The Hotel Design Leaders of the Next Decade will be Cultural Spies

By Jeffrey Ornstein, Founder and CEO, J/Brice Design International, Inc., Boston, MA & Dammam, Saudi Arabia

The passing of Yves Saint Laurent last year crystallized my thinking about how the principles of great fashion are so similar to the principles of great hospitality design.

Saint Laurent was a master at reading social change and creating fashions that reflected the enormous social and cultural changes that were taking place during his lifetime. The best known of these was his creation of the pantsuit that reflected a sea change with regard to the role of women in society, business and professionally.  Likewise, leading-edge hotel designers must observe and interpret the cultural mega trends that are now taking place before our eyes and interpret these changes in our work and execution.

To be sure, the latest materials – be they the couturier’s fabrics or the hotel designer’s furnishings and fixtures — have a profound influence on the outcome and do suggest possibilities.

Nevertheless, real inspiration must be drawn from our cultural, geo-political and economic environment. For the first time, for example, the world design centers are no longer only in Europe and the US. The Middle East now has tremendous influence on redefining the luxury hotel experience. The region’s emergence as leader, rather than follower of American and European neo-modernist themes, is coupled with a new ultra-high-end guest who has a global perspective and heightened expectations that  far surpass those of the previously adhered to Western standards.

Cultural Spies

Like Mr. Saint Laurent who was a master at reading people and their times, those of us in the hotel industry have to read the people we serve and place them – not the hotel — at center stage. We must be guest-centered rather than hotel- centered. Since memorable clothing fashions draw inspiration from people and society, we as hotel designers should think of ourselves as being, not in the hotel design business, but in the hotel fashion business.

The concept of hotel design as hotel fashion began to develop when I addressed Heimtextil, the renowned international fabric show in Frankfurt Germany. There I coined the term ‘Cultural Spy’. Indeed the designer as Cultural Spy underscores our belief that true inspiration comes from society – the guests our clients serve and want to serve. The term ‘Cultural Spy’ resonated with the international audience of designers, architects, textile manufacturing executives and hospitality industry leaders. It succinctly emphasized how important it is for the hotel designer to take in everything about society – from popular culture — such as movies, fashion, music and cuisine ­– to the fine arts as well as shifting economic centers, political winds and social tensions.

Being a ‘cultural spy’ is at the heart of our work at J/Brice Design (www.jbricedesign.com). We are now restoring the luxurious RMS Queen Mary that first sailed in 1934. We are not simply bringing this magnificent ocean liner-cum-hotel and popular wedding venue in Long Beach, California back to its original Art Deco era splendor as if it were a museum. We are instead focusing on what a 21st century guest with contemporary expectations wants and recreating the romance – of luxury travel during in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Similarly, we read the guests who visit the Muse in New York and established This Times Square property as the sought-after hip-hop boutique hotel in Manhattan and the in place for music industry glitterati.

Internationally, the royal families in the Middle East were diversifying oil wealth and investing in infrastructure and real estate, including of course hotels and resorts. When they asked J/Brice Design to create luxury properties in the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean, they also urged us to push the limits of luxury. They want us to help them define a new World Standard that will attract and exceed the expectation of the new traveler to region. Indeed, we are now creating the interiors of Doha, Qatar’s iconic Aspire Tower that will define this city as much as the sail shaped Burj al Arab defines Dubai.

We’re also creating designs for a new property in the Saudi Arabian oil-rich province of Al-Khobar. The hotel experience we create will resonate with guests as diverse as fashion models from France, cattle barons from Uruguay or CEOs from North America. It comes down to this: guests, who arrive on their own Gulfstream, expect their hotel experience to exceed their homes and private jet. This guest must be awed.

The Hotel that Branded a City

The Burj al Arab opened our industry’s eyes to enormous potential. The property exceeded expectations with its sleek poetic sail-shape and high fashion, luxury mystique. It actually established Dubai as a global brand, with the hotel’s distinctive shape as its logo—as powerful a brand identity as the Eiffel Tower is for Paris.

Working in the Middle East, means we have to meet guest demand for fresh new ideas all the time. We are creating unique and distinctly separate experiences for the guests of the Uber Moderne Aspire Tower and English Classic Hotel Khalifa in Doha, Qatar. The bold and inventive styles we are creating there are setting the benchmark for future developments we are managing in other Qatari locations as well as Bahrain, The Saudi Kingdom and the region’s newest hot spot, Zanzibar.