Starwood Hotels & Resorts has unveiled a new lobby concept for its Westin brand, designed at bringing the outdoors into hotels.
The new design for Westin’s public spaces will include vertical gardens, or green walls featuring a range of plants and foliage. Ranging from 10-30m², each vertical garden integrates wall-mounted plants and designed panels which Starwood says will reflect “the interior architecture and the location’s regional identity”.
Plants used in the walls will be selected for their detoxifying and oxygen-producing properties, with the aim of improving the hotels’ air quality.
“Although vertical gardens exist in other boutique hotel properties, Westin is the first global brand to incorporate these structures in the lobby space throughout its global portfolio,” the company said in a statement. “As the first international hotel brand to go smoke-free in 2006, Westin decided to partner with Ambius, the premier global interior landscaping provider, to create these “living walls” that function operationally in the hospitality environment and further the brand’s commitment to ensuring that guests leave feeling better than when they arrived.”
In addition to the vertical walls, the revamped Westin lobbies will feature new free-standing check-in pods, instead of standard reception desks, as well as large back-lit feature walls. The Dock will be a new standard meeting concept, offering a range of power outlets, tables, and acoustic screens to improve sound control, while the ‘Grab & Go Café’ concept and Westin Retail Store will offer separate retail areas for coffee and snacks, or to buy hotel amenities such as bedding and bath products.
The new lobby concept has already debuted in the US, at the Westin Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego, and the roll-out will gather pace in 2013.
