Out of the Water New pool designs aren't leaving hotel guests all wet.
by Len Vermillion
Spring is right around the corner, and before long it will be time to open up the pool. But for hoteliers these days, opening up the pool means a lot more than heralding the start of another summer season. It means uncovering an important amenity that can help attract guests. And for many, it also means creating an entire pool experience which can add another layer to their revenue stream.
Hotel swimming pools are no longer places simply to swim. They are being design-ed to add entire atmospheres and themes to hotels. In some cases, such as waterpark re-sorts and properties in tropi-cal locales, they are even becoming the main attraction. In short, pools are no longer simple amentities, but vital cogs in hotels design.
“Hoteliers are really look for those spaces to generate more income rather than just being pool decks,” says Cheryl Rowley, principal of Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Cheryl Rowley Design, which has created innovative pools as part of its designs for several notable properties in both the United States and abroad. “We are creating exterior living spaces at pool decks, such as cabanas and food and beverage services.”
At some properties, such as the Harrah’s Resort & Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., pools are even being designed to be multifunctional spaces to help them generate more revenue. At Harrah’s the indoor pool is covered over at night to become one of the city’s most popular nightclubs. Rowley says similar trends are happening around the globe.
“One trend has been extending what’s a pool during the day into a lounge experience in the evening,” she says. “That’s a trend that I think will continue.”
Rowley’s team has done similar designs where the pool is turned into a evening hot spot at places such as The Peninsula in Beverly Hills and the Hotel Palomar Dallas.
Other hotels have used their pool space to upgrade their properties in the face of increased competition for guests and the current credit crunch, which has left little money available to expand, forcing them to find ways to change their property within its existing footprint.
“Existing hotels can certainly take a mundane space, if you will, depending upon the category of the hotel, and upgrade it by introducing more cabanas, more living spaces, fire pits; those auxiliary amenities that define the space and provide a more luxurious experience,” Rowley says.
Redefining the Space The growing trend of taking “wet” space and turning it into more than a swimming hole extends throughout the lodging industry—from luxury properties to midscale properties to specialty properties. “I can’t speak for any developers, but one would think it would be time to revisit the [space] and think of how we can redefine it,” says Donny Weber, principal of the Louisville, Ky.-based Weber Group, which has done design and construction work for several waterpark resorts, such as Great Wolf Lodge. “One of the ways to do it is to look at what you can market to the general public. Does everything have to be ‘wet play?’ I mean, does it all have to be waterpark? And, what is the definition of [a waterpark]? I know there are several people who are already looking at that.”
Weber says thinking outside the water portion of a waterpark can make a lot of sense when you consider the return-on-investment. “If you look at it from a square footage point of view and there are X number of dollars devoted to the waterpark portion of a resort hotel, it’s obviously the most expensive portion of a building to build,” he says. “So without making it smaller, if you were to take some of the water components out and replace them with other entertainment venues, what does that do to your capital expense? And then what does that do to your operating expense?”
The same thought process works for swimming pool design. By not only adding pool deck elements, but also changing the traditional pool, designers are creating more aesthetically pleasing and attractive pools that make the most of their space. In recent years, many resort properties have changed the look of their pools to reflect naturalistic themes, such as rivers or lagoons. These days, the hot trend is the infinity pool, where the edges become less defined and seemingly flow into the deck. In many instances, designers have added sand to the decks to create an ease of entry for the swimmer.
And, as Rowley points out, many pool designs are foregoing deep water in favor of more shallow pools that allow guests to not only take a swim but also socialize. In some of Rowley’s projects, shallow pools have been equipped with beverage service to offer a sort of “wading bar/nightclub experience.”
Working with What’s Available As Weber pointed out concerning waterpark space, pool designers are finding a need to get creative with pool deck space, depending on the property. For example, urban pools limit how many elements can be added to the deck because of space con-straints and the fact that most are built on rooftops.
“The most apparent difference is between an urban property and a resort property,” Rowley says. “Of course, resorts have more square footage associated with pools. When we get into urban properties they’re typically on roof decks. So your square footage is limited. Resort properties just have more to play with; there’s more acreage and more meandering space so a pool becomes more of an amenity associated with the property than an urban project.”
But that hasn’t stopped designers from getting creative with tight spaces. At the urban Beverly Hills Peninsula, Rowley’s team was able to create several cabanas along the rooftop deck. Likewise, they spruced up the look of the very tight space of the Hotel Palomar in the heart of Los Angeles’ Westwood section.
Something else that affects the direction of pool designs is the current regulations placed on pools in the United States. There are much less restrict-ions on pool designs overseas. “That’s always the biggest challenge for us,” Rowley says. “We can design much more interesting pools outside of the United States. Here there are code requirements that we don’t see elsewhere.”
For example, pools in other countries can feature different color schemes. In the United States, pools are required to be white. (This is to make it eas-ier to identify floating bodies in the case of an emergency.) Often, the color restrictions can make it challenging to coordinate pool deck lounges and other types of poolside amenities. “We had a design we wanted to do that had a lounge aspect to it for the evenings,” Rowley says. “We wanted to do a red mosaic in the pool as a very important visual element, but we have to have white pools in the U.S. So the challenges are also with the rules and regulations.”
Some other regulations that designers have to consider are the space around pools—they can’t be placed near edges of buildings—as well as ADA requirements, such as railings. Overseas, designers are placing dark-bottom pools and other aesthetically pleasing elements. However, they are more than making up for those lack of elements with their designs around the area of the pools, and hoteliers are feeling the benefits of those elements on their bottom-lines. n
