Recently the unchanging role has remained a crucial area for hotels’ improvement but rather is shifting to the community. In the past, the only reason why people preferred to rent out the boilerplate hotel was for sleep. But hospitality companies tend to position their hotels not only for rest but also as active floating business centers where people can hold meetings and engage with the local community.
There are also those hotels which have actually incorporated some elements of the community by organizing conferences or providing call centers and working with local businesses. This paper will attempt to highlight how the concept of hotel has exceeded the broad definition to become an important and intricate part of today’s society.
Changes In Hotels Including Coworking Departments And Other Work Amenities
Workplace innovation is one of the radical changes that have been seen in the hospitality field and particularly in hotels. Observing the current trend where people have switched to a home-based working system, hotels have never had such a demand in providing more adaptable work areas for business travelers, moving people and even city inhabitants.
National & Regional or Ace Hotel & The Hoxton have been at the forefront of this creativity by making available to clients temporal and internet connected workstations and meeting rooms which are self-contained. Such workspaces not only attract guests of the hotel but also the community members looking for an interesting place to work.
Hotels as Event Spaces in Society
Generally, pillared buildings like hotels came up with the idea of restructuring their lobbies and even turning the conference rooms into functional spaces for events not only for the guests but also for outsiders at the time of conception. Whether it is hosting an art exhibition, live music, pop-up markets or wellness workshops, many hotels devise such activities as per the norms of their surroundings.
For example, The Line Hotel hosts not only tourists but also local residents through organizing events, including book readings or food festivals in L.A. This trend of engaging hotels towards the role of event venues has somehow improved the position of hotels as focusing points of the community.
Local Food Partnerships: Fulfilling the Community’s Requirements
Another trend that is emerging within hotels is that of getting into partnerships with local food providers including restaurants. Some hotels have also been able to embrace the trend of cuisine by contracting out local chefs, brewers and artisans instead of confining their visitors to the restaurants in the hotels.
Besides assisting the local economies, this approach serves to connect the hotel with its surroundings. For instance, in the case of 21c Museum Hotels, they provide only food that is grown and produced locally and has a direct relationship with the restaurant. Furthermore, many dishes created by local farms and producers are seasonal and rotate to include these as well.
Wellness and Fitness of the Local Populace and Visitors
The hotel’s focus has traditionally been on the amenities that guests can consume, but as of late many have tried to incorporate wellness into the agenda of guests and nowadays provide fitness classes, spa treatments or wellness workshops not necessarily for the guests only.
Hotels with sprawling space for enhancing the wellness and recreation experience such as the Equinox Hotels in New York focused on locals too and persuaded them to purchase a gym membership or a day pass to the premises.
This approach creates a shift in how the hotel is perceived, from a temporary resting point for visitors on tours, to a permanent feature in the community, with health and wellness services integrated in its offerings and therefore appealing to the local populace who require health and fitness services.
Establishing Sociable Venues: The Modern Hotel Entrance
The view of hotel lobbies as only a functional part, a check in check out area for the guests, as transformed to lobbies becoming working spaces, lounges or places of social meetings for guests and even the residents. Lobbies of hotels, with the relevant furnishings, wall decor and other attributes have commenced to be where girths let their hair down rather loiter more.
‘The Ace Hotel’ whose advert is on the cover page has so outfitted their lobbies as one of the core host services, where one could read numerous amounts of books, drink really nice specialty coffee and watch aboriginals ending up in the on-stage performance, as it has all been thrust into here ear local residents. The redesigned lobbies enhance socialization activities that take place in the lodgers and also the social efforts of the lodgers in protecting the welfare of the society.
Hotels: The Heart of Culture
Over the past decade, it has become a practice for the hotels to enhance their brand image as cultural establishments by engaging in the organization of exhibitions, film screenings or concerts. Several hotels have also fulfilled the civic function of promoting local art by featuring local artworks or conducting art-related programs like art trail and art openings.
The James Hotel in Chicago, for instance, showcases this principle by providing a rotating collection of pieces of art and giving a call to the local artists to use this venue as a place of their imaginative work. This change allows hotels not only to accommodate guests as a single attraction for tourists to travel, but also to become an organic part of the culture and creativity in which local patrons would be encouraged to partake.
Enhancement of Sustainability and Community Programs
Due to globalization and the increasing competition in the hospitality industry, there are now movements where hotels aim to fulfill the correct role of the hotel. This includes philanthropy, social responsibility programs, and attention to community needs. Regarding these tendencies almost all the hotel chains reveal more, dare one say, ecological faith, where they transform the processes to cut back on the wastage, need lesser non-local constructions and go for energy which can be renewed.
Additionally, several hotels have progressed into the community engagement spectrum by conducting charitable acts such as offering funds, materials, or time to healthcare facilities, cleaning up the beach along with hosting beach events open to everyone. 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge showcases this phenomenon rather well, hosting numerous events aimed at the sustainability agenda and community that needs assistance to become productive for both the environment and society.
Collaborations of Hotels and Local Businesses
All the same, in today’s hotel industry, hoteliers are associating themselves with local businesses to improve their guests’ rather than just seasonal international tourist flow; rather, they assimilate into the community. Such hotels are also doing some other local commercial activities and are not shying away from providing space for the local artisans.
For example, with regard to Kimpton Hotels, guests can sip beers that are brewed nearby, order some coffee or take part in yoga classes at any places that are in concert with the hotels. The engagement remarkably enhances the social cohesion of the hotels without dominion into the local enterprises.
Conclusion: Hotels As Instruments Of Local Power Structuring
The recent advancement of the hotel’s trajectory has moved beyond the concept of places of just sleeping and developed them into places of meeting, which is not just for the benefit of the tourists but of the local people as well. Including working spaces, directing events, market local businesses or generating connections, hotels have plunged into the studies of the society they work for.
Such improvement not only benefits the people who live around a place of facilities but also enhances the environment positively and constructively. Concerning the restructuring of the hotel business paradigm, this goes hand in hand with creating sociopolitical-oriented logics of hospitality transforming behavior towards places, clouds, and people.