About this series: This is the final part of a four-part series of articles about how consultants from around the world view current trends in the global hotel industry. The content is a result of a roundtable discussion held during last fall’s International Society of Hospitality Consultants’ annual meeting in Berlin, Germany. The roundtable was moderated by Hotel News Now.
BERLIN—The penchant of hotel developers to construct properties with postage-stamp size guestrooms might not be the best course of action for the long term, according to a group of global consultants who participated in a roundtable discussion about current industry trends.
Global hotel brands have been more accommodating with existing offerings and new brand launches that possess smaller room sizes simply because developers are demanding it, consultants said.
Christophe De Bruyn, director of tourism and leisure for Spain-based Indra Business Consulting, said real-estate owners in dense urban areas
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such as Singapore are looking for hotel brands that utilize small hotel rooms because the building’s dimensions demand it.
One growing hotel chain that features small guestrooms put the bathroom against the window in its New York property—which makes for great efficiency—but it’s not so good if that property ever needs to be redeveloped for another use, according to Bill Barnett, managing director of Thailand-based C9 Hotelworks.
“It’s all about the real estate,” he said.
- Read the third article in this series, as analysts discuss restaurant trends in hospitality.
Guest perception and financial practicality
The consultants agreed the jury is still out on whether consumers are fully onboard with smaller room sizes, even though they are spending more time in lobbies of hotels. That could make the smaller-is-better mentality a fad—which could spell trouble in the future for an owner, according to Cecilia Gordon, partner and co-chair of the hospitality practice at Boston-based Goulston & Storrs.
“I defer to the architects and ask, ‘How flexible is that space?’” Gordon said. “If you have those smaller rooms or you just built yourself a building that you can’t convert to apartments, that you can’t convert to an office—or actually is it more flexible? From an investment standpoint that’s what people would look at. Are you boxing yourself in?”
Mike Chun, senior vice president of Hawaii-based WATG and an architect by trade, said Gordon’s point is an essential one for developers to consider.
“Once you set the module, it’s extremely difficult to change,” Chun said.
Room size is a product of the environment and largely is determined by the market, Chun added. It shouldn’t be arbitrarily constructed as a small room if the market isn’t in sync with it.
“I mean you can’t make rooms smaller in London or Paris than they already are,” De Bruyn said. “Then you go to Dubai, you go to Doha, you can play tennis in (the rooms). Between one extreme and the other, there must be some common sense, you know?”
- In part two of our ISHC coverage, panelists discuss the impact of livelier lobby space.
Bob Puccini, president and CEO of San Francisco-based Puccini Group, isn’t convinced there won’t be an alternative use, if needed, for the small rooms being integrated into the hotel supply.
“These small rooms, if the payback is good, and there’s a quick profit on the investment, and they go out of fashion, they’ll simply, like everything else, get reconstructed into something else,” Puccini said. “Get downsized into something like a hostel or who knows what it’s going to be. But what I’ve noticed is that there’s always somebody back there in the food chain that’s looking at an opportunity to take advantage of somebody else’s mistake.”
Thomas Tritschler, managing director for Germany-based Tritschler Associates, said he’s seeing a trend in Europe that has boutique hotel owners knocking out walls when they renovate to create larger rooms that drive average daily rate.
In-room technology
Size isn’t the only trend affecting hotel room rates. Technology is an ongoing moving target for owners, operators and guests, according to the consultants.
The cost of the technology revolution in guestrooms is a concern for owners, De Bruyn said.
“Brands are always asking for more and more—and is the client going to pay more for that?” he said.
Handling issues with in-room technology is an issue for hotels, especially when dealing with guests who aren’t technologically oriented, De Bruyn added.
“We have to think about the people that are really into technology, but also the people that are not,” De Bruyn said.
- Check out the first article in this ISHC series, which touches on operational trends facing hoteliers.
But like so many other aspects of a hotel, it’s all about return on investment when deciding what technology to implement in guestrooms, Puccini said.
“It’s really an economic question of somebody deciding when they are going to get a payback,” Puccini said.
Plus, the speed at which technology advances makes it a difficult decision for hoteliers when considering what tech makes the best investment, consultants said.
Barnett said what may be needed today might be obsolete next year. The desire of guests to bring their own content is one of those issues.
“We see a lot more people who want Internet TVs who don’t even bother turning on TV channels,” Barnett said. “They want to bring their own content, they want to hook up to the Internet, and they want those things from it.”