2022 Summer Issue - 41

who might now make their primary residence what
would have previously been their secondary residence
in a small town or resort, and their urban
home becomes a secondary home with services and
amenities.
ZIMMERMANN: Some innovations resulting from
the pandemic are here to stay. There is a lot more
self-service. For example, Marriott's Bonvoy mobile
app, which lets you check yourself in with your
smartphone and go straight to your room without
having to interact with a person. Another example is
the electronic kiosks at ski resorts that allow people
to buy their lift tickets online, walk up to a kiosk,
show the bar code on their phone, and get their
ticket printed without human interaction.
What other trends do you think more
people in the industry should know
about?
VOELLM: Getting behind social media is probably
a necessity. Pre-COVID, that was something nice
to do, to attract followers on Facebook, and now it
has a much more important role in your marketing
game. Companies with social media specialists in
house, or a third-party specialist, need to pay more
attention to getting that right, because advertising
on social media can have a much larger reach than
traditional print media, which was very expensive
and cumbersome, with high production costs. Many
operators curate great experiences on site, but
their social media didn't communicate them well to
guests before they arrived. With social media and a
little video production, a lot can be done. But you
need the right person and capabilities to create
them and push them to your channels. That's particularly
important for higher-end leisure travel.
ABREU: More and more we keep seeing a mix of
different uses in the same building: a hotel mixed
with residences or co-living or coworking spaces.
Flexibility is something everybody is looking at.
And more and more people are mixing leisure with
travel, staying for a week or two in a resort for vacation,
but needing a few days or a morning to do
work, and they want to have the right space to do
so.
FAIR: Another interesting trend is the creation of
new experiences. We all have more leisure time
than we've ever had before. We spent a lot of it
over the last few years watching Netflix while we
were mostly stuck at home. But as we go back out
into the world, we want new activities, experiential
exhibitions like Color Factory or Museum of Ice
Cream. We are also seeing the rise of electronic
sports, introducing digital technologies into physical
environments. There's a company in Montreal called
Moment Factory that creates night walks and storytelling
experiences in forests, national parks, and
urban environments. Chicken N Pickle is specializing
in barbecue chicken and pickleball. It's not just
food and beverage, it's also an activity. I think we'll
see more of these kinds of innovations that shift
from passive leisure to activities.
ZIMMERMANN: In the next two to five years, the big
issue is going to be the labor shortage, for demographic
reasons. That is having a bigger impact
on hospitality than even the pandemic. Of course,
the pandemic played a role in the labor shortage,
because daily housekeeping stopped during
the pandemic, and many hotels still don't offer it.
Guests were sympathetic with this during the height
of COVID, but the question is, will guests lose
patience? Only time will tell. UL
RON NYREN is a freelance architecture, urban planning, and real
estate writer based in the San Francisco Bay area.
SUMMER 2022
URBAN LAND
41
The ski-in/ski-out
residences at Aura in
Snowmass, Colorado,
developed by East West
Partners and designed
by 4240 Architecture,
are all electric and rely
on mass timber and
cross-laminated timber
to further reduce carbon
emissions.
3DQ.STUDIO
2022 Summer Issue

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