I did not know that I would find myself in the field of hospitality design when I went back to school to become and interior designer. However, when my husband and I made the move to Oregon 3 years ago an amazing opportunity presented itself. I found a job with a small interior design firm (WCI, Inc.) that focused on hotels and resorts and soon found myself to be taken up by the whirlwind that is hospitality design. I soon found that I was critiquing the design of any hotel room that I stayed in and soon referred to myself as a “chair flipper” looking at the bottom of furniture to find out who made it!
I recently had a short stay at a newly renovated resort. The design was beautiful and, initially, I was happy to stay in a fresh, new hotel room! The room had new carpet, tile, window coverings, paint, wall vinyl, casegoods, lighting, artwork, electronics, leather upholstered chair, bedding…you name it, it was new. It also had what I would refer as “New Hotel Smell” (which was almost as bad as staying in a smoking room to my olfactory senses that are in overdrive due to being pregnant). The room also included a thorough welcome binder with a plethora of information about the resort and surrounding area, green bathroom amenities, the usual information that you find in hotel rooms now telling you how they save water by not washing your towels or sheets if you give them the right “sign”, and a recycle container next to one of the trash cans. Some steps in the right direction, but as a designer that is passionate about green design there are some things I really would have like to have seen instead of the usual this-is-how-we-are-saving-the-environment mumbo jumbo. I would have liked to know things like:
- What product was sourced locally?
- Were the lighting and electronics energy efficient?
- Was it low-VOC paint that was used?
- Why did they choose to use wall vinyl?
- Were the carpets and textiles recycled or recyclable?
- What did they do with all of the old FF&E?
It would have been great to see this list in the binder of other information about the resort and would have impressed me about how the resort was taking steps to be more environmentally friendly. Instead of being impressed, I spent most of the night trying to figure out how to use the remote control AC unit to get some fresh air circulating in the room so I could get rid of that “New Hotel Smell”.
