Design details that create special moments throughout the guest experience imbue authenticity, value, and intent.
Watch: DLR Group Insights: Design and Authentic Experience
The Nanxun Blossom Hill Hotel Is Inspired by the Concept of “Hidden”
The Nanxun Blossom Hill is a boutique hotel tucked away in Zhouzhuang, China that’s been recently renovated by Dariel Studio. Inspired by the quiet, hidden beauty of nature found in Nanxun and its Southern China style gardens, the interior design studio combines contemporary western design with the heritage of the building and site for a tranquil retreat away from the busy city life of Shanghai.
Ian Schrager's PUBLIC New York Hotel Opens Inside Herzog & de Meuron-designed Tower
Occupying the base of the 28-story tower is PUBLIC — the first in a new series of hotels conceived by Ian Schrager, which seek to offer luxury accommodation at an affordable price point. Now open, with rooms starting at $150 USD per night, the hotel is looking to attract ‘savvy and sophisticated’ clientele. ‘I truly believe that everyone deserves a one-of-a-kind experience that lifts their spirits and makes their heart beat faster, one that elicits an emotional response,’ says Schrager. ‘To deliver this at a reasonable price point is even more on the mark for today’s savvy and sophisticated traveler.’
Why hotels are getting on board with sustainable development
Hospitality is a competitive marketplace and sustainability is now increasingly mainstream – partly because social responsibility and the environment are becoming more of a focus area within the corporate world
Radically Reinventing The Luxury Hotel To Compete With Airbnb
Chatbots, plentiful amenities, and hardly any furniture: Hotelier Ian Schrager’s newest venture aims for luxury on the cheap.
How Instagram has changed restaurant design — and the way we eat
While design has always been at the forefront of a restaurant, beautiful backdrops that take into consideration the lighting, the colors and the utensils are now becoming just as important as the food. When restaurateurs talk about design, Nils Norén, co-founder of restaurant and beverage advisory company Absolute Culinary by Asil, said there’s one big question on everyone’s mind: "What’s going to be your Instagram moment?"
Fairmont, St Andrews, UK
Situated on a 520-acre estate on the east coast of Scotland, Fairmont St Andrews has long attracted the golfing set, who come to play the two championship courses – The Torrance and The Kittocks – that are surrounded by panoramic clifftop vistas of St Andrews and the haunting North Sea seascape.
Beyond Market Niches: Designing Hotels That Can Flex
There will always be hotels catering to specific needs. There are hotels for pampering, hostels for the frugal adventurer and business hotels designed for efficiency. And no doubt, these types are likely to exist in the future. But more recently, there’s a shift from accommodating to specific market niches towards places that can adapt to changing moods and activities.
Inside the Foundation Hotel in downtown Detroit
The highly anticipated conversion from the old Detroit Fire Department Headquarters to boutique hotel is finally open in downtown Detroit. Located right across from Cobo Center, the Foundation Hotel has kept the fire department aesthetic, while adding finishing touches from Detroit businesses and artisans.
Wellness design is spreading across hospitality architecture and beyond
Fifty years ago, the term wellness—if it was used at all—essentially meant “not sick.” Then, throughout the ’80s and ’90s, the rise of gym culture and workplace wellness
snowballed into an explosion of fitness boutiques in the early aughts. In city centers and upscale suburbs today, specialized fitness boutiques such as SoulCycle, PureBarre, Barry’s Bootcamp, and FlyWheel are nearly as ubiquitous as Starbucks. Combined with the rapid expansion of “health” branded grocery stores, an uptick in haute athletic wear, and a plethora of juice and smoothie companies, not to mention the surrounding media buzz, wellness has become not so much a trend as a booming industry.
Mobile, Modern, Modular: citizenM’s Tower of London Hotel
Even though the M in citizenM stands for Mobile (as in ‘mobile citizen’), we think it can stand for ‘modern’ too because it’s definitely one way you can describe the hospitality brand’s luxury hotels, including its Tower of London property. CitizenM is reinventing the hospitality experience in ways that makes complete sense given the technology readily available today, such as self check-ins, customizable guest rooms using touch-screen MoodPads, communal workspaces, and more.
