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Hotels Tear Down Wall
Between Bed and Bathroom;
Case of the Ill-Timed Omelet
By HANNAH KARP
February 24, 2006; Page W1
Hotels have added a new place to see and be seen: the bathroom.
Embracing a phenomenon that started in Europe, some boutique-hotel
designers are exposing a corner of the room long deemed private
-- plopping tubs down next to the bed, installing glass walls between
the bathroom and sleeping area, even removing parts of the dividing
walls altogether.
The new Hotel Valley Ho in Scottsdale, Ariz., where prices start
at $289, features bathtubs in the middle of some of its bedrooms.
After renovations are completed in April, the Sofitel in Los Angeles
will reopen with bed and bath areas separated by nothing more than
long glass panels. At New York's Hotel on Rivington, which opened
last year, many showers not only can be seen from the bedroom, but
have sweeping windows that let bathers peer at the city, and vice
versa. At the newest W hotel, in Montreal, the only thing that comes
between the bed and bath areas is a curtain, and it's transparent.
The W also lets guests peek into the bathroom from each room's private
entryway, thanks to a peephole in the wall.
The smattering of properties that are experimenting with the designs
are typically newer, boutique-style hotels in downtown city areas.
In part, these hotels say, they're seeking ways to make small rooms
appear more spacious, and some are picking up on an open plan that
has already appeared in some European hotels. But it's also, more
simply, a bid for attention: After a decade-long boutique-hotel
boom, properties in this competitive field are hoping for notice
by going to extremes. "We're being deliberately provocative,"
says Colum McCartan, designer of the new Hotel Vitale in San Francisco,
where suites have tubs in the sleeping area, pressed against floor-to-ceiling
windows that overlook San Francisco Bay. "It's a little cheeky.
We know everyone won't want to take a bath in the middle of the
room."
A studio guest room -- bathtub included -- at the Hotel Valley Ho
in Scottsdale, Ariz.
The peek-a-boo bath was a bit unsettling for Meredith Burn. Seeking
some privacy during her stay at the Vitale, where a standard room
goes for $329, she waited until her husband dozed off and then dimmed
the lights before slipping into the tub. "It's a little uncomfortable
for someone my age," says the 55-year-old from Melbourne, Australia.
Her husband, Richard Burn, wondered why the hotel went to all the
trouble. "Places spend a lot on fancy bathrooms but they might
as well spend it elsewhere," he says. "As long as you
have good ventilation and a shower that works, basically it doesn't
matter to me."
Open bathrooms are cropping up now as hotels across the industry
make a broader push to play up their washrooms. Some guests are
buying into the bathroom experience, as hotels continue to add touches
like rain-forest shower heads and bottles of sugar scrub and moisturizing
body butter. One sign of visitors' bathroom preoccupation: Retail
sales of bath-related products tripled last year at the W hotel
chain, while non-bath product sales doubled, says Stephen Werther,
president of W's retail business. "Five years ago, all you
got was a bar of soap," says Joe McInerney, president of the
American Hospitality and Lodging Association.
Hotels are also playing up bathrooms as they run out of new ways
to highlight their other big focus, the bed. Hotels have been offering
sleep upgrades for years, adding bigger mattresses and importing
feather pillows and down comforters from Europe. Five years ago,
Westin introduced its Heavenly Bed -- with a pillow-top mattress,
250-thread-count sheets and a European-style duvet -- followed by
efforts such as Hilton's Serenity Bed (with "Super Topper"
mattress pad) and Radisson's Sleep Number Bed (with a mattress that
adjusts from soft to firm).
'Not on Their Honeymoon'
Opening up the bathrooms, some psychologists venture, let hotels
extend the bathroom vibe -- the feeling of private reflection and
pampering -- to other, more public areas. But they also say the
idea has its risks. "The bathroom signals sex," says Toby
F. Israel, author of "Some Place Like Home: Using Design Psychology
to Create Ideal Places." "But hotels need to reality-test
-- not everyone is on their honeymoon."
A bathtub with a view of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in
a suite at the Hotel Vitale.
