Patrick's posterous

A Guide to Hotel Design Pt 2

My grandparents on both sides of my family were farmers. It was drummed into me at an early age that money was earned and that the way to earn it was to work hard. It was also drummed into me that ‘the labourer is worthy of his hire’ and that you ‘don’t get owt for nowt’. In later years as I ordered millions of pounds worth of product for hotels on behalf of our clients I came to realise there is truth in clichés, and that indeed one does get what one pays for – in other words there is a relationship between price and product quality. It is indeed true that there is no such thing as a free lunch and those companies using ‘cheap manufacturing’ in China are finding it is not cheap as wages and social costs there rise and the transport costs leap. UK based companies such as Curtis Furniture or PTT may well become more competitive, but we and the USA have thrown away much of our manufacturing systems for a short term vision of getting something for next to nothing...

So it is with design. A good designer will use their knowledge and experience to save the client money – often saving more than their fee. Certainly the cost of not using an experienced designer can be paid by the operator for years through increase maintenance and staff costs, and difficulty in selling their product. Good Design adds to the bottom line.

There are a number of patterns of payment for design fees, and I would outline these, with their advantages and disadvantages, below. I would caution all designers to get a written instruction before proceeding with any work, and caution all hotel groups to control line managers so that they do not dishonestly appoint designers to do work when they don’t have authority to do so. Unfortunately at least two hotel groups ‘innocently’ allow junior or regional managers to do this in order to avoid paying for work. Designers should be aware that there are dishonest companies out there and should be formal in their relationships as Terry Addison points out in our ‘Ask the Experts’ columns in the DesignClub to avoid being taken advantage of.

Commissioning of design seems to go in cycles with each of the following being favoured over the others at one time or another as each has advantages and disadvantages for the client. The three major ways in which design is commissioned in hotel sector are:-
1. Design and Build.
• In this it may well be that the Hotel operator nominates a designer to produce schemes, but chooses to pay them through the building contractor, so that there is only one set of bills. The designer is ‘novated’ to the contractor, which means the contractor is responsible for paying the designer and the designer’s contract is with the builder. Designers generally dislike this because their responsibility is to whom their contract is with, in this case the builder. Thus they may find that the materials they would like to use, or the layout of the space, may be changed for cheaper solutions that contribute to the builder’s bottom line.

In my experience the major drawback with this approach is that the Client loses a productive relationship with the designer, and has a relationship with the builder instead. The relative benefits depend very much on the qualities of the individuals concerned.

Advantages are that the process is transparent, professional and controllable by the Client, but only as effective as the Clients experience and management abilities. Weak management can lead to buildings that have operational problems built in, or create conflict between the aims of the designer in serving their paymaster or the Client.

2. Design and Supply
• Here the design will be provided by the company supplying the FF&E*, maybe on a ‘turnkey’ basis, i.e. the Client sets a budget and gets a hotel finished with all the FF&E in place so that it can be operated from the moment the keys are handed over and the Client turns them in the lock. Here the supplier provides a professional design service, with all the necessary drawings and visuals, specifications etc. but it is paid for from the margins made on the supply of furniture, curtains etc. In this type of company there is also often a manufacturing arm and a contracting arm, so the client is paying only one set of bills, simplifying the accounting procedure. This also enables cash flow to be smoothed.

Some larger design companies will in effect offer turnkey solutions. It is effective and professional and can lead to good long term relationships. Where it can fail is if the company is intent on maximising profit from the supply and chooses the product lines with the largest margins.

Most dangerous and in my view unprofessional are those who charge a design fee and then also take a commission from the suppliers without telling the Client. They are being paid by both the Cowboys and the Indians...

3. Professional Fee Route
• Here the designer enters a contract with the Client to provide a design and project management service for a fee. Fees are usually related to the cost of the project and are percentage based the percentage dependant on the size of the project in the same way as architectural fees are set, but only on the interior element (which is obviously subtracted from the architect’s area of responsibility). A contract or letter of understanding is usually put in place before any work is carried out (essential in a new relationship) and issues such as copyright are clarified.

