Hotel Design, Planning and Development

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Hotel Design

Planning and Development

S E C O N D

 

E D I T I O N

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Hotel Design

Planning and Development

S E C O N D

 

E D I T I O N

Richard Penner, Lawrence Adams  

and Stephani K. A. Robson

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Second edition published 2013

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2013 Richard Penner, Lawrence Adams and Stephani K. A. Robson.  

All rights reserved.

The right of Richard Penner, Lawrence Adams and Stephani K. A. Robson

to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance 

with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or 

utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known 

or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information 

storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered 

trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to 

infringe.

First edition published by Architectural Press, an imprint of Elsevier Science

© 2001 Walter A. Rutes, Richard H. Penner, and Lawrence Adams

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

CIP data has been applied for

ISBN: 978-0-08-096699-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-08-096700-4 (ebk)

Acquisition editors: Nancy Green, Liz Burton, and Wendy Fuller

Editorial Assistant: Laura Williamson

Production manager: Alfred Symons

Book designer and typesetter: Alex Lazarou

Printed by Everbest Printing Co. Ltd, China

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v

Acknowledgments  

vi

Foreword 

vii

Preface 

x

  1 Overview 

3

  2 Urban 

Hotels 

11

  3 Design 

Hotels 

53

  4 Suburban 

Hotels 

69

  5 Multi-branded 

Hotels 

91

  6 Mixed-use 

Developments 

105

  7 Resort 

Hotels 

119

  8 Casino 

Hotels 

173

  9 Convention 

Hotels 

187

10 Conference 

Centers 

215

11 

Residential Hotels, Condominiums, and Vacation Ownership 

231

12 

Updating Existing Hotels 

241

13 

Site and Master Planning 

283

14 

Programming and Development 

299

15 

The Guestroom Floor 

317

16 

Guestroom and Suite Design 

327

17 

Public Space Design 

341

18 

Administration and Back-of-house Design 

375

19 

Technical Coordination and Construction 

385

20 

Future and Fantasy Development 

403

  A 

LEED New Construction Checklist 

412

  B 

International Hotel and Travel Organizations  

413

  C 

Development Budget (typical 500-room hotel) 

415

  D 

Ten-Year Forecast of Net Operating Income 

416

  E Coordination 

Matrix 

418

  F Chain 

Brands 

422

  G Bibliography 

424

  H 

Project List and Credits 

426

About the Authors 

431

Index 

432

Part 1 HOTEL TYPES

Contents

Part 2 DESIGN GUIDE 

APPENDICES 

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vi

Acknowledgments

This book is the result of many decades of experience in the specialized 

field of hotel architecture and interior design—the experience of the 

scores of people who generously provided us with their insights about 

design and with examples of their work. We credit the architects, 

designers, photographers, and others who encouraged us and 

provided us with material about their projects—there are many 

more than we can suitably acknowledge here.

We owe a special debt to three giants in the industry: architect 

Michael Graves, designer David Rockwell, and developer Barry 

Sternlicht, who agreed to introduce the book with personal 

observations about their distinguished careers and about the 

future of hotel architecture, design, and development. Also, to their 

assistants who helped with the work: Ben Wintner at Michael Graves 

& Associates, Joan MacKeith and Maggie Hartnick at Rockwell Group, 

and Beth Shanholtz at Starwood Capital. In addition, sincere thanks 

to Robert E. Kastner, Ian Schrager, John C. Portman, Jr., Stephen 

Perkins, Roger Thomas, Howard J. Wolff, Steve Rushmore, Jim Anhut, 

and Sara Schoen for providing a series of sidebar commentaries for 

specific chapters.

We cannot offer enough thanks for the patience and enormous 

good judgment of the editors at Taylor & Francis and W. W. Norton: 

Laura Williamson, Wendy Fuller, and Nancy Green, and, especially, 

Ruth Mandel of Images Sought and Found, without whose assistance 

this book would not have been possible.

