Hotel Design Podcast Porcelanosa

In this episode of the Hotel Design Podcast we welcome Siobhan Barry, Design Director at Gensler. Like everything we see with hospitality design lately, projects are grounded in ‘experience’ – something that Barry says is essential to satisfying today’s customer.
Good thing that she has had plenty of experience doing just this sort of thing since the 1990s. That’s when she spent a considerable amount of time working on nightclub related projects, where experience is essential. Glenn and Siobhan discuss the rise of bottle service, which transformed the nightclub scene, and how they’re developed. They also discuss how selling real estate changes the economics of this side of the hospitality business, and how music, décor, and customers’ desires have changed since that era.
They talk about how design must appeal to both women and men while creating a scene in both restaurants and nightclubs that facilitates mingling and more. Siobhan shares how to create an interplay between the different elements of design to create the perfect foundation for people to make those connections against the pageantry of it all.
Then they move onto hotels from the nightclub world by chatting about the Ian Schrager effect on hotels and hospitality. Glenn and Siobhan layer on how culture is pushing the hotel experience to change, especially when it comes to satisfying that screen need and how business and leisure trips are melding.
Siobhan shares some detailed tactics for designs including table heights, depth of seating and more. It is an essential lesson that many designers do not seem to get right. Afterall, it’s more critical than ever, especially as folks tend to want to hang out more in public spaces. Designers must create a great, comfortable environment which prompts people to spend more money. Siobhan and Glenn use the Citizen M in New York as an example for this and talk about the balance between the science and heart of design.
Then Glenn and Siobhan discuss the dichotomy of the hotel experience vs. shared economy type stays. Siobhan shares a story about her experience with Airbnb and how it underscores to her the importance of knowing what your brand is, how it should be communicated to a target audience, and how everything should be geared with that specific point of view.
Technology is also discussed, of course. But in this case, they chat about how it is used in the design process and how it helps create common ground quicker between developers and designers – like a virtual model room.
They wrap up discussing an airline lounge project that Siobhan loves and how it’s changing the notion of what that product is supposed to be. Listen and find out how.

In this episode of the Hotel Design Podcast we welcome designer Kimberly Daoust, who is principal at Tandem – a Las Vegas-based interior design firm that she co-founded in 2005. While she lives in Austin, TX, she commutes by plane to Vegas.
The conversation starts out with how Las Vegas is a great place for design freedom. Kim loves that by nature, the city is impermanent and so is its design. Glenn and Kim then discuss the first casino resort project that she ever took part in 25 years ago. The project was a riverboat casino, which she did with Paul Steelman – another visionary who was previously featured on The Hotel Design Podcast.
Kim then shares her experiences working on creating The Cromwell, which was the first project that her company Tandem completed on The Strip. The project challenged her to utilize original structural and design elements of the former Bill’s Gambling Saloon, such as the existing chandeliers, as a starting point for a modern boutique hotel design experience. She also shares details about what it was like working with Las Vegas icon and nightclub visionary Victor Drai, and how he inspired her to utilize a more feminine design approach throughout the property. They also discuss the opportunities and limitations designing new guestrooms in older guestrooms ideally built for a previous era, and how the small scale of the entire property has affected its overall evolution.
The conversation shifts to her role in designing the Bret Michaels suite at the Hard Rock Riviera Maya, and then back again to Las Vegas to discuss recreating the historic El Cortez. Kim discussed tying in a graphic street art element into the design, and the notion of designing something seemingly timeless in a city where timeless is anything but that. She also discusses the Black Hawk Casino expansion project in Colorado outside Denver. It has a Wild West feel in an area that goes back to the days of gold rushes back in the 1800s. Kim goes into detail about how she created a sense of authenticity for the 500-room hotel expansion.  The area is also exceptionally small, and the one-lane roads to leading to the hotel are curvy and narrow, so she talks about how that challenge affected the entire project from design to execution.
Finally, Glenn and Kim discuss how she found her calling as a designer, how her dad’s role in the fabric business affected that goal, and how she found her way into casino and resort design through residential design. She also shares an emotional story regarding designing and building the Hard Rock Biloxi, MS, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina just before it was set to open. Kim also provides many incredible tips that you have to listen to.