Fees are usually paid according to a split reflecting the work involved at each stage. This may be:
i. Feasibility – a study of the location, local market, competition resulting in an outline proposal for development of the site or budget proposal for the refurbishment of an existing hotel
ii. Design- the production of the initial design and plan layouts, visualisations and reasonable design development to acceptance of the scheme by the Client. By the end of this stage 25% of the fee is usually due
iii. Tender – production of detail drawings and tender packages. This may cover joinery (millwork) drawings, design of furniture, light fittings, tenders for electrical work, tenders for tiling and marbled work etc.. A project programme will be drawn up and planning and building regulation applications made, together with appraisals under the CONDAM and Fire regulations. Tenders are issued and opened according to clear industry standards, and the Client is not committed to accepting the lowest or indeed any tender. By the end of this stage 65% of the fee is due.
iv. Site supervision and project management involving arranging and attending site meetings regularly, agreeing variations to the contract and checking and agreeing the contractors payments in conjunction with the Client team** Signing off the work for handover to the client. By the end of this stage 95% of the fee is payable.
v. Snagging and rectification work which usually covers the first six months from handover. Here the last 5% becomes due.
vi. Purchasing of all FF&E will be organised by the designer for the Client, usually for a percentage either on the fee to start with or separately agreed. Again I will look in another article at the rôle of Purchasing agents.

In all the above cases a schedule of regular monthly payments may be agreed between the parties concerned of smooth cash flow thought the length of the project. A contract is normally in place which will cover all the work undertaken, and defining responsibilities. Designers in all these methods of working are expected to have Professional Indemnity insurance, usually of up to £3 million

The latter arrangement was the one I was used to working under when in practice. It enables the Designer to work directly as a part of the Client team, building on and understanding the operational requirements to the benefit of the schemes and the profitability of the Client Company.

If these models are used the Client can create a transparent management structure that allows them to interrogate the construction team, be aware of costs, see the implications of changes of mind or specification. Choose the structure that supports your own management capabilities, and remember the Golden Rule – he who has the Gold Rules.


*FF&E = Furniture, Fittings and Equipment. Sometime the E is taken to mean Electrical, although Electrical may be subject of separate sub contracts.
**Client team may include Architect, Interior Designer, Quantity Surveyor, Project manager, Structural Engineer, Services Engineer and more. Oh - and don't get upset these are not in order of importance!


©Patrick Goff

Brand Standards - Who screws it up?

For some time I have listened to designers and suppliers alike bemoaning the evil influence of the Purchasing Agents. Demons who's only desire is to cut the cost of a job without any reference to standards, they have been portrayed to me as the devils incarnate only interested in their 2%.

In fact the reality is different, and here I must use my age and experience, and my age is starting to be a big number unfortunately! So bear with an old man as he tells the story and hopefully clears some of the smoke from the battlefield of budgets and new hotels.

The first new build I was involved with was the second new build (then) Shire Inn at Aztec West outside Bristol in the UK. This 100 bedroom hotel was designed for an exacting Client who wanted a four star hotel built to a five star standard. His reasoning was that if he ran a five star then complaint levels would be 35% higher than in a four star as guest expectations were higher - apparently an industry statistic. However if he ran a four star with five star interiors guest would be impressed and would return again and again, and recommend his hotels to others.

An old man's memory is a strange and selective thing, but as I remember the analysis it went along these lines.  The construction cost per room of the Shire Inn Aztec West was reputedly the highest of any four star that year (1982) at (forgive me if the figures are wrong but memory etc.) £125k per room at a time when the average four star cost was about £84,000. As a current indicator I heard a couple of years ago of a proposed refurb budget where the design came in at £60K per room but the client wanted to spend only £40K per room(per key if you prefer).

Imagine than my surprise then when I was talking to a contractor and he showed me some really boring layouts of a proposed new four star. The budget proposal the hotel groups was working on was a construction cost of £74K per room. I could do an analysis here of what goes into a room and calculate a cost, but that would be to miss the point. Cheap money gets cheap jobs. How is this cheapness achieved?

Firstly by cheapening the build. Hoteliers may think that a guest would not notice if the hotel had skirting's without any mouldings, or plastic switches where the competition has metal. Sure if you ask a guest would be hard put to remember detail - they are not designers, or builders or operators. But this does not mean they do not know what a high standard is. Cheap build will both wear badly, and more importantly be noted by the guests. Read TripAdvisor if you doubt me.

 An hotel group confided in a designer that they didn't clean the bed throws between guests. He asked how often they did clean them. They replied: on a weekly rota 'if they needed it'. That explains the semen stains one of my assistants found when sent to check out an hotel  (needless to say it didn't get reviewed). Apparently this saving on laundry, set across thousand of rooms added up to millions of squids over a year. Forget cleanliness - the guest will never notice!

If hotel groups set unrealistic budgets in relation to the level of luxury the star rating is supposed to represent then they will get a product that reflects this. One way to reduce the budget is the cheap copy - the 'Freds in a Shed' so often lampooned elsewhere, who care not for copyright infringement or patents and maybe disappear after the manufacture so there are no guarantees worth the paper they are written on, no after care and often no pride in product.

