Blog Category: Trends

Raj Chandnani, Director of Strategy, and Rhonda Rasmussen, Vice President and Director of Interior Design, on the Green Day panel.

Six months and 23 days, that's how long it has been since we found out we had won the first USGBC Sustainable Suite Competition! Now with the Hospitality Design Expo just 3½ weeks away, we are making sure all the pieces are in place for our Haptik suite to come to life. We're putting together our final check lists and marking items off every day as the show gets closer.

Reclaimed wood headboard…check, outdoor garden balcony…check, eucalyptus sheets…check, walls…check!

We have been working closely with USGBC to make sure this is a success for everyone. On May 19th, WATG and IDEO will unveil their winning design at the Hospitality Design Expo in Las Vegas, NV for all to see. This isn't just another model room, it's an experience. If you will be attending the HD Expo, please visit the Haptik Suite and discover all the subtle nuances of sustainability enveloped in luxury. Also be sure to check out our many gracious vendors and sponsors that helped make this a reality with their donations of sustainable products.  

After the HD Expo, the Haptik Suite will be moved to a more permanent location at the College of Southern Nevada.

The TED video below shows Blaise Aguera y Arcas of Microsoft demonstrating the new Bing Maps capabilities. The three technologies he demonstrates are SeaDragon (Deep Zoom), Photosynth and augmented reality. All three are technologies that WATG has been researching or is currently using. Beyond that he mentions "Live Dynamic Mapping" that uses live video feeds in the geo-spacial space.

 

Luxury hospitality has been hit harder by the worldwide financial disruption than any other segments of the hotel business. According to Mark Lomanno of STR, it may rebound the quickest, but it has the farthest to go.

While all indications are that affluent travelers will indeed return, what they will be hoping to find in the hotels and resorts they visit will have morphed in a number of subtle ways.  Shifting perceptions about luxury will account for changes that we are already seeing in high-end hospitality design.

The changing nature of luxury

To the extent that conspicuous consumption and ostentatious décor might be considered bad form in a global recession -- where so many people and businesses have been hard hit -- design aesthetics will be tamped down in new and renovated properties, thereby changing the look and reconsidering the definition of luxury.

While luxury conjures images of excess and indulgence, Isadore Sharp, founder, chairman and CEO of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, views it as something that goes deeper than aesthetics: "For our guests and clients, luxury is about making the most of their precious time. It's about feeling welcomed and recognized. It's about not having to worry about a thing."

Conscientious consumption

Among affluent travelers, there seems to be a general self consciousness about the appearance of over-indulgence and a desire to feel vindicated in some way. Sonu Shivdasani, CEO of Six Senses, identifies the shift as "a move away from conspicuous consumption to conscientious consumption."

In other words, bling has blung. When it comes to luxury hotel design in 2010 and beyond, expect to see less flash and more substance; comfort over coolness; friendliness over pretentiousness.

Back to basics

Though clearly a five-star brand, St. Regis recently went through the conversion of a property in Princeville, on the island of Kauai, that involved removing tons of polished marble, ornate railings and chandeliers, European themed furniture and artwork, and gilded Corinthian columns. Designers repositioned the Hawaii property to reflect its locale through the use of indigenous materials, paintings and sculpture by local artists, and custom-designed carpets and furnishings with a residential feel that exude warmth and hospitality.

In 2010 and beyond, polished brass and shiny chrome will be out. Natural stone and salvaged wood will be in. Recycled materials and accessories will enhance the guest experience and give a property a unique story to tell.

Simplicity and sustainability will be the key drivers for success.

It took just under a year after the property opened but at the end of January, we received word posted on our USGBC project site that Bardessono had completed the final certification review and was being awarded Platinum certification. Talk about wanting to turn cartwheels in the office and scream FINALLY! What a relief. I have to say, the review process was challenging, interesting and stressful towards the end. We ran into a few hiccups – having to issue clarifications, reissuing information that the review team had received yet we believe was lost at some point. Checking and rechecking – dotting I’s and crossing T’s. During that time in the back of my mind I thought – what if we miss this and receive LEED Gold – do we write Highest Amount Gold Points Achieved below the plaque? Missed it by ONE point? No – that wouldn’t do. In the end, the perseverance of a dedicated design team along with a determined owner/client paid off. Bardessono is an excellent product and I understand it’s faring well despite the economy. Guests are impressed and have returned. I’d do it all again, in a heartbeat.