In this episode of the Hotel Design Podcast we welcome Tina Wichmann and Craig Palacios of the Las Vegas based design firm, Bunnyfish. They have been involved in some major projects, such as helping entrepreneur and CEO of Zappos Tony Hsieh reinvent downtown Las Vegas.
The conversation starts with the duo dissecting a project they did in Reno, Nevada to reinvent the Renaissance Reno Downtown Hotel. That brand was on the cusp of irrelevancy, but Marriott wanted to reinvent it. The folks at Bunnyfish worked closely with the Marriott team to follow overarching brand strategies while accommodating the desire to create something new that hadn’t been done before. We hear the story about the Renaissance Hotel’s reinvention, and how they rethought guestroom components such as the desk (which has come under lots of scrutiny lately in the hotel business), the dresser, and many other components.
Then, the conversation shifts to how hotel amenities have changed during the last 20 years as guests are looking to have more experiences.  Now, food and beverages have returned as a critical element of hotel industry’s profitability. Guests are starting to do a lot more outside the guestroom, including connecting over coffee and being social in the hotel’s public spaces. Now, it’s about rethinking everything about the public space experience from the entire lobby, to the F&B experience, to the changing nature of how guests want to interact with staff. They discuss what all of that means in the context of service touchpoints and what designers should think about in the future, such as how to create spaces that morph during different times to equally capture the breakfast rush and the happy hour crowd respectively.
Then, Tina and Craig discuss how they met entrepreneur and Zappos founder Tony Hsieh at their favorite coffee shop, who they formed a working relationship with after bonding over architectural books and their love for adaptive reuse projects. At some point, Bunnyfish was tasked with helping reinvigorate what was then a flagging downtown area at the behest of Hsieh. They took on the task of reinventing the Inspire theatre in Las Vegas, added two stories and morphed it into a popular bar, lounge, nightclub and theater. It’s one of the main attractions that have people hanging out in downtown Las Vegas again in record numbers.
Finally, they discuss how micro apartments have come into fashion, particularly for millennials, and how that changes the way hotels are being developed for the rising needs of Generation Z. They also chat about creating new active adult communities and how that applies to changing hotel industry trends.

In this episode of the Hotel Design Podcast we welcome the founder of TAL Studio, Todd-Avery Lenahan. Based in Las Vegas, TAL Studio has been an integral part in designing huge projects for many major companies, including Disney and Wynn. In fact, since we recorded this show last spring, TAL Studio is merging with Wynn entirely. While there has been a slight change in the company’s structure, its ethos have not changed.
Todd has always loved hotels. From his earliest days traveling with family and staying in brands like Holiday Inn and Howard Johnsons, his passion for hotels was always there. Little did he know that he’d be designing them one day. Todd shares how he started working at hotels when he was 15 years old, which provided him with an operational background that most hotel designers do not have. Part of the conversation focuses on discussing how his operational background meshes with his love of design to significantly inform him of creating functional properties that also look great.
“It’s not just the physical quality of the building being some extraordinary opulent environment. What we do is we create a canvas upon which service delivery can be rolled out in the most anticipatory seamless way,” says Lenahan.
This is essential to how he approaches hotel design. Too many resorts, for example, have infrastructural shortcomings even if they look gorgeous. Todd shares his philosophy on creating a structure that first and foremost serves the property’s operation, which helps owners save money in the long run while simultaneously increasing customer service. He also provides some strategies for designers to increase back of house functionality in the design phase.
An important aspect of the conversation regards creating memorable guest experiences. For Todd, that means focusing on great storytelling at the property. His approach, which is an important lesson that he learned while working with Disney, is to look at the property’s story like a screenplay. He says he approaches this part of the job in a cinematic way. This helps create what he sees as a consensus around ideas while giving all stakeholders and construction people a framework for all design work to follow. He also shares how storytelling is critical to creating memorable spaces, managing owner and developer expectations, and more. Todd mentions that some Disney projects were used as case studies – including the Boardwalk Hotel, where he served as an Imagineer.
Todd also brings up a Four Seasons project in Lanai, which opens the conversation up to the challenges of turning an aging building that is not built to today’s customer expectations into something that resonates with guests today at the luxury level. There is a struggle with making it feel authentic, which is a challenge on an island with less than 100 years of human history associated with it. He shares how they examined the greater Polynesian region for inspiration.
They wrap up the conversation by discussing designing for companies like Viceroy and how the property in Chicago is very different than one of their hotels in Mexico, for example. Todd also shares details about creating memorable guest experiences that also drive owner profitability at the same time.