In these scenarios things are missed - fabrics are supplied without flame proofing perhaps, or performance parameters are lower. A few years ago a guest died in an hotel fire caused by the ignition of a settee in reception that had a flamepoofing certificate but had not in fact been flame proofed. Prosecutions followed, but apparently this kind of cost cutting measure is reappearing again today. Reduce specification will cut cost but it is often at expense of the quality or longevity of the supplied goods, so the hotel ends up paying again for the product, or has a much lower life expectancy,  higher refurbishment rate, simply pushing the spend from the capital budget to the maintenance budget.

The worst thing about all this is that it is being driven by the operators. The poor Purchasing Agent plays his part, and I am sure that there are some out there who are totally unscrupulous, but if they are given rotten budgets to work to in the first place can they be held to blame for the end result?

There is hope however, and I have been relieved to find a number of hotels that have recently opened where the owners have cared for the standards and have used designers and contractors who have had the same philosophy. This has lifted my heart after a number of disappointments. Notable amongst these new quality hotels is a Hilton Doubletree in the States - the Wit in Chicago designed by Cheryl Rowley, to be the subject of a future Review; the Andels in Lodz Poland by Jestico and Whiles, a super conversion of an old weaving mill;  the refurbished Marine in Hermanus South Africa by the tireless Ms. McGraw (even older than me); and of course the latest Miniview on our site, the Arch in Great Cumberland Street in London by RDD and contractors E.E.Smith.

I attach some images here of these hotels, and there are more in the archive and DesignClub Gallery on HotelDesigns. But please go and see them for yourselves. Stay a night and experience the difference a high quality hotels have to those merely having pretensions. Then go back to your projects an fight hard for quality. It is in your clients interests.

Branding through Design

The hotel market is qualitatively different in Europe to the market in the USA. In fact the market in the USA is qualitatively different to the market just about anywhere else. This difference is based in the ownership and operation of hotels – in the US some 80% of hotel beds are owned by chains and 20% are in individually owned and operated properties, where as in Europe this proportion is reversed. Without the corset of branding European hotels have a spread of styles which defy labelling

Schrager or Hempel may lay claim to have introduced the first boutique hotels, but this is not a claim that stands up to any serious examination. What both Hempel and Schrager did was produce idiosyncratically styled hotels, fashion icons that captured a moment in the historical evolution of hotel concepts. If boutique means less than 100 rooms, individual contemporary design, modern (in its time) then maybe Bob Lush of Richmond International got there first with the much copied North Lakes Gateway in Lancashire in the mid 1970’s, or perhaps Schrager and Hempel were just the first to crank up the pr machine to sell design rather than just the service the hotel offered?

Maybe good idiosyncratic design goes back even further, to  the Swan in 1600, in the Seattle of its day, Lavenham in Suffolk. Or maybe it was a new seaside hotel in 1860 as the steam age took the first package holiday makers to the English Riviera as the industrial revolution brought the first form of mass travel and ushered in the railway age and the resort hotel. Maybe there were articles on hotel design in the papers then, but design was not a mass obsession in the way it is now, as society was less urban than now, rooted in different concerns and rhythms.

With our preoccupation with media in these days of newspapers, magazines and television the exposure that can be gained for a new hotel makes it difficult to read an objective comparison historically. This leads to history being forgotten, and of course history forgotten is doomed to be repeated. Innovation is a pursuit of design, and as such happens regularly, cyclically, frequently reinventing the wheel and these days in the full glare of the spotlights.

Until the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century most hotels would have been the product of artisans and craftsmen, often developing their fittings from traditional domestic pieces. Design as a discipline grew out of the establishment of art schools (Bauhaus, Royal College) and the debate about the relationship between craft and machine production. The development of hotels, too, paralleled these innovations with the creation of Browns hotel in 1837 being hailed as the ‘first luxury hotel in London’. This distinguished it from previous commercial hotels which grew out of  English Inns or boarding houses, Gasthaus in Germany or Pensions in France. In a subversive way the continued existence of these ‘vernacular’ hotels in Europe has created a range of individually and idiosyncratically designed hotels, a parallel universe of ‘boutique’ hotels of which the late Christian Lacroix Hotel du Petit Moulin in Paris is an example.

Andrea Dawson Sheehan of Dawson Design has observed that “as designers we want to push the envelope”. Boutique hotels are hotels in which the designer has been allowed to “push the envelope” by a “smart sophisticated client”. Why doesn’t this happen everywhere? Often because of the influence of ‘bean counters’ who want to minimise risk, and in all envelope pushing there is risk. Playing safe is inimical to good design, which like all creative processes is about the balance of risks. Design is also about challenging the status quo, defying ‘rules’ to create new styles, whilst for branded hotels of course the branding is in fact a set of rules to be obeyed by designer and operator.

