INDUSTRY INSIGHT: enhancing guestrooms and suites post-pandemic

730 565 Hamish Kilburn
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INDUSTRY INSIGHT: enhancing guestrooms and suites post-pandemic

While public areas in hotel design are having to adapt in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak, Hotel Designs asks the experts at Billiards how their products can add entertainment in suites and large guestrooms…

With the hospitality industry seeking creative responses to the short and long term effects of the Pandemic, Hoteliers and Interior Designers are looking especially at the division between public and private spaces, and the need to make significant changes to appeal to guests in the first place, and to provide an ideal environment for them when they arrive.

The need for Social distancing creates challenges in Public areas in particular, so one area of focus will be on expanding and enhancing the Private areas, and providing entertainment within these, that might previously have been features of the Public areas. Key to attracting guests, for extended stays especially, will be to offer them ways to enjoy spending more time with family and fellow travellers in their own space, without the need to socialise more widely, and thus less safely.

Imagine the option of a home away from home in a fabulous location, the opportunity to enjoy a luxury ‘staycation’ with all the comforts of home, or, even better, with more. What better way to entice your wealthier guests, than to provide them with luxury leisure items, in the comfort and security of their own Rooms, Suites or Apartments. By doing so, you significantly enhance their experience of the Private area, and therefore of their entire holiday.

Snooker tables and Pool tables, whether in a Bar or dedicated billiard or games room, have long been a staple piece in many hospitality venues.  At the luxury end of the market especially, bar-owners, and interior designers have often chosen to make a statement of quality, and personality, at the same time as creating a focal point for social entertainment, with a truly bespoke, well-designed and hand-crafted table, like the ones made by Sir William Bentley Billiards, at its workshops in Marten, England.

Ranging from carefully restored antique billiard tables, through strikingly contemporary pool tables, to dual-purpose dining & conference tables, examples of the company’s work can be found in hotels and bars as far afield as Macau, Singapore, Dubai & New York, and as close to home as Mayfair and the West country. Every piece is uniquely specified and finished to suit the room it is being made or restored for; and, although most have been purchased outright, for commercial clients, the company also offers tables on a rental basis.

The majority of its tables, however, will be found in the homes of discerning private clients. For more than 40 years, Sir William Bentley Billiards has been the choice of Interior designers and private clients seeking to furnish their games rooms, dining rooms or open-plan living spaces with unique, bespoke Snooker, Pool and dual-purpose dining tables. It is this experience of providing truly personalised pieces of furniture that makes them so unique, and so suited to the ‘boutique’ or independent hotel.

During the lockdown, we have all been made to realise how important our living space can be to us; what we’re lacking, and what we’re so lucky to have. Those whose homes already had a focus for social entertainment such as a Pool table or Table tennis table, have appreciated it more than ever. And many who haven’t, have begun to realise how valuable something of this sort might be. As a result, in residential environments at least, there is now an even greater perception of the value of a Pool or Snooker table – for those who have the space for a games room – or a multi-purpose Pool-dining table, for those who want or need to make better use of a dining room or open plan living space.

For hotels and resorts, therefore, and especially lifestyle hotels, and those at the higher end of the market place, there is an opportunity to take advantage of this desire for luxury social entertainment, and provide your guests with a reason to escape the public spaces and indulge their private spaces with a friendly frame or two of Snooker or Pool.

Billiards is one of the brands that has taken advantage of our Industry Support Package. To keep up to date with supplier news, click here.

Main image credit: Billiards

Hamish Kilburn / 20.07.2020

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