NEW YORK— If they haven’t done so already, hotel owners attending this year’s IH/M&RS here at the Jacob Javits Convention Center should take this opportunity to prepare for the integration of technology in their properties’ collective décor. That’s because within a few years, technology products such as flat-screen plasma televisions and Voice Over Internet Protocol phones will be as much a part of the décor as the bed has traditionally been, according to many design procurement experts who will be perusing the aisles at the 2005 IH/M&RS.
“We’ll be looking at technology and, specifically, flat-panel, LCD and plasma televisions and how the whole design situation is handled and tied into the guestroom furniture,” said Alan Benjamin, president of Boulder, CO-based Benjamin West. “The armoire is now pretty much 90% buried, so how does the guestroom get reconfigured without the armoire and with the new technology and the focus on the bed and the top of the bed?”
As armoires are removed from guestrooms, hoteliers could begin to focus on bedding to an even greater extent. According to Sally Martin, vp of procurement for Rockville, MD-based Avendra, bedding products are an important focal point for her company since hoteliers are all looking to make their products stand out from their competition.
“From the select-service segment up to luxury, the whole trend is toward upgrading the bedding and the guestroom amenities,” she said. “Even small items are being upgraded, like the soap dish and the trash can. Everyone wants to make the guestroom feel more like the guest’s home and maybe even better than that.”
Martin added that from an overall design standpoint, the shift is toward cleaner and sharper images and styles and away from floral-type designs. However, in order to create a unique look and feel, some owners are now adding a touch of color in the form of throw blankets or bed skirts.
Meanwhile, Jerry Zeitner, a vp with Chicago-based Gettys Group, revealed that the design trend may already be migrating back to more colorful arrangements simply because most hotels have already copied the clean, white bedding trend to no end.
“Brands are still rolling out new bedding programs five to six years after Starwood introduced the Heavenly Bed,” he said. “So it will be interesting to see what the next hot topic will be since bedding was a huge shift for the industry. While we see a lot of white bedding now, we’re starting to hear rumors that could be changing. Some are using white bedding with a patterned throw blanket in order to differentiate their white bed from everyone else’s. Some brands might even change their standards in order to go back to colors.”
If owners aren’t already dizzy as a result of all of the bedding design changes, the recent introductions of several new lifestyle/boutique brands are sure to make them downright woozy. As a result, owners interested in these new brands will have to be on the look out at IH/M&RS for products that create the high-end residential look these new brands are based upon.
“With the lifestyle/boutique brands, you have to marry that high-end residential look with durability, and especially at the mid-market price point that many of the new brands will have,” Benjamin pointed out. “You have to have a full, normal product lifecycle out of what you buy. You can’t be replacing chairs in six months or reupholstering them. But the neat thing is that a lot of vendors out there are very technology driven, which allows them to create products with that high-end look and feel as well as durability.”
Regardless of the products’ lifecycle, the items themselves are sure to on the expensive side for now as a result of raw material shortages and higher energy costs, according to Benjamin, who noted that a lot of guestroom products, such as carpets, are petroleum-based.
As a partial solution to the materials problem, Zeitner suggested that hoteliers should look to buy from U.S. manufacturers, who can at least cut down on the overall lead times for product shipments, which have been on the rise with overseas suppliers. “We look for domestic products sometimes,” Zeitner said, “because the lead times are now becoming as important as the overall project budget.”