The boutique hotel has become a playground for owners and designers alike, as owners seek to use design to leverage profitability. Chains too are recognising that design sells and are trying to introduce higher design values to their properties (witness the ‘W’ brand) whilst the rising standards of design within brands is also forcing the ‘boutique’ into more extreme definitions of that niche (underwater or fashion house hotels for example).

Yet, and yet… even within rules an original or creative mind can find new ways of playing the game. The challenge for designers is to make all hotels boutique, with high design values whilst playing to brand standards.

Branding: Managing Expectations, Creating Anticipation: Part 2

Now you have a clear idea of your own brand, and have created a list of keynotes to be implemented by your design team. It may be that you insist on having a picture of your Founder behind reception, or using you house colours of red and green in every scheme. Perhaps you have a signature ice cream and want to ensure the there is a chocolate shop selling ice cream as a part of every reception area, or you want to manage without a reception desk and have greeters instead. Whatever your particular approach, which you have of course defined over the years against your preferred guest profile and have measured against your bottom line performance, you will have refined it into an operational and design guide.

 

You have found your preferred designers, and approach them to set up your project team, hoping that this is the beginning of a long term relationship where each can learn to respect other members of the team, to work collaboratively to produce design solutions that will both win awards and increase your profitability. To your surprise the designers do not fall on you with open arms, but start to ask questions about your brand, your last project and how they are to be paid. Of course you have already chosen the architect, and have been disappointed by the fact that they have never done an hotel before, but they are good architects who have won awards for their other projects, so that’s all right then. However the second fee for the interior designers wasn’t in the budget so some hard negotiating will be called for. Then you discover that you can arrange things in different ways, unlike the architects who have convinced you that they are not allowed to vary from the fees guidelines laid down by their professional body.

Curiously it seems that some designers expect to be paid on the same basis as the architects – that is with a professional fee paid in stages that relate to the progress of the job. They expect to be paid by you directly, but this does make them a part of your project team and makes them answerable to you. It also gives you the chance to build a relationship with them for the long term benefit of your company.

As an alternative you find there is a process called novation, which enables the designer’s fee to be hidden within the builders budget – handy if you don’t want someone to realise you have not budgeted for an interior designer. With novation the contractor pays the designer and includes their fees in his bills. The drawback is that he expects a mark-up on the fee for his administration, and the designer feels that their responsibility is to the builder not the client directly. Hmm, lots of potential problems there then – especially when the builder wants to use a cheaper moulding to save money, or tile rather than marble. Maybe it is better for the designer to be a part of your team rather than the builders?

There is another way, you discover. The designer will undertake all the supply. You don’t pay a professional design fee, but the designer takes a commission on everything that goes into the hotel. In some countries this is a standard way of working and commission rates of 40% or 50% are not unusual. Sometimes the design service is a part of a manufacturing outfit and can guarantee delivery periods and quality because everything is ‘in house’. There are draw backs sometimes when something you like cannot be supplied through this arrangement, or only comes at a price you know from experience you can better elsewhere. Of course some designers on a professional fee will also undertake the supply in union with your house team – for an additional defined fee.

Either of these routes can provide a good design service, and leave you with your team and hotel intact at the end of the process. What is not so comfortable is when you discover that the designer you are using who quoted a low low fee is also taking a commission payment from each supplier and contractor. The potentials for conflicts of interest are clear.

Keep in your mind that you are looking to build a creative team to advance your brand. Think of your longer term goals, and ask what relationship you want with your designers. Choose your team accordingly. But do it with your eyes and mind open, knowing the look you want as a part of your brand implementation.

Think brand recognition and consistency in design style and solution. Think evolution not revolution.

 

Branding: Managing Expectations, creating Anticipation: Part 1

 In an hotel world where standards are rising and where innovation is a constant, for a brand, managing the brand identity is key to survival and financial success. As large brands continue their paths of expansion (for example Rezidor passing 300 towards their total of 700 hotels by 2012, Intercontinental currently announcing their 150th Intercontinental branded property) their brand identity creates expectations in the guest and also hopefully a degree of pleasurable anticipation. The skill of the brand manager is in creating the brand loyalty, a fan club for the brand, in the way soccer teams have done over generations, or as with the Coke vs. Pepsi rivalry. The essential ingredients for this are both style and substance not just consistency, as Jose Marinho discovered when grinding out the results was not enough for Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich.

