Look to the lobbies of Orange County’s newest and most recently redesigned hotels to see the hospitality industry’s latest generation of interior design on display.
Area hotel developers and owner-operators are putting a new spin on their properties’ front rooms, with an emphasis on modern design and informal multiuse meeting space.
And they’re making the changes in Orange County fashion.
“We’re trying to be a little more modern—but not trendy—while staying authentic to where we are, with a modern, coastal feel,” said Scott McCoy, general manager of the Irvine Marriott Hotel.
The 485-room Marriott in the Irvine Towers office complex near John Wayne Airport recently completed a $5 million renovation of its lobby, lounge and main restaurant.
The redos turned the three areas, which were previously separate and distinct parts of the hotel’s first floor, into an open-air, comingled space that the hotel rebranded as the Floe Lounge. It describes the new look as having “a coastal urban vibe.”
The hotel aimed for the redesign to emphasize flexible gathering spaces for social interaction and entertaining, as well as individual use, McCoy said.
Visitors to the lounge might find multiple parties eating dinner at tables while nearby guests tap away at mobile devices on cushioned seating and others pause for a drink on an adjoining patio, all within just a few paces of each other and with no walls separating them. The space feels like an expansive living room-dining room combination.
Leo A Daly, an Omaha, Neb.-based architecture, engineering, planning, and interior design firm, oversaw the renovations, which were inspired by OC’s beaches.
The interior of the hotel now features a soft color palette and furniture with straight surfaces and clean lines that draw inspiration from sand, ocean, and driftwood, according to the firm.
Metal cabling in the main lobby area that resembles ship rigging, and a photo of a yacht are intended to reflect the influence of the region’s marinas, according to hotel officials.
The end result is a 180-degree turnaround from the hotel lobby’s prior look, which gave off the air of a chain restaurant and had few design features tied to the area, McCoy said.
“We want our guests to spend more time in our spaces. It’s purpose built.”
The hotel is about to begin a second round of upgrades, this time to its meeting rooms and guest rooms.
Olson Originals
Similar trends are playing out in the lobbies of other area hotels that are opening up or in the development pipeline.
In the Irvine Spectrum, a new $50 million Courtyard by Marriott that opened this month “has special features not found in any other Courtyard property,” according to Bob Olson, chief executive of R.D. Olson Development, the project’s developer.
The hotel’s design, overseen by Irvine-based architecture firm WATG, features an interior theme that celebrates Irvine Ranch’s history.
Elements of the 210-room hotel’s entry have rustic accents, such as distressed wood floors, high-back leather chairs, and historical photos of the old ranch.
As in the case of the Irvine Marriott Hotel, the Courtyard’s lobby features an open room that incorporates informal meeting space, a bar area, and art that would not look out of place at a trendy boutique hotel.
The unique lobby features stand alongside the modern conveniences expected by today’s business and leisure travelers, according to the developer, which plans to incorporate surf and ocean themes in its latest OC project, the 250-room Pacific City Hotel that broke ground last month in Huntington Beach.
The hotel’s design will incorporate more than just surfboards as decoration, Olson told the Business Journal last month.
“It will be something that the millennials and the Gen Xers will enjoy,” he said.
R.D. Olson is developing the eight-story Pacific City hotel in a venture with Pacific Hospitality Group in Irvine.
The hotel will be unbranded, “which will allow us a little more creativity,” Olson said.
Surfboards do have their place for at least one line of hotels in the early-stage development pipeline.
In January, Huntington Beach-based apparel manufacturer and retailer Quiksilver Inc. announced it had signed an exclusive license agreement with Matteson Capital in Newport Beach to develop a chain of branded hotels.
The venture will develop hotel properties under the Quiksilver Hotels & Resorts International name that will be designed around the surf-inspired culture associated with the Quiksilver brand, according to the companies.
Matteson Capital is seeking to raise some $250 million in a private offering to fund the venture, which is considering Anaheim and Palm Desert as potential locations.
National Trend
The new looks at the OC hotels mirror many of the interior design trends that are being rolled out across the country.
Lobbies envisioned as dynamic multiuse spaces, restaurants focused on presenting a memorable eating space, blurring of indoor-outdoor space, and an abundant use of local art and environmentally friendly features
are among the fastest-growing trends in
hotel interior design, according to a recent article in design and architecture magazine Freshome.
The importance of hotel lobbies, in particular, “is growing, as social encounters become more and more dependent on this particular hotel area,” according to the magazine.
“Communal spaces are changing the way we view a hotel stay,” wrote Paula Oblen, president of San Clemente-based design firm Hotelements Inc., in a recent blog entry. The company focuses on hotel-inspired designs for homes. “The days of heading to a hotel to simply ‘sleep’ are over.”
With business travelers seeking less formal, more personalized experiences, “hotel lobbies should provide a multi-use space for casual as well as formal talks, working on laptops, plugging in various devices,” the Freshome report said. This means “a simple sofa-coffee table arrangement won’t cut it.”
It’s a style and design not too dissimilar from what’s being done at commercial buildings in OC and other coastal markets that are now incorporating creative-office elements, which emphasize open-air work stations and plenty of collaborative meeting areas indoors and outdoors.
The design features of the new generation of hotels also are a nod to OC’s new-home market, where “California Rooms,” an open living space that extends into a covered backyard area that can be used for dining or socializing, have become the norm for new housing developments, particularly on the Irvine Ranch.
At the Irvine Marriott Hotel, for example, the Floe Lounge’s use of indoor-outdoor seating areas allows guests to watch TV or a movie outside, eat a meal or have a drink. As hotel officials put it, it was “designed with Southern California weather in mind.”
