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<\/a>At 21c Museum Hotels, you might find one of the featured limited-edition penguin sculptures in the lobby, the restaurant\u2014even your guestroom.<\/p><\/div>\n
The cutting edge of hotel amenities in 2018 covers a lot of ground. Where there was once a utilitarian lobby, there’s now space for guests to hang out with their electronics. What used to be a token bit of exercise equipment has expanded to include sophisticated wellness offerings. Once upon a time, guests sought their travel experiences away from their lodgings; now hotels are adding designs and features to be part of that experience.<\/p>\n
SEE MORE ON THIS TOPIC<\/a><\/p>\n The hotel industry is using its current prosperity to experiment with a variety of amenities undreamed of only a generation ago. Not because business is bad now, but because in an age of potential disruptors\u2014Airbnb might only be the beginning\u2014the race is on to capture the future of hospitality.<\/p>\n WeLive laundry room<\/p><\/div>\n In short, hotels are staking their future on attracting Millennials. In the mid-2010s, even as the industry recovered from the recession in a very solid way, the worry was there: Can hotels compete for the rising generation against the likes of Airbnb? So far, the answer seems to be yes.<\/p>\n Recently, Resonance Consultancy released its 2018 Future of Millennial Travel Report, a survey of more than 1,500 active U.S. Millennial travelers. One finding was that despite 52 percent of respondents saying they use services like Airbnb, that kind of service isn’t actually their first choice. Only 23 percent said that a short-term rental was their preferred type of accommodation.<\/p>\n Rather, Millennial travelers cited full-service hotels as their first choice, followed by staying with friends or family. Not only that, a fair number of the respondents said they preferred upscale or luxury hotels and resorts among hotel sectors. In their accommodation tastes, the rising generation isn’t that different from their elders, they just want more and different amenities.<\/p>\n “A lot of the hotel companies are focusing on Millennial travelers,<\/em>” said Pinkowski & Co. founder Chuck Pinkowski, a hotel consultant with more than 30 years in the business. “Their preferences are significantly different from the older generation, and hotels have picked up on that. They’re customers today, but they’re also customers of the future.<\/em>”<\/p>\n More precisely, Pinkowski pointed out, hotels aren’t devising an assortment of amenities for a particular age group but rather a mindset. A connected, social-media-inclined mindset that values experiences. It just so happens that Millennials tend to exhibit this mindset. So do some older travelers.<\/p>\n Moreover, he said, the trend isn’t confined to the top of the hotel market, though luxury and upper-upscale properties can certainly spend more on their amenities. The drive to make hotel amenities more interesting is also emerging in mid-level properties.<\/p>\n Andreas L\u00f6cher, head of investment management hospitality at Union Investment Real Estate GmbH, which has acquired a number of U.S. hotels, agreed with that assessment. “Some features that might have been exclusive in the past\u2014such as a signature restaurant, a rooftop bar, a gym, or a grab-and-go market\u2014have already become kind of a standard in the high-profile segments.<\/em>”<\/p>\n LG-Concept Robots<\/p><\/div>\n “The most remarkable change I’ve seen in hotels recently is in the lobbies,<\/em>” Pinkowski said. “Enter a lobby of some of the newer hotels in the mid-day and you’ll see groups of people with their laptops out, or individuals with headphones sitting around, working.<\/em>”<\/p>\n Hotels are revamping their public spaces in a variety of new ways, but more often than not, the new lobbies end up connected, offering some kind of grab-and-go food service, and are a lot more visually (or otherwise) interesting that they used to be.<\/p>\n At the newly opened Moxy Times Square, a Marriott brand, guests check in with a crew member at dedicated kiosks\u2014if they haven\u2019t already accessed keyless entry through the Marriott Mobile App. Rather than a standard newsstand, the lobby features New Stand, a New York-based chain of boutique convenience stores that offers everything from a toothbrush to a mini-pi\u00f1ata.<\/p>\n Bar Moxy is in the second-floor lobby lounge, serving as the social heart of the hotel, with a copper-wrapped bar at its center and natural light during the day through a triple-height atrium skylight. On one side, the lounge offers flexible seating areas and power outlets for co-working. On the other side, divided from the bar area by sliding, copper-framed glass doors, are three \u201cstudios\u201d\u2014multi-purpose rooms with AV equipment that can be combined for meetings, events or private parties.<\/p>\n \u201cTravelers\u2019 needs are rapidly evolving, and the hotel industry is still playing catch-up,<\/em>\u201d said Mitchell Hochberg, president of The Lightstone Group, which developed the hotel. \u201cToday\u2019s travelers don\u2019t need a newspaper at their door or a mint on their pillow. They want to be engaged by unique experiences that create a sense of place.”<\/p>\n Travelarz hotel robot<\/p><\/div>\n Amenities that promote wellness are increasingly important to travelers, and hotels are obliging them. Take spas, for example. According to the Resonance Consultancy’s Future of Millennial Travel Report, spas are as important as fitness centers among \u201cvery desirable\u201d hotel amenities (according to 18 percent respondents) and are more prized than interior design\/style (which 17 percent termed “very desirable”).<\/p>\n Counterintuitively, more men than women in the survey said that they think spa facilities are desirable (38 percent of men to 29 percent of women), and they ranked them just ahead of fitness centers (37 percent of men consider these desirable compared to 24 percent of women).<\/p>\n The Hotel Crescent Court in the Uptown neighborhood of Dallas recently unveiled its newly renovated, 22,000-square-foot spa and fitness center. The spa features 16 treatment rooms, women’s and men’s lounges, relaxation rooms, a couples suite, whirlpool with a hot and cold dip, a dry sauna, and a nail salon offering manicure stations and pedicure thrones.<\/p>\n There’s also a spa lounge complete with freshly squeezed organic juice and champagne. The spa’s retail offerings have been revamped as well, with such products as Epicuren, Cosmedix, emerginC, ALO and Beyond Yoga apparel. Other facilities include a fully refurbished health and fitness center, featuring new TechnoGym equipment, flooring and lighting.<\/p>\n “For Millennials, health, fitness and wellbeing are experienced in very different ways than for previous generations, all of which influences their expectations when they travel,<\/em>” Resonance Consultancy posited. “The wealthy among them were the first generation brought up with organic food as a touchstone, exotic travel as a birthright and taking matters into their own hands as technology\u2019s gift to their generation.<\/em>”<\/p>\nHotels aim for the millennial generation<\/h2>\n
<\/a>The reinvention of the lobby<\/h2>\n
<\/a>The next frontiers in wellness<\/h2>\n
<\/a>The experiential hotel<\/h2>\n