 For many brand experiences in the hotel world the key is with staff, as they represent the interface between the brand and the guest. However staff must have a product that they can believe in, a corporate philosophy that they can subscribe to, and an hotel environment that they can both sell and be proud of. I am tempted to build a new measuring system for interiors – nothing to do with star ratings but rather a system that rates the success of the design against the brand identity and how successfully this identity has been managed in its implementation across the branded hotels. I have often quoted Olga Polizzi, Design Director of Forte before its destruction by Granada, who has said that “design represents 15% of the spend on an hotel, but can leverage 70% of the income”. Her new group, the Rocco Forte Collection (Olga is Rocco’s sister) has a clear brand identity, and her consistency as a design manager makes for a strong brand identity, so maybe I should score hotels on a scale of 1 – 10 ‘OPI’s’ (Olga Polizzi Indicators)as a measure of success. ..

The management of design has been described as a little like herding cats. Those of you who are owned by a cat will understand this (someone once said cats don’t have owners, they have servants) and designers too can be single minded, stylish, in need of having their ego’s stroked, and determined to go their own way. Designers can also provide a source of delight, and have the potential to deliver the unexpected, exceeding all expectation in the process. For the hotelier the key is managing the designer and remaining in control of the process of realising their own brand standards whilst achieving an interior that has the wow factor for the guest and makes staff proud.

As a designer I was on the receiving end of some very intelligent and also some very curious processes adopted by owners wanting to find a designer that they could work with, and who they believed could deliver the style (and frequently economy) that they were looking for. The first thing that needs recognising here then is that managing design is a discipline as important and functionally necessary as the accounting process, only of course infinitely more rewarding when done properly, and needs to be approached with the same seriousness.

So how then should an hotelier set about finding a designer? The first and soundest way is to ask who did the interiors you admire the most. Unfortunately, whilst hotels are very conscious of the star status of their chef, they are frequently quite incapable of remembering who the designer is. The hotelier also needs to ensure that the designer they use is familiar with hotels/spas/restaurants etc. Not that someone new to this world is incapable of doing a good job, but managing a novice in the hotel world, however good they may be as a designer, demands a great deal more management and input from the operator.

The hotelier also needs to recognise that there are specialist skills involved in creating an hotel interior which are often not necessarily possessed by architects – interior design is a defined discipline with its own training and peculiarities. There is also a difference that needs to be recognised between an interior designer and a decorator.

We can therefore narrow the choice down then to an hotel experienced interior designer, capable of looking at the planning of the interiors in relation to the operational criteria of the brand, as well as controlling the contract process for refurbishments, and who can offer a full service i.e. design, detailing, tendering, project management and FF&E specification and ordering.

The problem for the hotelier then becomes where to find this paragon. Site such as ours at www.hoteldesigns.net offer a designer selector as a part of t he Directory, and there are of course professional bodies such as the UK’s Chartered Society of Designers who can also help find qualified professionals.

When all these criteria are met, then you can move on to talk to designers. Go to their offices and see how they work. Go through the design process with them – don’t worry if you don’t understand it fully, or can’t read a plan, keep asking questions until you are happy that they will guide you and provide you with what you want. The designer you select should be considered a core member of your brand development and implementation team – and for a large group this may mean creating a team of designers.

Use once and throw away is not a policy that will generate consistency in design style or solutions.

Branding in Hotels

Branding in the hotel market

It is the grain of sand that irritates the oyster that makes a pearl. Grains of sand are irritants in machines and engineers try to remove them to ensure smooth running. Smooth running is routine. Routine does not foster innovation or change, but inertia and, eventually, decay. No grain, no gain!

In the UK we mourn the 'homogenization' of our high streets, but here the retail is the area where the chains dominate - every high street with the same shops. In Europe the balance in the hotel market between the homogenized chain and the unique individual property has been healthy with only 20% or less of hotels etc. being chain owned. The small independents have proved to be places of style and innovation, spawning the boutique movement, new approaches to design and operation in dozens of bars and restaurants across the continent (as well as serving up sometimes decrepit hotels with poor food and awful standards - you get both extremes). The role of the designer has been critical in this saga - the designer maybe the grain of sand.

Now the story is changing. In France for the first time the chains approach 30% of rooms as independent hotels and the famous zincs (pensions and bar cafés) slide out of business, killed by concepts of employment protection, the working time directive and punitive taxation levels. The result is a growth in the number of French hotel rooms owned by international brands as a proportion of the overall ownership of the hotel industry.

Branding is becoming the prime marketing concern for the international hotel industry. The US market is dominated by the brands with an estimated 80% of rooms owned by major chains. The chains are eagerly pushing into China to try to build up brand loyalty there, amongst a third of the world’s population. Branding has resulted in some truly boring and unadventurous hotel design, although there are exceptions to this as there are to every generalization. In Europe the variety and competition from the smaller hotelier has kept the chains on their toes in design and operational terms, unlike the US where bland rules.

