The anatomy of good hotel design

When South African-based hospitality company BON Hotels turned its sights across the African continent a few years ago, it knew it would need an aggressive refurbishment campaign to turn each new acquisition into a first choice for potential guests.

Enter Cape Town-based Delta Design Studio, a specialist hospitality interior design company headed by Grant Gillis, who had already made a name for himself in the design of a number of dynamic spaces in South Africa – along with a number of hotel and retail locations, these included the offices of Vodacom, The Jupiter Drawing Room and Planet Hollywood.

Joining forces with chief executive officer and founder of BON Hotels, Guy Stehlik, the BONDelta collaboration was born in 2015, Mr Stehlik explained: “As a company, we were looking for an opportunity to provide countries in Africa not only with our own hotel management skills, but also complementary skills in the design and layout of hotels.”

The BON Hotels group has itself benefited extensively from the collaboration; with a vision to develop “Africa by Africans”, the group now operates a total of 16 hotels across Ethiopia, Namibia, South Africa and Nigeria, with a number of others in the pipeline, and the Delta Design touch is part and parcel of each establishment.

“We needed an interior design team that would buy into our company ethos of ‘Good people. Good thinking. Good feeling’ which also extends to that overall, single big impression that guests will encounter when they enter one of our hotels,” Mr Stehlik said.

With his own philosophy to “make complex things look and feel simple”, Mr Gillis explained further: “Good design is actually a combination of a multitude of disciplines constructed together to subconsciously create a flood of emotion that speaks to all five of our different senses simultaneously.”

A person’s overall reaction to the space, believes Mr Gillis, will hopefully then be the desired “warm fuzzy feeling “ resulting in that person wishing to be in that space and enjoy whatever it has to offer, even if they can’t quite put their finger on what makes them want to stay.

It’s very different approach, Mr Gillis said, to that used by other designers who may “agonise for days over a flooring type, or a pattern or a colour scheme, or the tone of the timber, the grain of how a floor is laid, or even how the junction between the floor and the tiles meets up.”

These are not the things that a visitor will remember, Mr Gillis said: “Try asking a friend after they’ve left a restaurant or a retail shop whether they remember what was on the floor? They won’t. But they’ll remember how the place made them feel.”

When it comes to accommodation venues, Mr Gillis believes the most essential “design” elements are the cleanliness of the place, the friendliness and efficiency of the staff, the quality of the bed and linen, and – he stresses: “The sense of arrival.

“This gives the guest his or her most important first experience and ultimately sets the tone of the entire stay.”

As a result, the design team pays particular attention to the reception areas of the hotels in which they work, Mr Gillis explained: “The average reception desk is actually a negative encounter where guests either need to check in by filling out forms, check out and pay, or where they lodge a complaint. It’s not a place they ‘desire’ to be.”

BONHotels take the experience to another level, added Mr Stehlik, by training staff to document guest histories – including their likes and dislikes – so that a repeat visit can be tailor-made to them: “Wherever possible, we want our staff to greet guests by name, and show them swiftly to their rooms. Our reception areas are therefore an integral part of the design that sees guests flowing through them as smoothly as possible. “

However, it hasn’t been a one-style-fits all approach when it comes to the interior design of the BONHotels in which Delta Design has been involved. Spread as they are across Africa, the hotels are located in different cultural and ethnic areas and can further be divided into those catering primarily for leisure guests or those looking largely after business travellers.

Length of possible stay is also a determining factor, Mr Gillis said: “You don’t design a business hotel look and feel and position it in Plettenberg Bay. A holiday resort requires extra amenities such as larger cupboards, or public areas that can accommodate kids.”

Alternatively, from one African country to another, the design team must take cultural identities into account, Mr Gillis explained: “Muslim men, for instance, need adequate ‘dress length’ cupboards for the tunics they wear. Different hotels must be designed for the distinctive markets they service.”

And, in turn, architectural design must be specific to the environment, Mr Gillis stressed. “I firmly believe, in contrast to many architects, that function over form will win every time. That’s the real winning recipe for interior design.”