Hotel Design, Planning and Development

PART

 

1

Hotel Types

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1

C H A P T E R

Overview

W Dallas Victory Hotel and 

Residences, Dallas, Texas

With 252 guestrooms and 94 

luxury residences, this 33-story 

hotel and condominium tower is 

the centerpiece of the 72 acre (29 

hectare) Victory master-planned 

development in Dallas. Designed by 

HKS Architects, the hotel includes 

a 10,000 sq ft (925 sq m) spa, pool, 

and fitness facility, 11,000 sq ft 

(1,020 sq m) of meeting space, and 

Ghostbar, a sleek and stylish rooftop 

venue. 

Arriving in Esfahan, Iran, centuries ago, you could stay outside the 

city gates at a roadside caravansary now called the Sha Abbas. Or 

desiring better service, you might continue to the Khan, an in-town 

hotel. As a “frequent traveler” journeying to Rome, you could stay 

at a downtown mansione, a boarding house on the Appian Way, 

or at a spa resort.

While the quality of hotels has advanced immeasurably over several 

centuries, especially their services, the basic functional elements remain 

almost as simple and familiar as in ancient times. But with increasing 

guest sophistication—and imaginative development and design—we 

anticipate growing demand globally for increasingly diverse and 

customized hotels, resorts, and related leisure-time amenities for 

the world’s largest industry. The first part of this book discusses and 

illustrates scores of different types of hotels and considers how their 

design is being refined and their markets reassessed. They range 

from sensible extended-stay residential units to lavish super-luxury 

urban suite hotels. Hotel developers are reconsidering the design 

and character of all hotel types, from ecotourist retreats to the 

adaptive reuse and restoration of existing urban infrastructure. The 

latter provides a variety of finely detailed hotels and entertainment 

amenities that dramatically upgrade inner-city environments. And 

family-oriented theme parks continue to serve as multi-resorts for 

major corporate trade exhibitions and conventions as well as for 

advanced leisure-park communities.

The explosive growth of our global economies has generated 

extravagant architectural and engineering accomplishments around 

the world: in the Middle East, China, India, and Russia, as well as in 

Europe and the United States. Such major resort destinations as the 

Palm Islands in Dubai have sprouted dozens of hotels featuring all the 

leading brands with luxury accommodations and residences. Resort 

World Sentosa, off the coast of Singapore, City of Dreams in Macau, 

and CityCenter in Las Vegas represent massive investments in multi-

hotel, residential, retail, entertainment, gaming, and conferencing 

developments. Extraordinary hotel architecture continues to amaze 

travelers with such exceptional structures as the Marina Bay Sands 

in Singapore and with such iconic mixed-use developments as the 

Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany, which includes a philharmonic 

hall wrapped with hotel rooms. Design hotels extend the boutique 

fascination by emphasizing great architecture combined with chic 

interiors and now include fashion designers entering the fray with 

their own brands, such as Armani Burj Khalifa and Missoni Edinburgh. 

Fashionable downtown hotels such as Hotel Gansevoort and The 

Standard in New York’s Meatpacking district bring new vitality to 

dormant neighborhoods and serve as place-making destinations. 

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H O T E L

 

T Y P E S

4

Environmental responsibility has taken on new dimensions worldwide 

in all segments of the hotel and resort industry as new properties 

seek LEED certification or similar recognition by a number of other 

international green-design rating systems.

Other major prototype developments include hotels with themed 

shopping and entertainment atriums, all-villa enclaves, various types 

of vacation ownership resorts and spas, as well as vertically integrated 

mixed-use high-rise towers combining hotel functions with offices and 

trade centers incorporating flex-suites affording virtual officing. One 

type that has seen major growth in the past decade is multi-branded 

hotels, where one site or building houses two or more competing 

brand hotels. The next several chapters illustrate a wide range of the 

era’s most significant hotel types, from future concepts for world-class 

multi-resort destinations to the most innovative and cost-effective 

limited-service prototypes. While the opening chapters discuss the 

latest examples in each category, and describe the different features 

of each type of hotel, the Design Guide, Part 2, provides information 

on how to program and design the hotel guestroom, public, and 

back-of-house areas.

With concepts ranging from airport conference center hotels to 

exotic eco-tourist lodges and from high-fashion design hotels to 

gigantic casino hotels, Part 1 reviews more than fifty different types of 

hotels now flourishing in today’s increasingly customized marketplace. 

Separate chapters are devoted to each of 11 major categories. For 

example, suburban hotels offer many choices ranging from office-park 

hotels to country inns, while resorts encompass an ever-widening 

array from luxury wilderness lodges to remote island resorts. The 

repositioning of countless downtown and suburban properties is 

accomplished by innovative renovations, restoration, additions, or 

adaptive reuse. The conference center hotel, which significantly 

differs from the urban convention hotel, is discussed in terms of 

design options, planning, and development considerations, as well as 

social and cultural implications. Highly imaginative future hotel and 

resort development concepts are summarized in the final chapter. 

A continuing theme is the emphasis on carefully targeting specific 

market segments so that the hotel may better fulfill its function. For 

example, luxury resorts and super-luxury hotels need small, superb 

restaurants and health spas to maintain their clientele.

In industrialized nations, familiarity with new types of hotels is 

essential for developers to plan their expansion strategies and devise 

more imaginative prototypical features that attract new customers to 

hotels. Some types of hotels are as different as is a single-family home 

compared to a high-rise apartment tower in the residential field; it 

is essential for the designer to understand the variations in facilities, 

program areas, and circulation patterns required for each new form 

of hotel designed to serve a particular market niche. Also, an overall 

familiarity with diverse types encourages cross-fertilization of ideas, as, 

for example, introducing larger health spas to fill relaxation needs at 

conference centers, adding meeting rooms to turn country inns into 

instant conference retreats, and borrowing attributes of super-luxury 

hotels, such as original artwork, to better upgrade other types of 

hotels. New ideas for better hotels come from each member of the 

design team, ranging from market researchers to food and beverage 

(F&B) consultants, and include a variety of specialized disciplines 

from high-tech systems experts to talented landscape architects and 

environmental designers. Chapter 19, Technical Coordination and 

Construction, discusses the development areas in which consultants 

are recommended—even required.

Classifications

Since hotels generally are classified by location, function, and 

other special characteristics, a given hotel may fit more than one 

category—for example, Ames Hotel in Boston is both a design 

(boutique) hotel and an example of adaptive reuse. A number 

of airport hotels could also be considered conference centers or 

convention properties. However, the overlap should not impair the 

usefulness of the classification system referenced in this book, which 

permits easy access to information by subject headings generally 

used in the hotel field and clear to the public.

While hotel classifications are necessary for purposes of organizing 

and referencing information, they are by no means perfect and no 

substitute for specific knowledge of the individual character and 

detailed ingredients of the hotel. As a writer in the New Haven