Whilst tourism and occupancy rates have risen, the cost of development has risen too, putting smaller players at a disadvantage. For the large brands the issues are how to manage the branding across continents. As travellers increasingly use the web to book (over 50% of major chains bookings are generated over the web) they see branding as a quality mark. There is no agreed international standard for judging hotels, and the star system doesn’t work, as a five star in one country will be equivalent to a lower rating elsewhere. Sometimes stars are awarded without physical inspection, or the payment the rating authority receives warps its judgment and the award of the rating is inappropriate for the hotel visited. This just leaves the brand as the quality mark.

The management of the brand standard becomes a major issue for a company, with not only differentiation between its own brands being at stake, not only the perception of the brand by the guest, but also the perception of stock holders and franchisees and thereby the value of the company itself. Within a brand the management of innovation can be problematic. The imposition of standards can lead to the stifling of any variation from those standards in the interests of maintaining an equality of experience for the guest – no variety or innovation means homogenization. Everything will tend to drift to the lowest common denominator.

The challenge for chain hotels is how to manage innovation. How does the group stay at the front of design and innovation in the provision for its guest as, briefly, Le Méridien group did? How does a hotel stay ahead of domestic changes so that the ‘wow’ factor is still present in its properties? It can be done, but skilful management and genuine leadership are needed. What are a company’s policies on innovation and design leadership? How does it plan to avoid perhaps not an actual decline in standards, but a perceived one due to a failure to raise them as the rest of the hotel world moves up market? Maybe worse, is it becoming a boring brand?

If the trends to scale and international branding continue, spread, and lead to the collapse of the independent hotel groups in Europe, it may lead to the market dominance of the chains on this side of the Atlantic as well as in the USA. Then we will all be losers.

Hotel Design: A Primer #2

 

Episode 2: Managing the Process at the beginning– finding the designer

Before we start to look at the nitty gritty of what happens inside the building, lets for a moment consider how you are going to manage the process. After all you are neither building a retail shed, nor a domestic block of flats, but a destination to which you hope people will come back again and again. To achieve your goals in planning your hotel you need to be able to communicate and manage your development team – you do have a development team don’t you? Oh my god! Well then we’d better look at some objectives for it, and who that suggests should be in the team.

The starting point is of course that you have done you market research as suggested in Episode 1. If you haven’t, stop reading this and do it now.

Let’s assume that you have progressed as outlined in Episode 1. No doubt you have been impressed by some of the hotels you have seen, but equally you will be sure you can do better, so you are moving forward with confidence. You have the support of your bank*, your accountant is enthusiastic and you know what star rating and price range you want to operate in. Now you need to find a designer who knows what they are doing, and who should, if they are good, be able to save you their fee by knowing their way around the contract market (and no not a purchasing agency).

I am not talking about the architect (good at the outside and at running a team, great on contracts and knowing everything (they say) but not an interiors specialist) or the builder or contractor. Nor yet the structural engineer or the quantity surveyor, services engineer or kitchen specialist. I mean the person who understands the relationship of the internal parts of the hotel and how to make sure that they all contribute to the operational effectiveness and thereby the return to your bottom line.

The obvious way to find a good hotel designer is to go back to the hotel you admired most and ask ‘who did this?’ You could use the Interior designers in our Directory at www.hoteldesigns.net - it is free to use. They are all checked out by us for their relevant experience.  Once you have a name, check their track record – not what they say on their CV but actually look at hotels they have done and talk to the operators. Get a short list of two or three, and maybe get them to pitch ideas for your hotel – a paid pitch or they won’t give it real attention. Designers, like chefs, do not like giving the results of their efforts way for nowt, and you shouldn’t expect them to. Nor should you choose them because they have nice legs or a big lunch box – this is about finding a serious contributor to the success of your business, not a lucky charm.

What about qualifications?

If you are in the USA then your designer will almost certainly have to be licensed by the State you are in – this is a requirement in around 30 states that I am aware of. If in Europe the picture is different. In the UK there are formal qualifications but no requirement for them to be taken. The courses are mainly BA/MA courses, although there used to be some good HND programmes until the politicians – don’t get me started! These programmes often share part of their courses with architecture courses ensuring that the students are introduced to the main planks of building design.

 

Most professional designers are registered but again there is no requirement to be a member of a professional body – the one with the Royal Charter and obligation in representing designers is the Chartered Society of Designers, who are in our Directory. However the most successful designer in Britain since the 1950’s was Bob Lush (now dead). Not only did Bob run the largest interiors practice in Europe, but he also had as his assistants good designers, many of whom now run their own successful interiors practices. Bob trained in the theatre, and was not a professionally trained interior designer, although one could argue that theatre is what hotels are all about (see Radisson Berlin if you don’t believe me!)

