Dexter Moren, partner, Dexter Moren Associates, is part of the Inner Circle, a group of industry leaders and innovators we have brought together to help us contribute to debate in the sector.
Some years ago, while staying in a resort ski hotel, my entire family were one of many struck down by a dreadful stomach bug, the existence of which both the hotel and brand vehemently denied.
Thinking about it later I realised that the means of transmission was the ubiquitous food buffet where successive handling of serving implements was a perfect means of passing around any manner of bug. That’s probably why cruise ships were at the heart of the Coronavirus pandemic – no airborne cough transmission necessary! What we have learned most from this catastrophic viral event is avoidance of direct contact with others or items handled by others, and obsessive hand cleanliness.
So, what are the implications going to be for hotels, post COVID-19. I suspect the porter taking your luggage will be gloved and while we may be less concerned at keeping 2m away from a receptionist, that key card would have come direct from a steriliser, or access to your room would be via a code on your mobile.
Contactless self-check-in will also become the norm with no grubby keypads to touch. The lift will accept voice command and the bedroom door will spring open with a swipe of your mobile phone, and no touching of handles in the “public realm”. Inside, the room will have not just been cleaned, but every surface, handle or switch wiped with sterilising liquid, with house-person note to confirm.
Within either the room or bathroom, or both at upmarket hotels, the new feature will be a wall mounted sterilising gel dispenser, of which a variety of designer versions will soon become available in a wide range of colours & finishes.
With so much to keep clean & sterile will room design be simplified with unnecessary items and fashionable bric-a-brac eliminated? Restaurant buffets will become less ubiquitous or at least food dispensed from buffets will be placed on your plate by a member or staff, no personal serving implement touching necessary. More budget operations, where such staffing levels or physical layouts aren’t possible, will feature sterilised gel dispensers at the beginning and end of the buffet run, probably with bold instruction notices.
The bar will be encouraging guests to help themselves to their own glasses from a sterilised stash and the server will simply top up with your favourite tipple direct from the bottle or cocktail shaker. No touching necessary.
When it comes to payment, contactless credit card limits will be increased and guests will more readily use personal phones to pay. Keypads and cash may all but disappear. In public washrooms touchless toilet flushing, hand washing and drying is quite commonplace but many manufacturers will be trying to emulate the Dyson hand-drier which dispenses water and dries your hands at the single point of washing.
Automatic sheet by sheet toilet paper dispensers may grow in popularity. It’s assumed that toilet paper won’t be the object of pilfering post lockdown but dispensers will ensure you’re the one and only person to handle that sheet. Gym’s will probably offer gloves to guests as well as peppering the space with more hand sanitising dispensers. All doors will open automatically and handles will become redundant artifacts of a past age. All in all there will be a lot more Indian style head shaking than traditional English hand shaking and definitely no European body embracing – Brexit in a nutshell.
Dexter has also treated us to a view of a lockdown fantasy:
ANIMAL FARM: Thoughts on a fantasy of our age
The streets were still awaiting public celebrations as we made our way to inspect the hotel in anticipation of the early morning lockdown reprieve. As the church bells struck the hour, and with the façade windows still security boarded, we entered via the service yard, making our way in the vast service elevator to the ballroom on B2.
There was a lingering medicinal aroma as we looked across the huge space where distinct lines of carpet compression were like a palimpsest reminder of its’ most recent use as a Covid 19 field hospital. From here we unlocked the doors into the hotel itself and the atmosphere instantly changed from medicinal to musty.
We first entered the adjoining leisure faculty, moving with torches to the reception area where it felt somewhat festive to power up the lights. Through the huge window we could see the pool was no longer it’s chlorinated blue, but a pond-like olive green, the algae giving the appearance of a verdant meadow.
We could hear the Frogs but declined to investigate what other invaders had taken up residence, making our way to the main lobby. Here the urban foxes, who’d left overnight paw prints in the fresh concrete during construction, had returned en famille and we’re comfortably ensconced on the leather lobby loungers.
They observed us with disdain as we moved gingerly around their settees to the hotel bar & restaurant. Normally bathed in natural light the temporary shuttering outside the windows was crude & unpainted, giving memories to us, & presumably the foxes, of the once building site. Huge rats had taken up residency in the kitchen & restaurant, where they had apparently found partitions and doors either as tasty as the outdated storeroom produce or perhaps as useful toothpicks.
For fire & security reasons all the bedrooms on the accommodation floors had been left open and from here a few further foxes fled as we undertook our detailed inspection. Like supermarket shelves, all toilet paper & cleansers were gone but all else was intact. However, the terrace doors to the presidential suite stood strangely ajar and more that a family of pigeons had taken up residence with nests in unlikely corners with the deep luxurious carpet soaked in their residue.
Outside the rooftop meadow adjoining the presidential suite terrace had gone wild, almost choking the hotel beehives in their midst. In an ironic twist, while the hotel was empty the active honey factory had choked the hives with unharvested honeycomb to the point that new breakaway homes were emerging under the hotel eaves, joined now also by Wasps, in a veritable terrace of animal housing. All this is of course a mad Orwellian fantasy and in any event hotel maintenance teams would have ensured no unwanted invaders.
On the other hand who could have believed the science fiction fantasy of an apparent Pangolin in a Chinese Street market effecting a global pandemic & worldwide lockdown