Next-Gen hotel guests are checking-in and have no reservations about demanding what they want and expect in today’s hotels. This is putting tremendous pressure on hoteliers to improve the guest experience by upgrading and improving services, amenities, and accommodations to drive loyalty and repeat business.
As a result, Washington D.C.-based Tom Rowley, executive managing director and national practice lead for Hospitality and Leisure at Cushman & Wakefield, said that hotels are adding technology and workspaces to existing hotels, and newly renovated lobbies are more open than previously with small work areas, such as work bars, and larger gathering spaces.
Additionally, they are enhancing food and beverage offerings with new spaces; rooftop lounges, coupled with branded lobby bars and restaurants are prevalent in most urban markets, Rowley added, citing The Prince Kitano Hotel at 66 Park Avenue in Manhattan, which recently converted meeting space on the 16th floor of the hotel into a new rooftop bar and lounge.
Outside of resort markets, hoteliers are converting obsolete or little used amenities to more popular amenity and functional spaces, like eliminating indoor swimming pools to expand fitness facilities or meeting space, Rowley continued.
Changes in the food and beverage experience continue to evolve, according to Atlanta-based Steve Schrope, senior director of Hospitality Project Management-CBRE Hotels, with lots of upgrades and changes around operational efficiencies too that may require less staff.
He also said that obsolete services are being eliminated due to changes in guest needs and to modernize the guest experience. “This has been a long-standing trend, but getting rid of stuff continues,” Schrope added, noting, for example, that the business center is gone because guests now use personal laptops in their guestrooms, but hotels still provide a printing service.
Minor adjustments being made in guestrooms are aimed at modernizing their look and feel and accommodating new technology and how people today use it, he continued. For example, old TVs on the top of the vanity are being replaced with a flat-screen TV on the wall and computer workspaces have replaced the traditional desk.
New York-based Susie Park, executive vice president of JLL’s Asset Management team, suggested that the pandemic accelerated hotel technology improvements to provide social distancing of guests and less face-to-face interactions between guests and staff members. “This pushed hotels without a digital key option to invest in (digital key) software,” she said, noting that during the pandemic hotel rooms were offered as a “work away from home” option, while guest travel was down.
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