All this brings me back to the first point I made – look at the jobs that you like, ask who did them and talk to them. Make a short list and see who you then want to work with.

 A good designer will then give you a fee proposal that should list:

  1. ·         Their professional working methodology including allowance for design development
  2. ·         The basis on which they will charge their fees and expenses
  3. ·         The number and type of drawings they will produce
  4. ·         Details of the production of Tender documents and processes for their area of responsibility
  5. ·         The approach to running the job on site
  6. ·         Their level of attendance on site, attendance at site meetings, site supervision etc.
  7. ·         Fee stages i.e. what they charge and when so that you can see where your cash flow is going to be
  8. ·         Ordering systems, control books and record of installation for you and your housekeeping staff to refer to. This should include a comprehensive list of all suppliers and their contact details for your maintenance crew.
  9. ·         Clarification of copyright

 

Designers will normally charge a fee based on the cost of the interior fit-out, including lighting, joinery, soft furnishings FF&E and so on. Obviously the elements in the interior package should not form a part of what the architect is basing his fees on. Equally neither should the interior designer be paid a fee for the work of the kitchen designer. Included in the fees of all the professionals should be an amount for coordination work with the other professionals, but this is not the same as charging a fee on their share of the work.

You need to manage a process that on a typical new build can run into tens of millions, and millions for a simple refurb. In managing remember the Golden Rule, - he who has the Gold Rules.

 

 

 

 

·         Support of a bank – an archaic term from an earlier age when you had a relationship with your bank and did not just get ripped off by them

 

2009

The last year has been a fractious one. I think we all suffered from the effects of the banking crisis. It was exacerbated in the hotel business by the panic reactions of hotel companies to perceived rather than actual threats.

The UK market actually held up very well, with occupancy averages touching lows of 63% in the Provinces whilst the capital enjoyed lows on 74%. By Christmas London hotels were once again pretty full, with complaints of there being no rooms at the Inn echoing Bethlehem two millennia before.

What we are going to do when the Olympics arrive I dread to think, as there has been no real attempt to stimulate an increase in hotel provision. Maybe the lack of support for the tourist industry by the British government, such as cutting Visit Britains budget, is actually a cunning plan? By not encouraging tourism or aiding investment (as France has done for example with a 5% VAT rate) despite tourism being over 8% of all British economic activity maybe Whitehall plans to enable the capital to cope with an influx of maybe an extra 300,000 visitors by keeping ordinary tourists away.

Whilst the US occupancy levels, down in some areas to 35%, gave every reason for their new build and refurbishment markets to stall the same was not the case in Europe. With France boasting it didn't go into recession, Germany leading the pack out and the UK benefitting from in effect a 30% devaluation of the pound, the hotel market remained remarkably buoyant. However the panic in the UK by hoteliers to cancel projects has lost them a valuable year to get their hotels up to international standards. Unless refurbishment programmes restart with vigour then complaints will come thick and fast at Olympic time.

The problem will be, as it always is after a recession, that the manpower will not be available to jumpstart a vigorous programme. Design practices shed staff fast as do suppliers. For both, recruitment of replacements is a slow and painful process.

Compare this performance with that of South Africa where new openings such as the One & Only in Cape Town and refurbishment of existing hotels like the Cape Grace continues apace in advance of the soccer World Cup. In a market that was already growing vigorously and where hotels are seen as a major source of employment, the vigour of local as well as international investment is stimulating local design practices and manufacturers (and incidentally SA hotels provide literacy and numeracy classes for their staff too).

Best hotel visited this year was again the Bushmans Kloof Hotel and Spa in Cedarburg, South Africa, but most interesting, and deserving the label 'sustainable' was the Damaraland Lodge in Namibia. Best Spa is a toss-up between Intercon's Mar Menor and again Bushmans Kloof. Because Bushmans location is so unique I think design-wise Mar Menor is the cleverer piece of design, and so gets my recommendation. Most important UK openings this year were the new Campanile and revised Holiday Inns, but with I plump for Barry Sternlicht's Campanile as a clear indicator of where his now tenth biggest hotel chain in the world is going. Some might argue for Missoni but I think this kind of fashion statement is a cul-de-sac creatively (and given that Kurt Ritter of Rezidor is one of the sharpest operators around I am probably wrong).