Also, over the past few years, students at Cornell and other 

universities took on individual research projects or assisted with 

the many drawings that illustrate the book. These include Katie 

Kozarek, Jerome Chen, Eduardo Quintero, and Carla Moulton. Their 

interest and enthusiasm for the details of hotel planning issues are 

infectious.

Our own associations with many good friends provided helpful 

comments throughout the writing of the book, and others went far 

beyond the call of duty in providing resources. There are too many 

individual contributors to acknowledge each one. We want to thank, 

however, the many hotel executives who identified their company’s 

most exciting new properties and the many media services and 

marketing people who provided us with images and drawings, all of 

whom willingly met our endless request for additional information. 

Most of all, we must recognize the sacrifices made by our families, 

friends, and colleagues who have provided incredible support and 

encouragement to complete this project. Thank you all.

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vii

Foreword

The Architect’s Perspective

Michael Graves, FAIA, and Patrick Burke, AIA

Michael Graves & Associates

Princeton, New Jersey 

Business hotels and resorts compete for today’s sophisticated 

global travelers, and their developers and operators often look 

to architects and interior designers to create new and interesting 

“experiences” for the guest. For decades, the hotel industry had 

been focused primarily on functionality and operations, and hotel 

design became formulaic. For business hotels, the predictability 

that came with standardization was often a virtue. For resorts, 

however, the trend resulted in a proliferation of hotels across 

the globe that looked as if they could be located anywhere in 

the world. Hotels in Egypt could have easily been built in Costa 

Rica, or in Miami. 

All that has changed over the past 15 years as leisure travelers 

seek unique experiences connected to local culture and context. 

As architects and designers, we ask ourselves, “What is special 

about this place, and how can we capture that spirit?” The sense-

of-place influences every scale: from the landscape and buildings, 

to the interiors and the smallest details of their furnishings. Thus, a 

resort in Costa Rica might be designed as a series of ecologically 

friendly, small-scale, semi-open-air pavilions, creating the feeling 

of being immersed within the tropical landscape. Or a spa resort in 

Switzerland may incorporate restorative natural thermal baths and 

grand fireplaces within architecture that is contemporary in design 

but constructed according to local craft traditions. 

Urban hotels too can reflect local culture. For example, The St. 

Regis Cairo embodies the worldly character of the hotel’s brand 

while conveying the ambience of the host country through details, 

materials, colors, and patterns inspired by the context and intended 

to be locally sourced. Going local is just one component in the 

prevalent interest in environmental responsibility. The hospitality 

industry increasingly recognizes the benefits of building and 

operating hotels that are efficient in their use of water and energy. 

This requires integrative thinking among members of the design 

team and a commitment from developers and operators. Significant 

technical inroads have been made not only in building envelopes 

and mechanical systems but also in the hotel kitchen, laundry, 

and waste management. We believe that guests appreciate the 

healthful aspects of environmentally responsible places, as much 

as they appreciate good design. 

Good design, long associated with luxury and boutique hotels, 

today brings fresh and sometimes innovative solutions to three-star 

and four-star properties as a way of differentiating brands, providing 

value, and attracting guests. In creating operator standards for these 

hotels, many of which cater to the business traveler, we have learned 

that the attributes must be adaptable to different building layouts 

and designs since many of such hotels are conversions of existing 

properties and not always new construction. Like their higher-end 

counterparts, these hotels recognize the guests’ expectations for 

services that meet today’s needs. 

Hotels, like other customer-oriented institutions, continually 

evolve in the services they provide and how they provide them, 

creating a gradual change in the building type. What hotels offer 

the public today meets the expectations and needs of business and 

recreational travelers, from express grab’n’go food to Internet access 

and programmable technology for everything from hotel check-in 

to controlling light, sound, and temperature in the guestrooms. 