Nobu opens Japanese-influenced oceanside hotel in Malibu
Studio PCH and Montalba Architects have converted a 1950s beachfront hotel into Nobu Ryokan Malibu, the first in a line of high-end, Japanese-inspired retreats.
Stretching along a waterfront property in the affluent California city, the boutique hotel is the first in Japanese restaurant chain Nobu's Ryokan collection of exclusive retreats in exotic settings and gateway cities. The line is named after a type of traditional Japanese inn that first emerged in the 1600s.
This Firm Is Redesigning The Most Stressful Places On Earth
For the New York-based design firm Icrave, interior design isn’t just choosing paint colors, lighting, and furniture. While the firm got its start in 2002 designing the interiors of bars and restaurants, it has since branched into designing airport terminals, including the jetsetting JetBlue terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City, and most recently, healthcare spaces, like the Josie Robertson Surgery Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Grupo Habita’s New Hotels Embrace Chicago, Inside and Out
The urban grit of Chicago is a stark contrast to the bucolic peace of the 8,000-acre citrus farm in Veracruz, Mexico, where hotelier Carlos Couturier spends much of his time. And yet there was something about the midwestern city that he found captivating. “Chicago is a unique city—probably the most American of them all,” he says. “It kind of lives inward and has a life of its own. It’s casual, practical, and humble.”
HKS Hospitality Group Expands U.s. Footprint With First-ever Hospitality Architecture Studio In New York City
HKS Hospitality Group, the renowned hospitality architecture and interiors division of HKS Architects, announces its U.S. expansion with the opening of a hospitality architecture design studio in New York City that also marks its first hospitality presence in the northeastern U.S. The new studio will support HKS Hospitality Group's growth and development efforts in the northeastern U.S. and will be directed by Vice President Alex John, an accomplished architect with diverse global experience who is returning to his New York City roots following a successful 12-year post in HKS' Dallas headquarters.
The draw of art in modern hotels
Hotels have long had links with the arts world but the trend is now accelerating in many countries. “Hotels are becoming more interested in art for two very simple reasons,” says Geraldine Guichardo, Americas Head of Hotels & Hospitality Research at JLL. “These are to help enhance the guest experience and also to differentiate the hotel.”
Can Pop-Up Hotels Become A Permanent Fixture With Travelers?
There are pop-up restaurants, pop-up shops, even pop-up museums. The phenomenon is so widespread, it makes sense that it would eventually hit travel. With a motto of stay tonight, gone tomorrow, alternative hoteliers are investing in mobile, collapsible accommodations that have particular appeal to that most coveted of demographics: millennials. Some companies are setting up camp in areas low in hotel room inventory, like music festivals, while others are pitching tents in pristine countrysides, turning temporary hotels into a new type of guest experience—emphasis on the experience.
What Happens When You Let Students Design Hotel Furniture
Boutique and luxury hotels often pay careful attention to the furniture in each room. Instead of generic stuff that looks like it came from the clearance section of Wayfair, they give guests name-brand beds, nightstands, desks, and chairs. The functions are more or less the same, but they come in a prettier shell. For Salone del Mobile, the annual furniture fair in Milan, industrial design students at ECAL created a collection of hospitality furniture that’s dramatically different–equal parts clever, bizarre, and inventive.
Elements of Designing for Wellness
Wellness can mean different things to different people, from peak physical fitness to clarity of mind to pampered states. And each of these, in turn, can be fostered — or hindered — by spatial or experiential design of the facilities built to support them. We take a look at a handful of projects where design enhances the experience, from yoga studios and a hip fitness center to tranquil spas, and products to consider for your own wellness projects.
Rentable sleeping pods offer refuge from busy city life
Feeling sleepy at work? Well, a sleeping pod could be coming to the rescue (and you don’t even have to work at Google.) Sleepbox, a startup that develops cozy luxury sleep pods for public areas, recently installed its first unit in the U.S. Fatigued athletes at the Brooklyn Boulders rock climbing gym in Somerville, Massachusetts, can now get in a Sleepbox for a nap or general respite.