Dubai is currently the second largest market for Starwood Hotels & Resorts’ properties in the world after New York; the emirate is home to 15 hotels and five of the company’s ten brands, with four more to come online over the next few years.
Among these is long-stay eco-conscious lifestyle select brand Element by Westin. While currently there are 16 operating Element hotels in North America, recently the brand ventured outside of the continent into China and Frankfurt, and earlier this year, three Elements were signed for the Middle East, with the first to open in 2018 in Muscat.
This property will be followed in the same year with Element Dubai Raffa and Element Dubai Airport, to open in Q3 and Q4 respectively. Spearheaded by Aloft, the company’s mid-market portfolio in the region is expected to quadruple by 2019, and already represents 50% of Starwood’s Middle East pipeline.
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Seven years after Element’s 2008 launch — with Element Massachusetts — the long-stay, sustainable lifestyle brand has undergone an overhaul. Hotelier Middle East visited the Starwood Hotels & Resorts headquarters in Connecticut, USA for an exclusive preview of the second generation design prototype, launched in May. Lara Shortall, creative director global brand design at Starwood explains that the redesign, however, “is not a revelation”.
“It’s really about evolving the design and updating it so that any existing hotel can bring in the new design seamlessly with what they already have,” she explains during a presentation at Element Harrison in New Jersey. While Starwood’s luxury brands — St. Regis, W and The Luxury Collection — are made up of properties with bespoke designs, the next tier down —Méridien, Westin and Sheraton — is a hybrid of prototype and bespoke designs.
However, lifestyle select brands — Aloft, Four Points by Sheraton, and Element by Westin — are more or less standardised.
“Owners like that,” explains Shortall. “In North America, these hotels take anything from between 12 and 18 months to build. They pay less on their fees because everything is designed, and if they’re using everything we’ve designed, the process is much faster, and then we can go through the construction process pretty quickly too.”
“We saw this niche in the market for an extended stay product that could offer something that wasn’t out there already. The core values of the brand are smart, alive and balanced; there’s an energy and vibrancy to these values; a sense of being inspired but grounded.”
Element by Westin’s second generation design focuses on ergonomic use of space, sustainability, and making the most of natural light, while providing healthy choices through its F&B and the activities on offer.
Sustainability is a key touchpoint, and every property in the portfolio must be LEED-certified. Shortall, who is personally LEED-certified, explains that the Gen 2 design has even stricter LEED standards, which has posed a few challenges with the redesign. “We designed the prototype this time to comply with the new version of LEED, which has more stringent requirements for energy and interior air, so the heating systems had to change so they could be more energy efficient.”
In the Gen 2 rooms, the team has created space by changing the air conditioning units to meet the latest standards.
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