HOTELS

Roger Hill

Designing For Global Customer Of Tomorrow
August 21, 2008

After an amazing week in China, checking out the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China as well as plenty of Olympic events, I have returned home. 

I have a camera full of photos capturing the amazing sights that I witnessed, but ultimately, it will be the people who I met and the places where I stayed the night that will be largely responsible for the impressions of Beijing that I keep.

With that, my eyes were opened once again as to the influence that our industry holds as emerging markets become one global market.  I took away some real statements about China and their growth as a country through the design and innovation that I witnessed in their hotels.

With that I ask you: take a look around at your property and consider: what are you communicating about your global attitude through your design and accommodations?

It’s no secret that we in hospitality use design as one of our keys to set the mood, communicate our brand and develop a relationship with our guests. So, for those of us who are expanding our businesses globally and working in new markets such as China or India, I ask: how does your hotel’s design speak to your country’s evolving culture; accommodating the global customer of tomorrow? 

It is impossible to visit the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China or the Terracotta Army without being reminded that China has always expressed its great moments by building monuments.  So, it hardly surprised me when every hotel had made an incredible effort to communicate in the same “monumental” language through design speaking volumes of the Chinese culture. 

But, beyond the culture of yesteryear, the design that I saw in Beijing communicated a newer, grander global point of view surely inspired by China’s growing wealth and power.  Entrances and lobbies created a memorable sense of arrival with grand elements and incredible detail.  Intricate millwork, stone and carpet installations and top quality finishes covered every inch of every lobby.

Hotel restaurants in Beijing were serving up serious 4-star epicurean delights to packed houses and a number of hotels featured their very own high-end nightclub.

Private entrances and exits were located all over the hotels so that illustrious, or merely private, guests could come and go un-noticed.

Private event/meeting rooms were thought out down to the last element -- for example: a refreshment detail that quietly folds away, disappearing behind a wall while business is conducted and appears only during breaks. 

I was especially taken aback by the detail that each room displayed. True to traditional Chinese culture, there was a place for everything and everything in its place. But, a newer point of view was communicated by the closets. Clearly anticipating that guests from around the world would stay for a considerable period of time rather than a couple of days, the closets have evolved, showcasing first-rate details such as shoe drawers and cubbies.  Another nod to the technological age in which we live…while some hotel back in the States can struggle with WiFi, I was most impressed to find that the closet safes were complete with a plug so that guests could juice up their laptops while storing it.  Brilliant and forward-thinking.

What most impressed me, however, was how few traditional Chinese aesthetics were showcased in the design that I saw. Instead of trying to fuse Chinese design elements with Western hotel design, representing the Chinese culture of recent memory, the spaces that I saw were moving in a new direction…no longer using bamboo or courtyards, for example, to express their sense of tradition, but innovating new interpretations of Chinese culture. An expression of luxury, refinement and opulence that, like the Olympics themselves, surely sets the stage for the nation’s future.

I returned from Beijing encouraged with a renewed outlook of the impact that design can make in defining a future not just in celebrating a past. 

I am often touting our responsibility as hoteliers to think locally, to use indigenous materials, to think with authenticity and to engage a local culture in our design and philosophy. These words still stand true, but as I return to my desk, I will be talking not only about engaging an existing culture in our approach to design, but thinking about the governments, technologies, Olympic competitions, national infrastructure, currencies, and more that are defining the future of these cultures and, thereby the designing for a new, global customer.  As our industry enjoys a growth on new continents, it is our responsibility to create hotel experiences especially for the global customer of tomorrow.  

Posted by Roger Hill on August 21, 2008 | Comments (0)