Accor is premiering this month the new “Business Playground” meeting room concept for its Pullman Hotels and Resorts brand at the 312-room Pullman London St Pancras.
The new meeting room will be rolled out across the brand portfolio starting next year as part of the Pullman brand refresh. Accor said the new concept emphasizes the blurring of professional and private life and a ‘work hard, play hard’ aesthetic, and it showcases MICE’s importance to the brand, which makes up about 30% of overall revenue.
“We are operating in a hyper competitive and very efficient global business hotel market, but yet it is still not so differentiated,” said Xavier Louyot, senior vice president, global marketing, Pullman Hotels and Resorts. “The customer’s perception of this differentiation drives loyalty beyond reason and impacts the bottom line.”
Designed by Mathieu Lehanneur, the meeting room concept includes:
The Pullman “Poker Table”: The key element of the meeting room is the central table, and Lehanneur reinterprets it as a fiberglass poker table featuring a beige leather edge that Accor said “invites participants to lean into it and rest their elbows and hands on it.”
The Pullman “Canopy Break”: A polyhedron table and ceiling fixture with an arboreal interior surrounded by desk chairs designed for a more informal meeting. “Designed to offer a pause but also as an informal extension of the meeting, the Pullman ‘Canopy Break’ is somewhere else, outside, under the trees,” Lehanneur said.
The Pullman “Curiosity Boxes”: A set of wall fixtures that display objects and books that Accor said are designed to trigger ideas and provoke curiosity.
F&B: The “Business Playground” meeting rooms will include water, fresh fruit, a selection of teas and coffee machines.
Connectivity: Free Wi-Fi and landline high-speed Internet will be offered in the meeting rooms as well as audio and video equipment, multilingual keyboards and multi-socket panels.