Hotels Aim to Stand Out With Local Art

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Seeking to appeal to guests’ desire for new experiences and stand out in a competitive market, hotel brand managers are mining their local art communities for everything from inspiration to installations.

“I think the travelers today are exposed to more,” said Dan Vinh, vice president for global marketing of Marriott’s lifestyle portfolio. “When they travel, they want an experience that they can talk about, that they can bring back and share stories about.”

Even young adults looking for a cheap place to stay and business travelers looking for a place to recharge themselves and their devices overnight have higher expectations.

The evolution in how managers view hotel artwork is similar to the shift toward showcasing more local ingredients in hotel restaurants, Mr. Vinh said. In their restaurants, he said, hotels have begun striving to create an environment that is part of the local community, and now that’s happening in the general hotel ambience.

“I think it’s all part of the same movement to help the guest experience something new,” Mr. Vinh said.

For example, the Renaissance New York Midtown Hotel opened in March and features works by New York City artists that riff on the hotel’s garment district location. The artist Andre Woolery created a work consisting of red buttons arranged onto a canvas to create an abstract design, evoking the large sculpture in the district of a needle threading a button.

Other major hotel brands increasingly are making local art a more prominent fixture. When it opened in 2011, the Omni Dallas Hotel was considered an anomaly with its 6,500 pieces of original art, including work by 150 local artists. Two years later, the brand repeated the initiative, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale, when it opened the Omni Nashville Hotel. Now, it plans to do the same with hotels coming in the next two years in Atlanta and Louisville, Ky.

“People are really wanting to collect these experiences,” said Jonathan Frolich, vice president for global brands at Hyatt Hotels’ Andaz brand. “They’re looking to be immersed in local culture.”

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