Despite the importance of the public spaces in hotels—the lobby, 

lounges, restaurants, spas, and fitness center—guests’ satisfaction is 

ultimately judged by their experience of the living accommodations. 

In many of today’s higher-end developments, the guestroom may 

be a traditional hotel room or a serviced apartment, a phenomenon 

that has transformed the standalone hotel to a mixed-use mini-

community. For the architect, the guestroom, or the apartment 

unit, is the essential building block that sets the module for the 

building. It’s the place where one gets to think through who the 

guests are and what they need; guests may be a group gathering to 

play golf, a family on vacation, or a solo business traveler using the 

room as a temporary office. While some hotels once thought they 

had “perfected” the guestroom, today, just as in the technology 

industry, there is an impetus to innovate. The guestroom is being 

rethought in terms of its aesthetics, functions, and features. As 

savvy travelers, we have embraced the idea of traveling to different 

places and enjoying great guest experiences, and a well-designed 

guestroom is a measure of success. 

As architects who have been involved in hospitality projects 

for decades, we know there is simply no “one size fits all” in this 

industry. Therefore, a book like this is very helpful as a comprehensive 

reference guide to hotel design, planning, and development. We 

are honored to have been asked to offer a few comments on 

today’s hotel world and look forward to reading the insights of 

our colleagues. 

The Interior Designer’s Perspective

David Rockwell

Founder and CEO

Rockwell Group

New York, New York

Today’s hotel is not merely a destination, but is also a convergence 

of an incredible array of experiences. The moment guests enter, they 

become part of a vibrant microcosm, a carefully crafted environment 

that provides both a thrilling escape and domestic comforts. While 

the hotel’s calendar of events may change with the seasons, the 

value placed on small, everyday rituals is a constant. This is the very 

nature of the new hotel: its ability to be both up-to-the-moment with 

the latest trends, yet reassuringly personal and accommodating to 

a broad spectrum of guests. 

The hotel itself is a hybrid linking two worlds: home and destination. 

In terms of design, this idea is most clearly represented by the 

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F O R E W O R D

hotel’s entrance, which becomes a celebratory focal point of the 

lobby space. Although the hotel is itself a dynamic environment, it 

is also situated within a larger set of attractions and cultural milieu. 

Hospitality environments today must engage and reflect local context, 

forging a symbiotic relationship with the cities and neighborhoods 

beyond their walls. By joining in the celebration of local festivals or 

assimilating regional ingredients in their culinary offerings, authentic 

flavors of the world can permeate the hotel in myriad ways. An 

East Asian hotel might offer a traditional tea service, for example, 

and staff uniforms may be designed by an emerging fashion star. 

Fostering a rich sense-of-place can transform a fleeting hotel stay 

into an enduring, memorable experience. 

Through innovative uses of technology, hotels are able to reflect 

the interconnectedness of our lives today. From the moment 

you step into a hotel, smartly integrated, cutting-edge tools can 

transform and heighten previously tedious chores. Check-in desks 

are becoming a thing of the past. With advanced data-management 

systems, greeters can personally welcome each guest at the door 

by name. A cumbersome process becomes convenient, even 

leisurely, as travelers check in via iPad over a gin-and-tonic in the 

lounge. These are the least of the possibilities that our information 

age offers us. Rooms are equipped with a range of customizable 

features with which to personalize your space: at the touch of 

a button guests can control the lighting, changing the room’s 

entire mood, select a special aromatherapy-infused shower to 

shake off the drag of jet-lag, or conjure up a concealed high-end 

entertainment system. 

This flexibility translates into a warmth and openness towards 

individual needs that complements the distinctive character of 

a hotel. Each guest brings with him or her a personal routine of 

comforts, which the hotel should respond to attentively with a fine-

tuned menu of services. Quotidian rituals are enabled by diverse, 

dynamic spaces. In common areas, purposeful design can set the 

scene for spontaneous encounters and reveal unexpected and 

delightful details; everyone can find a favorite gathering spot—a 

lounge that allows intimate conversations, a lobby where you can 

go to see and be seen, or a comfortable corner to curl up with 

a book. 

