flex-suites affording virtual officing. One type that has seen major growth in the past decade is multi-branded hotels, where one site or building houses two or more competing brand hotels. The next several chapters illustrate a wide range of the era's most significant hotel types, from future concepts for world-class multi-resort destinations to the most innovative and cost-effective limited-service prototypes. While the opening chapters discuss the latest examples in each category, and describe the different features of each type of hotel, the Design Guide, Part 2, provides information on how to program and design the hotel guestroom, public, and back-of-house areas.

With concepts ranging from airport conference center hotels to exotic eco-tourist lodges and from high-fashion design hotels to gigantic casino hotels, Part 1 reviews more than fifty different types of hotels now flourishing in today's increasingly customized marketplace. Separate chapters are devoted to each of 11 major categories. For example, suburban hotels offer many choices ranging from office-park hotels to country inns, while resorts encompass an ever-widening array from luxury wilderness lodges to remote island resorts. The repositioning of countless downtown and suburban properties is accomplished by innovative renovations, restoration, additions, or adaptive reuse. The conference center hotel, which significantly differs from the urban convention hotel, is discussed in terms of design options, planning, and development considerations, as well as social and cultural implications. Highly imaginative future hotel and resort development concepts are summarized in the final chapter. A continuing theme is the emphasis on carefully targeting specific market segments so that the hotel may better fulfill its function. For example, luxury resorts and super-luxury hotels need small, superb restaurants and health spas to maintain their clientele.

In industrialized nations, familiarity with new types of hotels is essential for developers to plan their expansion strategies and devise more imaginative prototypical features that attract new customers to hotels. Some types of hotels are as different as is a single-family home compared to a high-rise apartment tower in the residential feld; it is essential for the designer to understand the variations in facilities, program areas, and circulation patterns required for each new form of hotel designed to serve a particular market niche. Also, an overall familiarity with diverse types encourages cross-fertilization of ideas, as, for example, introducing larger health spas to fill relaxation needs at conference centers, adding meeting rooms to turn country inns into instant conference retreats, and borrowing attributes of super-luxury hotels, such as original artwork, to better upgrade other types of hotels. New ideas for better hotels come from each member of the design team, ranging from market researchers to food and beverage (F&B) consultants, and include a variety of specialized disciplines from high-tech systems experts to talented landscape architects and environmental designers. Chapter 19, Technical Coordination and Construction, discusses the development areas in which consultants are recommended—even required.

Classifications

Since hotels generally are classified by location, function, and other special characteristics, a given hotel may ft more than one category—for example, Ames Hotel in Boston is both a design (boutique) hotel and an example of adaptive reuse. A number of airport hotels could also be considered conference centers or convention properties. However, the overlap should not impair the usefulness of the classification system referenced in this book, which permits easy access to information by subject headings generally used in the hotel feld and clear to the public.

While hotel classifications are necessary for purposes of organizing and referencing information, they are by no means perfect and no substitute for specific knowledge of the individual character and detailed ingredients of the hotel. As a writer in the New Haven Register lamented:

Along with new hotel types and almost infinite combinations and varieties, it is increasingly difficult for guests to select a hotel when labels are inadequate or misleading. Downtown hotels have as many tennis courts, pools and saunas as resorts. Resorts have as many convention or conference guests as downtown convention hotels or airport meeting centers. Motor inns are not necessarily superior to motels. And “inns” are not necessarily old. “Lodge,” “spa,” “guest ranch” also are unclear labels. Price is no indicator—expensive hotels may have small rooms, while budget hotels have larger, better appointed rooms. Buying on the basis of ingredients looks like the new wave.

Our late coauthor, Walter A. Rutes, FAIA, at the turn of the century wrote:

It is likely that today's oxymoron marketing mantra of “mass customization” is increasing in the hotel feld, after bringing gold to industries ranging from clothing to personalized vitamins. It responds to the consumer's desire for individual treatment in an increasingly impersonal world. If the typical guest buys designer clothes and made-to-order music CDs from a long questionnaire, why not a virtual Ritz at Times Square?

(Rutes, Penner, and Adams, 2001, p. 6)

Therefore, in this book guest perceptions are emphasized as much as the actual differences among types of h...