Hospitality Design - December 2011 - 67

interview: hyatt house
By Stacy Shoemaker Rauen

perspectives

home suite home
A conversation with Gary Dollens, global head of franchise and select brands, Hyatt Hotels, and Michael Suomi, principal and director of design, Stonehill & Taylor, on creating a fresh take on extended stay lodging with newly launched brand, Hyatt House HD: How did Hyatt House come about? GD: We were initially just having conversations relative to the brand [Hyatt Summerﬁeld Suites] itself, and the naming of the brand, and what did we want it to be, and what did we think it should look like? So that started some research. Are the customers using the brand the way that it’s intended to be using? Are there gaps? Where is the market segment going? We wanted to look at all of that. We started out with an ethnographic study, literally following customers around in the hotels to see how they were using them, because people will tell you they’re using a product one way, but they’ll use it differently. It showed us that there were gaps, and there were opportunities. The brand was relatively small prior to Hyatt’s acquisition of LodgeWorks’ 34 hotels. It was time for us to dig into it a little bit more deeply and see if we not only would change the name, but also reinvent the category again. HD: What were these needs and gaps? GD: There were operational and design issues. The segment was really built, from a public area perspective, on very little social space. Essentially,

Top, from left: Michael Suomi, Stonehill & Taylor, and Gary Dollens, Hyatt Hotels. Above: A rendering of Hyatt House’s integrated lobby and its market concept. Left: A rendering of the residentially inspired studio guestroom, where the kitchen island does double duty as dining room table and desk.
in the segment and to really migrate that evening social into an open house with much longer hours, better product, and create an intimate bar environment. We really wanted to have the best of what you have in your neighborhood in our hotel. Everywhere we turned we wanted to recreate something that mirrored key concepts in your home. In the guestroom, the kitchen island becomes your area where you can eat dinner, open up your laptop; through the cut-away cabinets you can see the wine glasses, the plates, the china, so it feels more like it’s your own home because you immediately know in your house where your coffee cups are; and the entryway hall tree acts as your own mini-mud room area where you can drop your coat and keys. All of those things came from focus groups with the customers; things they miss, or they would like, or that were important. A great example was the fact that the ﬁtness center becomes guests’ local health club. So a decision was made you walk into the lobby of an extended stay hotel, and it’s pretty quiet, has a small market, and free breakfast. An evening social, which, in the segment, is kind of dubbed the evening anti-social, because you’re going between 5:00 and 7:00, you’re going to get a beer or wine, and that’s it. And so it was clear there was an opportunity to do the best breakfast HD: Was the name from this home-away-from home feeling? GD: There was no value given to the current name. We just acquired it, later in the process to expand that space and offerings so somebody can say, ‘Wow, I’m ﬁnding what I might ﬁnd in my own neighborhood again.’

Above, from left: Two of the seating collections Christian Lacroix designed for SICIS, the Moise chairs and the Justinian chair, shown at this year’s Salone del Mobile.

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December 2011

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