In this episode of the Hotel Design Podcast we welcome incredible hotelier Larry Broughton, CEO of the boutique hotel company broughtonHOTELS. We also welcome the general manager of the Park James Hotel, Weston Spiegl.
This show was recorded on the evening of the Park James Hotel’s opening celebration, which is located in the Silicon Valley city of Menlo Park. The incredible luxury hotel has 61 rooms and was designed to carefully balance great service and technology.
Naturally, this conversation focuses on combining design aesthetics created by Parissa O’Connell Interior Design – in this case California Craft – including critical intuitive guest facings and back of house technologies. They discuss the design approach and its focus on using natural woods, balanced textures and the achieving the best lighting to create the overall visual appeal of the varied spaces.
This hotel’s motif is also about getting away from the heavy use of technology in Silicon Valley, so the conversation deepens to how to create the right technology balance as an integral part of the design. For Broughton, that means incorporating only elements that are intuitive to use. Their philosophy is that guests in Silicon Valley have enough technology in their lives, and the hotel’s experience must balance both digital and real experiences.
One example is the hotel’s ‘pour over’ coffee experience, which is as critical as the guestroom’s elements that are plugged in. It’s about crafting a luxurious experience that helps calm people while keeping them productive.
The conversation then focuses on the actual design of the hotel, its overall look and feel, and a discussion of specific and unique elements that the property features. Broughton and Spiegl chat about the importance of getting the design details right.
They also mention is the importance of engaging with a design team as early as possible in the hotel’s development process. This is essential to accurately creating a hotel that fits the developer’s vision, operational necessities, and ultimately the guests’ expectations. They talk about how developers can look to save money by waiting to hire designers, but how that can be detrimental in the long run and could create even costlier mistakes.
Broughton discusses the characteristics of a good leader and the leadership qualities Spiegl has that secured the job for him, even though up until this job Spiegl had no general manager experience.
Broughton also shares his design philosophy, what he expects from a design firm and ways to create a great partnership between developers and designers. It’s important to find a way to communicate the heart and soul of the project to designers, so that they can then go and visually interpret that desire.

In this episode of the Hotel Design Podcast we welcome Tom Ito, Principal at Gensler. Tom Ito is a force in the hotel design community and created the hospitality division of Gensler back in the late 1990s. Since then, it has been a whirlwind of creating some of the most incredible hotel designs we’ve ever seen – some of which have had far more impact than the building itself.
Tom Ito and host Glenn Haussman start by discussing downtown Los Angeles and the impact that the L.A. Live development created for AEG, and its J.W. Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels. This project set off a storm of development transforming the entire neighborhood in subsequent years. They delve into details regarding that project, the ones that came after, such as the Hotel Indigo Los Angeles Downtown, as well as an 800-room expansion of the hotel that is set to be built shortly.
They talk about the reinvention of how hotel public spaces are used, tying in the notion of the third place – where people hang outside of work and home. Glenn calls it the Great Convergence, and the conversation shifts to how to create instant communities of people in those public spaces.
Then they discuss expanding the design dialogue to avoid homogeneity, a problem that is infecting many designs. They use Moxy as an example here in creating properties that are appealing to a specific group. They talk about balancing loud spaces, meeting spaces, public spaces and more to create a diversified offering both within and outside brand standards.
The conversation then shifts to a survey Gensler conducted on ethnographic and qualitative analysis on design and experience, and the roles they play. This episode shares how that has affected the way Ito and his team create.
They also go over design and efficiency regarding how a property operates once it’s up and running. The conversation also focuses on designing for different cultures and how a hotel in Mecca would differ from one in Greece or Boston. They also discuss the notion of Feng Shui and its design effect.
If that’s not enough for you, The Mayfair is discussed, which brought a Los Angeles hotel from 1929 back to life. Glenn stayed there and they go over the concept of reinventing a historic property for a modern era.
Finally, they wrap up with their thoughts on technology and how it’s affected not just the guest experience, but overall how hotels are designed. Listen now!