Andrew MacLane got his own reality check at the Mandarin Oriental
in Miami. The six-year-old hotel was one of the first U.S. properties
to meld bed and bath, and Mr. MacLane's room featured a 10-by-12-foot
sink and tub area set off by a curtain but no doors. The 40-year-old
private investor from Portland, Ore., liked his $625-a-night room
so much, in fact, that he stayed for four extra nights. But there
was a moment of panic when room service arrived while his partner
was taking a bath. "They barged in with the omelets before
we could figure out how to close the drape," he says.
Some hotels say they're hoping to use voyeurism as a marketing
tool. "There's definitely an unwitting voyeuristic element
about living in Manhattan -- it's a bit alarming sometimes, but
we wanted to give visitors to New York the opportunity to partake,"
says Matt Grzywinski, co-designer of the Hotel on Rivington, which
stocks binoculars on top of its minibars. He adds that the risks
of being seen aren't so great, however: The hotel is taller than
most neighboring buildings on New York's Lower East Side, so many
windows are out of close view. "Unless someone's concentrating
on you with a telescope [from a few miles away] in Midtown, you're
probably okay."
Many properties say they aren't going to be adding open bathrooms
anytime soon. Big chains from Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons and Fairmont
to Holiday Inn say they wouldn't consider such a design because
it might alienate their more traditional customers. And even most
hotels that are flirting with edgy bathrooms say they also offer
cover-up strategies for bashful guests. The glass dividers in the
Los Angeles Sofitel's new rooms, for example, are filled with liquid
crystal that turns opaque at the flip of a switch. At the Standard
in Miami, which opened in December, the $325-a-night rooms come
with tubs on the Biscayne Bay-view terraces, but also include more-
private showers.
Greater transparency: Street-view showers at New York's Hotel on
Rivington
Montreal's W, however, offers little escape from prying eyes. The
peephole in the wall between the entryway and bathroom isn't equipped
with a cover, and the curtain between the open-plan bathroom and
bedroom is transparent. "You can see right through," says
front-desk worker Antoine Leblonde. "But there's nothing we
can do. That's how the hotel was designed." Adds Aaron Richter,
the design director for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide
Inc.'s W chain: "The philosophy is that the rooms are not divided.
We believe that the functions of the hotel room have become less
defined. The curtains act more to soften the difference between
the two spaces."
Lack of Definition
Open-plan rooms go back further in Europe, where hotel designers
have long sought ways to make small spaces seem bigger. The continent
has a longer history of design-focused hotels, too, and new properties
there continue to push the boundaries. At Madrid's Hotel Puerta
America, which opened last year, each floor is designed by a different
top architect -- including Ron Arad and Marc Newson -- and many
include open bathrooms. Rooms on the floor designed by Norman Foster,
for example, feature wall-to-wall slabs of white onyx that serve
as both bathroom sink and bedroom desk. French designer Philippe
Starck, meanwhile, recently worked on the Faena Hotel and Universe
in Buenos Aires, which includes see-through bathrooms. (Guests can
pull red velvet drapes across the glass for more privacy.)
Yet some groundbreaking hotels have discovered that it's possible
to go too far. In 2002, the Hotel Josef in Prague added 35 superior
rooms, starting at about $225 a night, with glass-wall bathrooms.
But it won't be adding any more. "Many people will tell us
after they check in that they appreciate the design but just don't
feel comfortable," says Milena Findeis, the hotel's head of
marketing. One or two guests a month ask to switch down a category
to a standard room, with a standard bathroom.
On these shores, at least there's one area that still affords some
privacy: Most of the new bathrooms place the toilet in a separate
cabin, with a traditional door. But even in this regard, the case
is not always open and shut. Bathrooms in the Hotel Vitale, for
one, are equipped with sliding panels that obscure that toilet and
sink from the bedroom area -- but still leave open gaps at each
side. Mr. McCartan, the designer, says that a real door would intrude
on the guest's sense of space.
But frequent Vitale guest Patty Garcia says that while she loves
the hotel's location and the room's general look, she doesn't like
the idea of a stall that won't close all the way. The 55-year-old
attorney from Sacramento, Calif., says she's even called the hotel
to request rooms with normal doors. "It's not very private,"
Mrs. Garcia says.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114073821313081898-8_e6tf3R50qYBTHD4h9_nxdyPP4_20070223.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top
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