Conde Nast Traveler magazine recently had a big feature on Russia today, and in a sidebar discusses the country’s stereotypical penchant for over-the-top style. This is my take on the notion that Russia is all about bling:

New money is new money, anywhere in the world. Russians certainly have their own style but it is indeed very arrogant and foolish to write them all off as being tacky. I think an anecdote with a client best illustrates this. We were recently asked to look at a very upscale community on a beautiful lake north of Moscow. When we started to talk about architectural styling, we asked the client if she had any ideas. "Yes," she said. "I would like to build residences that look like MY house." She showed us photos. It was a timber, minimal cube. Beautiful, sophisticated and simple…

Here is a behind-the-scenes glance into how we won the first-ever USGBC Sustainable Suite design competition.

17 July 2009: WATG officially kicked off its collaboration with innovation firm IDEO with a fresh look at the hotel guest experience. The team began its research by staying one night in different hotels and observing the human behavior of other guests within the public spaces as well as their own behavior as they interacted with and utilized the guestrooms. IDEO sent each team member a booklet in advance to gather and organize their findings.

Our team was challenged to switch gears; instead of looking solely at the design, for which WATG is well known, we were becoming modern-day anthropologists of the hotel experience.

We asked ourselves questions like, "How do we redefine luxury?" and "How do we create a sustainable suite without compromising the luxury experience?"

18 July 2009: The brainstorming day with the IDEO team was packed with innovative collaboration sessions that involved more Post-its (recycled of course) than you can imagine. The creativity was literally glued to the walls, and by the end of the day it was branded into our memories. Thoughts of sustainable systems, green fabrics, cradle-to-cradle (regenerative) design, water efficiency and so much more were streaming through our minds.

We set our sights on five areas of the guest experience:
• arrival, which starts from the moment the guests book a room to the minute they walk into their new home away from home;
• dining and entertainment options, which take the guest through the hotel’s dining options and in-room entertainment;
• bathing, which introduces the guest not only to the water-efficient features in the room but also touches on the wellness aspect built into the outdoor experience;
• exploration, as the guest encounters his or her new surroundings and community (as well as what takes place in the room while the guest is away, such as how the room is refreshed and what types of materials are used in the room);
• sleeping, which ushers the guest into a relaxing state with sustainable bed linens and custom pre-set lighting and temperature.

3 August 2009: With just 4 weeks to design, specify and put together a killer presentation, the team began calling vendors for the latest sustainable products, researching innovative systems for water and energy efficiency, drawing up floor plans, reading the entry rules over and over to make sure we didn’t miss a beat.

The WATG team -- Rashana Zaklit, Grace Machado, Catie Liuzzi, Shaun Hannah, Rhonda Rasmussen, Raj Chandnani, Larry Rocha and myself -- worked closely through those four weeks. In arriving at a solution for the design and sustainable specifications, we found vendors willing to donate all the materials that would be used in the room; we sought out  the best systems and made sure we were gaining as many LEED points as possible; and we put together a knock-your-socks-off presentation.

31 August 2009: Based on the competition guidelines, the team assumed the deadline for submission was at 11:59PM EST, but when that time came and passed, we decided the deadline was now 11:59PM with no time zone in mind (thanks to Hawaii for the extra hours).

As our fearless leader Rhonda hobbled back and forth from her office with a broken foot (project war wound) to see how we were doing, Rashana, Grace and Catie hustled to get the specification package together after a mishap with the editing software  resulted in them having to start all over. Raj reviewed and edited, reviewed and edited, reviewed and edited the project narrative while assisting me in putting the final touches on the design presentation boards. Larry became a cheerleader and overall extra set of hands in the late hours, taking on any task that we needed -- no matter how small or large -- and entertaining us with his magic tricks.

At 11:45PM we hit "send" on the last piece of material that needed to be posted. We wrote a final email to the team at IDEO with an update and the final submission. Then, like every great team, we walked out of the building as one unified front, confident that we had done the very best job we could and proud to have worked with every individual on the long journey to the end.

