LAS VEGAS — The 2022 HD Expo kicked off on Tuesday at the Mandalay Bay Resort with approximately 450 exhibitors and about 6,500 buyers learning about trends in hospitality design and the newest products on the market.
At this year’s event, the DesignWell Pavilion (designed by Inc Architecture & Design) is hosting sessions focused on wellness and sustainability, including the “Sustainability, Environment, Future” panel, which examined innovation in eco-friendly design and wellness initiatives.
Wellness vs. Well-being
Writer Alia Akkam, the panel's moderator, started the conversation asking what the difference is between wellness and well-being. Sarah Klymson, VP of product and brand development at Hyatt Hotels Corp., said that well-being encompasses more than simply health. “It's really … this idea of thinking about the whole person and all that goes into caring for yourself,” she said. “That means mind, body, physical attributes—and it goes beyond just being illness-free.” Wellness, meanwhile, is more the means to achieve well-being. As such, gyms and spas in a hotel are wellness attributes, but the hotel as a whole can be focused on well-being. “It's everything that encompasses what really cares for you,” she said.
Adam Rolston, a partner at Inc Architecture and Design, called wellness a “gateway drug to sustainability,” and noted the challenges of procuring products that are not only soothing for the guests but also not harmful to them—or to the environment. The very carpets on the trade show floor, he said, could be “off-gassing,” or releasing dangerous chemicals, and the products on display in the booths likely involved petroleum in some form or another. “We're in a place of transition where it's really hard to specify everything in a sustainable and well manner. And so it takes pressure off from our side, on the industry, to improve that.”
Heather Holdridge, director of design technology at Lake | Flato Architects, pointed out that there are “very few examples” of wellness and well-being conflicting with one another. “They really do work in concert with one another,” she said. “I don't think it's a false choice to think that you're choosing [among] wellness, well-being and sustainable design.” As hotel design matures as an industry, Holdridge continued, its practitioners are increasingly realizing that sustainability is “really multifaceted.”
Scalability
Hyatt, Klymson said, is looking to add well-being-based experiences at the company’s hotels up and down the chain scales. Last year, the company launched a pilot incorporating these experiences at three properties, and after “great success” with the initiative has expanded it to four additional hotels. “We're really trying to figure out how [we can] scale this in an authentic way that makes sense,” she said, noting that the company faced some challenges when it tried to incorporate wellness elements from its then-recently acquired Miraval brand into a Park Hyatt hotel. The idea of digital detoxing—popular at the well-being-themed Miraval—did not go over well at the urban hotel, even at the luxury level. “How do you take components that worked in certain settings and make sure they translate to other brands?" she asked.
Gary Golla, principal at Sera Architects, said his firm has not worked on as many Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified hotel projects as it was 15 years ago. Still, he said, while some developers are not chasing certification, they are still interested in reducing energy use and saving water—and, of course, health and wellness. “People seem to … be sort of relying on their consultants to help them work through what's what works for them, what's important for them, what's important to the story they would tell,” he said.
To help owners and developers understand the energy needs of their buildings, Golla recommended developing an energy model with set parameters— “insulation types, roof type, window glazing types, solar orientation”—that will determine how different factors will affect energy consumption. While such a model may not lower a building’s energy use by more than 5 percent or so, he added, if enough hotels lower their consumption by 5 percent, it can have a significant impact.