I hear you – your vacation rental isn’t a hotel. But you’ve got to admit, hotels know a thing or two about attracting guests and keeping them happy. As a former hospitality desiger, I use some of the hotel design secrets I learned to help hosts like you create rentals that delight guests – and make maintenance easier.
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Here are some of my favorite hotel design secrets.
Hotel designers create a sense of arrival.
Hotel lobbies are designed to impress. As the introduction to the property, a well-designed lobby communicates the spirit of the place, be it luxurious, creative, or impossibly cool. It sets the tone for a guest’s stay and defines the hotel’s identity.
The secret is that hotel lobbies are designed for vacuum cleaners as much as they are for guests. The best design is a failure if it doesn’t stay looking perfect despite constant foot traffic, suitcase wheels, and frequent cleanings.
Think about how you want your guests to feel when they first walk into your vacation rental. Is it relaxed, excited, or impressed? Do you want them to feel like they got lucky when they booked your place? Do they feel a sense of anticipation when they walk through the door?
On the practical side, is there enough room for both people and suitcases? Can the walls withstand the inevitable scuffs and dings left by unwieldy bags? Is there someplace to leave wet jackets or umbrellas?
This beautiful entry would make a great first impression on guests. Plus, there’s a place for wet umbrellas and coats and plenty of room to wheel in a suitcase. Photo: Cricket Studio | Designer: Georgina Jeffries | From: The Design Files
Hotel designs have to be approved by the operations team.
Hotel designers know that their ideas won’t pass muster if the operations team says no. If a room can’t be cleaned in a timely manner, the lobby floor won’t stand up to a floor buffer, or the reception desk doesn’t have enough room for a printer, the design will have to be revised, no matter how cool it is.
Your housekeepers likely have more time to turn over your vacation rental than hotel maids do to clean a room. Nevertheless, you can improve their efficiency by designing to accommodate frequent cleanings like hotels do.
Think about those vacuum cleaners, brooms, and mops again. Avoid corners too tight to be cleaned, such as between a nightstand and the wall, because they won’t be cleaned. Eliminate the need to check under beds by purchasing bed frames that go all the way to the floor. Avoid any surface material, such as marble or plexiglass, that requires special cleansers or cleaning techniques.
When you design your vacation rental, be sure to think about your housekeepers as much as you do your guests. After all, if they’re not able to do their jobs thoroughly neither you nor your guests will be happy.
Notice how this room at the Hotel Grand Stark has simple but efficient storage for suitcases and that the furniture doesn’t have spaces underneath for socks and chargers to get stuck. Designer: Palisociety | From: Dezeen
Good hotel designers don’t guests in the dark.
Have you ever walked into a hotel room and had only a single overhead light to illuminate the entire space? No, right? Not even budget hotels do this, yet vacation rental owners frequently fail to provide enough lighting.
Lighting designers work in layers of light, with the goal of providing ambient, task, and decorative lighting to a space without over-lighting or creating glare. Vacation rental owners can do something similar by adding wall lights, table lamps, and floor lamps as needed.
Think about the things people will do in a space and make sure they have enough light to do it. Keep in mind that we need more light as we age and that your housekeepers will need enough light to clean. Put lights on dimmers so that lighting can go from cozy to bright.
Now that LED bulbs are the norm, you also need to consider the color of the light and make sure you keep it consistent. LED bulbs range from 2700k, warm light to 5000k, which is cold light. 3000k is warm-neutral and is the go-to color for many lighting manufacturers. Find the color you prefer and buy extras to keep lighting consistent throughout your property.
Soho House designers gave guests table lamps, reading lamps, and a floor lamp in this room at Soho House Austin. Photographer: Chase Daniel | From: Dezeen
Hotel designers know that dings happen, and they make them easy to fix.
Remember in the ’90s when “wenge” became a color? That’s the black-brown “espresso” stain that became so trendy then, and you can thank W Hotels for that. They used that color for their sleek guest rooms because not only did it look good, it was easy to touch up.
Dark stains hide a multitude of dings and scrapes, as do many painted finishes. Emulate hotels by avoiding delicate furniture finishes and adding a protective layer of glass to tabletops when necessary. Make sure your team has touchup kits for baseboards and walls and painted furniture when possible.
The painted finish on this table and chairs is easier to repair than a delicate varnish, and it looks stunning. Photographer: Maree Homer | Styling: Kerrie-Ann Jones | Designer: Duet | From: The Design Files
Hotel design anticipates human behavior.
Did you ever wonder why hotels have that non-blanket strip of fabric at the foot of the beds? It’s called a bed scarf, and it’s there because the first thing most people do when they walk into a hotel room is toss their suitcase on the bed. The bed scarf is there to protect the bedding as well as to provide color to the bedding ensemble.
Bed scarfs aren’t necessary for vacation rental bedrooms, because a) they’re usually bigger than hotel rooms with more room for suitcases and b) they don’t get as many people moving through them. A blanket folded at the foot of the bed will suffice, and luggage racks will tell your guests where their bags will go.
Did you ever think about what happens to a mattress after thousands of people of varying weights sit on the edge of it? Hotels have to, so hospitality mattresses have reinforced edges.
You probably don’t need to seek out special mattresses, but putting a bench at the foot of the bed, or adding a chair to the room is a good idea to give people a comfortable place to put on their shoes.
Good design gives people what they need when they need it, whether that’s a place to sit or a reading light. Think about how people will move through your space and anticipate their needs. Here’s a good one to start with: Where will they plug in their phones?
Designer Johnson Nathan Strohe gives guests lots of places to put their suitcases and sit in this beautiful room at The Ramble Hotel.
Hotels lock down art and keep styling simple
Vacation rentals have a huge advantage over hotels because they don’t have to be cookie-cutter. You don’t see a lot of accessories in hotel rooms because it’s too much work for the staff to have to put everything back exactly in the right place every time.
Hosts have a lot more freedom to add personality to their spaces because they don’t have a bunch of guest rooms that have to look exactly the same. So take full advantage of that, but there are some steps you can take to make sure your styling looks good for every guest.
A lot of hotels use art locks to keep art on the wall, but frankly, those are a pain to install and unless you’re leaving valuable art in your vacation rental (you shouldn’t), you probably don’t need them.
For Airbnb hosts, it’s more important to make sure art stays where you want it, especially after vigorous dusting. To do that, ignore whatever hanging thing came with the frame and use French cleats (also called a mirror hanger or a z-bar hanger) instead. These are metal strips that fit together and keep art from getting knocked around. If possible, I also stick one corner of the frame to the wall with mounting putty for extra insurance. Just be sure to use a level to keep everything straight while you do it.
So what about accessories? You can’t exactly glue those down (well, you shouldn’t), and they tend to wander. Give your housekeeping staff photos to keep shelves styled the way you want them. If there’s more than one person cleaning, put someone in charge of putting things back where they belong. Share the photos in digital form and ask them to keep them on their phone for easy reference.
These shelves, photographed and styled by Brooke Stephenson will stay beautiful as long as whoever is cleaning has photos to reference to put everything back. Design: Talo Studios | From: Dezeen