1 October 2009: Out of a pool of 65 entries from some of the top design firms in the world (several submitted multiple submissions), we were the winners! We were asked to keep the fantastic news a secret until the USGBC had made an official announcement to the media. But once it did, we could finally celebrate this great accomplishment that WATG can add to its legacy of innovative design.

A special thanks to all those who encouraged and helped us along the way with creative input and inspiring words.

A compelling reason to renovate now is that construction prices have declined significantly following a 30-year rise. Saving money in labor and materials can increase the internal rate of return for any hotel renovation projects that are being contemplated … and have bottom-line benefits. But, as they say on TV, "Hurry, this offer won't last."

As reported in Rider Levett Bucknall's quarterly cost report, construction costs in the US declined for the fourth consecutive quarter, but the rate of decline has diminished considerably. Whereas in the first quarter of 2009, prices dropped in many cities by an average of seven percent, recent reductions in labor and materials (as well as overhead and profit) have leveled off to a single percentage point.

 

The data suggest that builders are unlikely to make additional deep cuts to their already tightened margins, even as workload projections remain pessimistic. In other words, if you're a hotel owner, operator or asset manager who has been deferring maintenance or waiting to renovate until prices go down even further, this is as good as it's going to get.

Act now.

I recently spoke on a panel at The Lodging Conference in Phoenix on the subject of "Practical Green Concepts in Design, Construction and Conservation Practices." The session moderator, John Scaggs of HVS Eco Services, noted that we have the technology to monitor energy and water usage in individual hotel rooms. If we can do that, why not provide an incentive to guests to conserve resources by letting them know at check-out how their usage compared to the average and offering them a rebate if they used less water and electricity.  

I made this suggestion, and fellow panelist Bill Weinaug of X-nth took it a step further: Why not build it into a hotel's  guest rewards program? You can earn conservation points that can be converted to a free night's stay.

If there are any hoteliers reading this, feel free to steal this idea and run with it.

Guest aren’t motivated to save a hotel's money by not having their bed linens and towels laundered each day of their stay. They view the practice somewhat cynically. But if they are saving their own money, it could change behavior and be a win for the environment, a win for the property, and a win for the guest.

I’m not an expert, but I play one at conferences.

Last week, I was invited to speak at a "Marketing Now" conference in San Francisco. The organizers presented WATG with a first-place Marketing Excellence Award for the design of our web site, and I was invited to speak on two panels on "new media."

Thanks to Dean Kawamura, WATG's marketing resources manager and webmaster, I was able to share some useful bits of information:

Web traffic – Of the 60,000 visitors to www.watg.com so far this year, half find us through search engines, a quarter from referring sites, and a quarter from direct traffic. Those who find us directly arrive through over a dozen variations of our name, including misspellings of Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo.

Search engine optimization – There has been a four million percent increase in web pages on Google in the last decade! 68% of searchers don't go past the first page of results. So, if you're not on page one, you're virtually invisible. The key to high rankings is regularly adding keyword-rich content.

Global differences – www.watg.com has had visitors from 171 countries and territories. While most spend an average of four minutes on the site – usually searching for information about our projects – those who linger the longest are from Azerbaijan and Lichtenstein (13 minutes), Bahamas (14 minutes) and the Seychelles (17 minutes). Those who view the greatest number of pages are from China and South Korea.

Twitter – According to fellow panelist Vik Duggal (www.konstructr.com), "Twitter is word of mouth on steroids." Last year, Twitter was #475 on the list of referring sites to www.watg.com. This year, it has risen to #17. We are following over 1,700 clients and thought leaders, re-tweeting their tweets and sending them information of interest anytime we post something new to our web site.

By the way, Hyatt, Marriott, Fairmont, and Aqua Hotels & Resorts are among those who have found very creative business uses for Twitter and other social networking sites.

Other topics of interest to attendees of this conference included e-newsletters (the best day and time to send them, apparently, is Friday morning); video on web sites (www.fliptv.com, www.blip.tv.com, and www.vimeo.com); blogs, podcasts and a host of other new technologies.

What I learned is that there are very few "experts" in new media; there are simply those who are embracing it (and learning as they go) and those who are neither.