HotelDesigns continued to grow its audience throughout 2009, with visits to the site up by 5% and unique visitors up to over 149,000 in the year (both figures from Google Analytics), representing a growth of nearly 7% over the year. Our own site stats showed monthly reader visits topping 70,000 and pages read over half a million in a month. Whilst I take all statistics with a pinch of salt, the trend in both confirms continuing growth.

We also continue to add to the resources available to you on the site, the year seeing the first anniversary of the DesignClub, still slowly adding members, and the introduction of the Miniview archive alongside the Reviews – now over 145 hotels and cruise ships being featured. As well as the new features on cruise ships (we featured the world’s smallest as well as the new behemoths) we have redesigned our daily Newsletters, and hope that you find them useful (don’t forget it is easy to select which ,if any, you want to receive.
In the Downloads area of the DesignClub we are adding hotel brand standards as we are able, and have begun to produce a monthly digest of new hotel starts and UK planning applications. Currently we offer these simply for the DesignClub membership fee, or freely to Directory companies.

Our Employment columns have proved very effective at both filling vacancies and enabling designers to find work. This area will be revised and expanded in 2010, as will the service. We have already undertaken one confidential executive search for a Directory company, and are happy to help where we can.

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Making Silk Purses

There is a saying that can apply to the capabilities of hotel designers. It tends not to be used in today’s street vernacular but is still valid. We say when you make good from bad, you are ‘making a silk purse from a pig’s ear’ (it used to be a sow’s ear until the Sex Equality Acts). Often this is simplified to ‘making a pig’s ear of it’.

 

Making a pig’s ear is something that amateur interior designers are good at. They may have taste and be able to put together superficially attractive schemes but when they lack basic functionality in an hotel context then they stink. I have recently visited two rather nice hotels where new owners are busy making pig’s ears because they want to save money by not employing a designer, or by lacking enough discrimination to use an hotel experienced designer.

 

Now most of the USA will know that we have our little idiosyncratic ways here in the UK. For example we spell color as ‘colour’ as, unlike my friends across the pond (or as someone described it to me, as they celebrated July 4th, “a just about big enough moat”) we still use the Queen’s English. Amongst our little quirks is, it appears, a set of taps (faucets) that rotate in the opposite direction to those in the USA. I must admit to never having been aware of this on my many visits to that gloriously independent country, but when a US owner uses US faucets in the UK that do rotazte differently it causes upset, especially when if you are in the shower you try to warm the water turning the tap only to find you are freezing your nuts off with cold water!

 

Compound this decision making by then using a designer who has a reputation gained as an antique dealer restoring old houses and you have a famous five star being ‘improved’ in a way that dismays the natives. We are currently seeing rather a lot of this here as US owners come in assuming that US standards are higher and taking no notice of cultural differences. One US hotel chain paid a US practice to research the UK hotel market and after six months came up with the shattering revelation that having all the room lights switched on by one switch as well as individually would be a great innovation. It has of course been standard in Europe for the last twenty years – we cannot get used to traipsing around a US hotel room turning off lights individually before going to bed….

 

However we can screw up our own hotels without help from across the water. Interviewing an hotelier recently I was surprised when asking the interior designer where she had trained to have the revelation that she had done her bedroom over frequently since she was five and this she thought was enough qualification. The hotel she was working on was 16th century, and fortunately she was blessed with good contractors, a strong architect and good ‘bones’ in the building that enabled her to carry it off. However she had moved all the sockets from above the desk in the bedroom to the wall behind and below it. When I asked how she felt about guests scrabbling around on their hands and knees trying to find the socket for their mobile phone (sorry, cell) charger a look of dismay appeared as the idea dawned that maybe hotel rooms are about more than just looks.

 

This is a problem we as an interior design profession have on both sides of the Atlantic. There is a core of people, architects, hoteliers and yes, contractors too, who do not realise that creating a wonderful hotel interior is to do with function as well as aesthetics. So who is to blame for this state of affairs? We are of course, the hotel design fraternity across the world.

 

We neither trumpet the achievements we make enough, nor spell out the complexities of hotel design. Domestic interiors are a different ball game with no disability access rules, no fire regulations to intervene, no housekeeping staff to criticise, not a guest complaint form in sight, no bottom line to boost. Magazines like my own HotelDesigns can help raise awareness, but it needs the designers to consistently both perform design magic and show innovative flair. In doing so, designers need to tell us what they are doing so we can trumpet design achievements to hoteliers and developers around the globe and through doing so raise awareness of the importance of the specialist professional hotel designer.

 

If the profession doesn’t do this the owners will continue to commission three little monkeys to do their work, three monkeys that hear no guests, see no guests and speak not of guests. If hotel design is to achieve its proper standing in the hotel world designers need to not only deliver the goods but also make sure the world knows about it.