In tune with the tempo of the individual and resonating with 

multiple rhythms, the hotel environment today presents an inviting, 

comfortable haven. The most successful hotel interiors transform 

a sojourn into an unforgettable experience, however brief, and 

position guests as the curators of their own journeys.

The Developer’s Perspective

Barry Sternlicht

Chairman

Starwood Capital Group

Greenwich, Connecticut

My mother is an accomplished artist. During our childhood, many 

of her paintings hung in the hallway of our home and in the living 

room. I loved the colors she used, the texture of her knife, and the 

calmness and feelings they evoked in me. Most of all, I marveled 

at the creative process, how on a blank canvas one could create 

such emotion and beauty. In high school, I took several art classes 

where I focused on painting. Good artists understand the delicacy 

of composition of the canvas … still lifes arranged just so—work … 

and others don’t. A picture taken at one angle tantalizes the viewer, 

but seen from another it is boring. The juxtaposition of one color 

against another is complementary and soothing, or dark, disturbing, 

and uncomfortable. While my parents suggested I not become an 

artist, I love design and architecture and so, for me, marrying design 

and real estate in the form of hotels was not work but the fulfillment 

of childhood ambitions.

Over the years, I bought an immense amount of property in many 

product types such as office, retail, golf courses, senior housing, and, 

of course, hotels. I marveled at design that worked, that powered 

occupancy, and achieved great rents versus that which did not. For 

example, when I lived in Chicago, I worked across the street from 

the Water Tower, perhaps America’s most successful vertical mall. 

The center was always busy and it felt busy. The mall was designed 

with anchor stores at either end, but in the center was a circular 

space four or five stories high in which were the glass elevators and 

all the escalators. You saw everyone in the mall! It was always busy 

and going up and down the escalators you could see all the stores 

you forgot were tenants or new stores you wanted to be sure to 

visit before you left. 

What I noticed about the hotel industry in 1995, the year I 

decided I would do a national “boutique chain” that I named W 

Hotels, was that the industry had spent decades dumbing down 

the product, and competed on price but not on aesthetics. We 

had a $79 a night chain, followed by those at $99, $109, $139, 

and $179. My theory was that we could build a chain where we 

would compete on design: that design matters, that consumers 

would not only pay more for great design but that it would build an 

emotional attachment with them, that they might define themselves 

by our aesthetic and we would build brand loyalty and, therefore, 

give ourselves pricing power. In hotels, the product had become 

commoditized. One could not tell the brand by looking at the 

room. It seemed that interior designers had gone to the “one size 

fits all” box, like the failed K car of Chrysler where someone had 

the brilliant idea of building multiple bodies on the same chassis 

and engine. Consumers saw right through it and so, by trying to 

be all things to all people, you appealed to almost no one. Or, at 

least, we can say you built no brand loyalty.

 

There are certain spaces you walk into that put you at 

ease and make you feel comfortable. These are spaces that work: 

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F O R E W O R D

proportions that are elegant, furniture that is sized appropriately for 

the space it occupies, pieces that speak to each other and enhance 

each other with their presence. We react to texture, to proportion, to 

color, and the immense talent of great interior designers is that they 

take the complex and make it look effortless, just as great athletes 

seem to hardly be trying when they are in their zone. A space may be 

filled with numerous wonderful textures, vibrant color, and surprising 

and dynamic innovative products. It simply feels right and yet it is, in 

my mind, just as hard as the great painter’s compositions executed 

in the physical space. Sometimes design makes you nervous, is 

unsettling, and you simply want to leave; sometimes you don’t even 

know why. And then there is design for design’s sake.

