Hospitality Design - May 2021 - 38

perspectives trends

Guestrooms at SIRO Boka Place will
evoke a relaxed and serene vibe

The colorful lobby at Greet Bordeaux
Aéroport, designed by Option d'interieur

with an outdoor furniture manufacturer, French
designer Franck Cousin noticed waste being
produced from the process-a hexagon shape that
was being thrown away. Cousin repurposed the
pieces into a mosaic that appears on tabletops and
in guestrooms. " It looked like it cost a fortune, "
recalls Damien Perrot, Accor's global senior vice
president design. " Thanks to that process, we
brought something high quality to the hotel. "
Like many other Accor brands, Greet relies
on the company's circular hospitality mission,
which focuses on less production, less waste,
and less environmental damage. " Our approach
is very pragmatic, and we want to be authentic
and tell the truth to our customers, " adds Perrot.
" When guests check-in to a Greet hotel, they
will never forget that they are in a place with a
strong focus on sustainability; they will just think
they're in one of the best-designed hotels they
have experienced at the 2-Star level. "

Kayak + Life House

Wood and earthy tones define Kayak
Miami Beach's living room entry bar

Layla, Kayak Miami Beach's Middle
Eastern restaurant, crowns the hotel

Greet

Joining Accor's powerhouse portfolio is
Greet. Launched in 2019, the economy brand
touts itself as being respectful of people and
the planet. Counting four properties found
throughout France and Germany, Greet has 15
properties in the pipeline-including flagship
locations in Vienna, London, and Lyon-and
has ambitious plans to open 300 by 2030. It's

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May 2021 hospitalitydesign.com

" about expansion, but with discipline, " says chief
development officer Agnes Roquefort.
Guided by the principle that good actions
fuel good feelings, Greet is committed to
minimizing its environmental footprint. One
of the most visible indicators is the recycled
and repurposed furniture found throughout its
properties. Take a metal element that pops up
in the Lyon Confluence location. While onsite

In a move some predicted was a long time
coming, metasearch engine and online travel
agency (OTA) Kayak announced earlier this
year that it was entering the hotel space with a
partnership with Life House. By joining forces
with Rami Zeidan's emerging lifestyle brand,
Kayak fomented itself as a serious soft brand
contender, begging the question of when other
OTAs would dip their toes in the hotel pool. " We
started Kayak to build a travel planning site that
we wanted to use, " says Kayak CEO Steve Hafner.
" Now, we're on a mission to reimagine the intravel experience and knew we needed to launch
our own hotels in order to do so. We see a big
opportunity to apply our audience and technology
to the accommodations space to level the playing
field for independent hotels. "
The inaugural property, a former Life House
hotel that is now dubbed Kayak Miami Beach,
showcases Life House's signature design-forward
ethos while integrating Kayak's proprietary
software. A key tenet of Kayak's move is its
impressive content management system intended
to help independent hotels, like Life House,
leverage the Kayak app and capitalize on its latest
advances. It's more than what Life House can
do on its own, Zeidan explains. " Our mission
is to make travel more meaningful and more
accessible. [If] a platform that has a ton of eyeballs
on it all the time believes in what we believe, we
can work together to have a bigger impact than if
we did it on our own, " he says. " Steve and I joke
that we'd rather own a piece of the watermelon
than the whole grape. " hd
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Hospitality Design - May 2021

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