Infusing your spaces with what’s au courant can be tricky. Hotel guest rooms today are being basically designed more like wellness zones, creating more of a pampering retreat for their guests.

To provide the guests with memorable services, hotels not only need to continue improving their services but also have to design artistic new services (explore). Thus, customer willingness to return to the hotel could be increased, enhancing customer loyalty. However, few hotels are also considering taking up as a prime responsibility in bringing about changes in restructuring hotel design, switching to constructing ‘influential Chambers,’ or ‘Loo Lounges.’

Reema Diwan, Associate Vice President Technical Services & Interiors, The Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL) was speaking at the panel discussion on the topic, 'Design for Every Style & Need’. This was the second session on the fourth day in the weBBlast series by BW HOTELIER and Hansgrohe on ‘Design – Innovation to Conservation’. 

She stated, “A while ago the dominance of design was focussed more upon demography of guest. I and my team were designing for Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, Millenial travellers, etc. But now we design hotels, evolving with physiography of the guests, paying attention to their mindset and passion points.”

Diwan’s viewpoint clearly demarcates that design today has become irresistible retreat for all guests across any hospitality chain, of all genres. Rather than creating segment positioning, they are creating diversities in the designing aspect of hotel rooms. She further explained that how she is able to stand out amongst this heavily male dominated community is by dimensionalising spaces, bringing them alive and creating diversity.

Talking about ‘Bathrooms she said, “In today’s evolving times, bathrooms have emerged as one of the selling points for guest rooms,” believes Diwan. It’s no more just a guest room design, bathroom has now become an integral part of hotel room designs.

Not just for hotel rooms, even for common lounge washrooms in hotels, the designing has been such that now they are more like an extension of lobbies, living spaces and are evolved to be  ‘couture ,’or ‘stroke to the eye.’ Just like a MF Hussain painting!

Further Diwan explained, “Moving from functionality to making them more fabulous, wherever possible we are trying to blur the boundaries between bathroom and guestroom, creating a more integrated experience and breaking the conventional norm of setting boundaries for each object/ space in the room!”