Hotels are offering private spaces to guests

Published on : Thursday, March 22, 2018

Giving a challenge by Airbnb and other home-sharing competitors, hotels are happy to lure the locals with laptops and the cocktail crowds to their lobbies.

But popularity risks frustrating guests, who may be forced to retreat to their rooms, which has led to an expansion of guest-only areas like meeting spaces, libraries, quiet rooms and bars.

For hotel operators, these private spaces are similar to the concierge-floor perks, where guests pay a premium for access to a lounge with business facilities and food.

The meeting facilities, available to guests and members, include a boardroom and work tables.

There is no fee to access the room, furnished with an armchair and reading lamp, which provides a moment of privacy.

Hotel libraries stake out territory between boardrooms and meditation rooms, exclusively giving guests a shared residential-style room to relax in.

The Betsy-South Beach in Miami Beach added a library in December 2016 when it expanded. The Kimpton Hotel Palomar Philadelphia furnishes its 25th-floor library in a 1929-vintage building with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, binoculars and tufted leather chairs.

The guests-only library at the Faena Hotel Miami Beach includes cocktail service. Credit the trend to millennial travelers, said Chekitan S Dev, a professor of marketing at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration.

Millennial are interested in private spaces which  can be secluded, giving them a feeling of exclusivity, while at the same time public, in that they can socialize with a group of friends.

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