If you are working in hotel design, you can’t forget it’s about people, 

customers, and that they are going to be part of your “composition” 

when it is complete. Great designers can deftly edit a space, modify 

its contents, work across all the dimensions of design—scale, color, 

texture, lighting—in their heads, and the result will be spaces that 

work, that make people feel good, that are inviting. If the artist can 

execute this with great originality, it becomes memorable, a classic. To 

me, it’s about the human experience for, after all, hotels are meeting 

places for weary travelers. Why not dazzle them and amaze them 

and leave them yearning for one more night’s stay? Just as Apple, 

Samsung, and Aston Martin have created loyal customers through 

innovative industrial design, so too can great designers influence, 

strengthen, and even define a great brand.

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x

Preface

Development and Design Interact

For their kind Foreword illuminating the timeless goals of the world’s 

largest industry, we immensely thank Michael Graves, David Rockwell, 

and Barry Sternlicht, who represent the major disciplines involved 

with hotel development and design.

Much has changed about hotels and the hospitality industry since 

the 2001 edition of Hotel Design, Planning and Development. In 

just over a decade, the Internet has risen to being the key form of 

communication for our guests and development teams alike and 

shapes how everyone does business everywhere in the world. Rapidly 

advancing technology is supporting the application of sustainable 

principles in design and operations. Robust growth in hotel supply 

during the 2000s reflected new segments, new markets, new lodging 

products, and new approaches to financing in a difficult economy.  

Today there are more hotel brands than ever, each demanding a 

specific set of design and operational requirements that make an 

integrated effort among the developer, operator, and design team 

paramount in order to ensure a successful outcome.  In 2001, most 

hotel development was still taking place in North America.  Now, 

Asia is the engine of much of the industry’s growth and other parts 

of the world are poised to follow suit.  There has never been a more 

exciting or more challenging time to create hotel assets.  

This book is intended to serve as a practical guide to the hotel 

building type for practitioners and students alike.  Our inquiry begins 

with the word “hotel” itself, meaning mansion, borrowed from the 

French soon after the American Revolution in an effort to express 

the sophistication of the new multifaceted inns that then appeared. 

From their onset, these novel mixed-use establishments served the 

varied needs of a rapidly expanding society by freely adapting new 

residential, commercial, and industrial features to hotel use. These 

include the first grand ballroom in New York, an atrium and Merchants’ 

Exchange in Boston, a domed European lobby in New Orleans, and 

a theater, shops, and laundry in London. Their competitive nature 

meant that hotels were among the first buildings in most cities to 

incorporate the newest technologies such as gas and electric lighting, 

central heat, telephones, and elevators. 

Such creative responses to consumer needs and desires more 

than ever drive hotel design and development today.  There is 

no such thing as a “generic” limited-service or full-service hotel 

anymore.  Ever-greater segmentation means that hotels need to 

be keenly focused from the very start of the development process.  

The specific requirements of the road-warrior business traveler, the 

design-savvy boutique guest, the family on vacation far from home, 

the meeting planner and corporate travel coordinator, as well as the 

hotel management company and the selected brand, all require 

careful consideration throughout the planning and design stages.  

And as digital technology continues to evolve at breakneck speed, 

developers and designers must constantly adapt to make sure that 

the amenities and infrastructure in all new projects keep pace.

In the following chapters we expand upon the practices, 

features, and trends that shape the hotel development industry.  So 

sophisticated are today’s markets that certain once-popular concepts 

have faded into oblivion while some previously negative traits are 

now considered attractions. Therefore, we are pleased to be able 

to interpret today’s design, technology, and creative concepts which 

continue to offer such bright prospects for the future.

Richard H. Penner

Lawrence Adams

Stephani K. A. Robson

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We dedicate this book to the memory of Walter A. Rutes, FAIA, our late coauthor 

and mentor. Wally for many years was a hotel architect and corporate executive, 

responsible for many of the innovations in the last quarter of the twentieth century. 

We miss his spirit and good sense. 

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