The lobby revolution
THE phrase hotel lobby used to be unambiguous. Its place in the world of accommodation was defined by certain constants.
There would be a reception desk, often with pigeonholes for messages and clunky keys, a formally attired concierge looming over a pulpit-like station, bustling porters, corridors or arcades leading to facilities that now seem prehistoric, such as barbers and business centres, and central to all this somewhere comfortable to sit and watch the world pass by.
About a month ago, I was reminded how things routinely used to be at Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof, built in 1841. Its venerable lobby feels like a portal to the past — and make that an era of guests in fur-collared coats travelling with small dogs and brass-hinged steamer trunks whose demands would be met by bowing under-managers snapping their fingers at ever more junior and terrified staff.
This five-star hotel is impeccable and now features a series of ultra-contemporary restaurants but, increasingly, such traditional hostelries, despite a rich heritage, look endangered as guests’ needs and time constraints change.
The relative cheapness and democratisation of travel has forever altered our expectations. Many high-flyers are members of an increasingly untethered workforce with high productivity goals and there has had to be a constant evolution of the way hotel public spaces are configured.
All the rage this decade is the transformation of lobbies into hubs of kinetic energy with “socialisation areas” and “productivity pods” that work as mobile offices, with nooks for meetings and computer access and streamlined check-in desks that feature no more than laptops or iPads and casually dressed staff. (Some budget properties are even experimenting with self-service kiosks like those at airports.)
Around this axis will be bars, restaurants and “lifestyle shops”, often selling hotel-branded wares, integrated into the heart of things rather than sequestered behind doors and walls with limited opening hours. The grab-and-go cafe or coffee stall is popping up, too, as guests take breakfast on the hop.
At the fab QT Gold Coast boutique hotel, the lobby is lifestyle central. The receptionists have clearly just stepped out of professional hair and make-up sessions, Betty Boop lips and all. The lobby has hanging oval lights in yellow and orange that look like hovering spacecraft; there are splashes of lime and cherry in rugs and soft furnishings, replica modernist chairs and tables shaped like toadstools. Guests segue from check-in to cafe to bar as if drifting through an emporium.
At the QT Gold Coast boutique hotel, the lobby is lifestyle central
Similarly, the stutteringly named Hotel Hotel in Canberra eschews the idea of a classic lobby and devotes its big entry-level floor to sweeping spaces with the feel of an art gallery cum exhibition space, myriad seating areas, a library devoted to art and lifestyle, and flexible dining. Its new Monster Kitchen and Bar opens from 6.30am to 1pm so you can get a house-special yabby jaffle or a violet-infused gin almost around the clock.
The T&I HOTW Hotel, Westin Singapore
Singapore is emerging as Asia’s most remarkable destination for design-driven hotels. The newish Parkroyal on Pickering at the edge of Chinatown has a lobby made for lingerers. There’s flexible chillout or work spaces, with screened desks and alcoves, relaxation chairs that look at least as comfortable as, say, business-class airline seating, “growing walls” of thriving ferns and broad-leafed creepers, water channels and mirror-shine surfaces that create a rippling, aqueous effect.
The Westin Singapore, in tune with another trend in Asia’s mixed-use commercial buildings, has its lobby above an office tower on level 32. So added to the inventory of lobby advancements comes the prospect of an encircling city panorama viewed from various buzzy spaces, such as bars, day spas and bistros. These aerial lobbies can be found in Japan at Tokyo’s Park Hyatt and Mandarin Oriental plus at Osaka’s Marriott Miyako; and, in mainland China, Four Seasons Guangzhou. But the vertigo-prone perhaps should not apply — in Hong Kong, the Ritz-Carlton lobby is on cloud-scraping level 103.
For those who prefer a more intimate arrival, British-based Firmdale Hotels encapsulates the cosy idea of residential lobbies at its eight London properties and its Crosby Street Hotel in New York.
Instead of foyers there are drawing rooms, honesty bars housed in, say, a handpainted Rajasthani cabinet, open fires, original artwork and chic touches from the group’s co-owner and design guru, Kit Kemp.
Many hotels of similar size are paying homage to Kemp’s eclectic style and doing away with hefty reception desks, identikit furnishings and traditional trimmings.
In the US, Marriott Hotels is harnessing Gen-Y power, involving Boston college students.
According to the Boston Globe, “The students designed a lobby fit for a new generation of travellers. A touchscreen map features the best places to eat and see in the city, tables go from work stations to presentation tables with video screens, and there’s a communal area with a charging mat that reveals where others at the hotel have travelled to recently, emphasising the social media element that has become an essential hotel communication tool.”
Coming soon, perhaps, to a hotel near you.
First impressions
FOUR Seasons George V in Paris spends $2m a year on fresh flowers, including massed installations of seasonal blooms in the marbled lobby .
At One&Only Hayman Island in the Queensland Whitsundays, relaunched last week, the pavilion-like lobby has myriad entryways and acts as a light-filled axis.
The Philippe Starck-designed Le Royal Monceau Raffles in Paris has a petite reception area, but the piece de resistance is the ballroom-like central foyer, full of customary Starck playfulness.
Still not trendy enough? The Norman Foster-designed Me Hotel in London is, at first glance, the antithesis of a welcoming hotel. The interactive all-black reception is housed in a glass-topped pyramid-like space and changing images are projected on to the walls, including floating jellyfish.
Hotel Icon Hong Kong has the world’s biggest vertical indoor garden in its lobby, featuring more than 8000 plants. This is a training hotel for hospitality students - the managers of those reimagined lobbies of the future.
Source: The Australian - 8th July 2014
