What is a hotel room layout?
Hotel room layout refers to the design and arrangement of a guest room within a hotel. This includes the placement of furniture, fixtures, and amenities to create a functional and comfortable environment for guests.
That’s the definition, but the impact of the right hotel room layout is more than just what the words mean. Your hotel room layout is a central part of the guest experience and it’s a factor you have the ability to proactively influence.
Whether you are adhering to brand standards or enjoying the freedom of independence, the impact of your one-time decision-making here is amplified by how your customers share their travel experience via reviews and on social media, again and again.
To help guide you, this blog details a few ways you can approach your hotel room layout and provides useful floor plan tips. Whether you are renovating or building from the ground up, read on for inspiration to create your original footprint and the best hotel room layout.
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Why is the layout of a hotel room important?
For hoteliers, the layout of a hotel room matters immensely because it directly influences guest satisfaction and operational efficiency. A well-designed room makes visitors more likely to leave positive reviews, return for future stays, and recommend your hotel to others. This boosts your hotel’s reputation and can lead to increased occupancy rates and revenue.
It isn’t just guests that benefit from a well designed room, however. A functional layout can streamline housekeeping and maintenance tasks, reducing operational costs and improving staff efficiency. That means that they can do more in less time, creating faster turnaround times and reducing the ‘dead air’ of an unlisted room.
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Hotel room layouts: Basic requirements
The most basic requirements for hotel room layouts generally include:
- Comfortable sleeping area: A bed that offers comfort and support, with quality linens and pillows. The bed is usually the focal point of the room and should be easily accessible from all sides.
- Functional workspace: A desk and chair provide a dedicated space for guests who need to work. This area should include good lighting and convenient access to power outlets.
- Adequate storage: Wardrobes, closets, or dressers for clothing, along with a luggage rack. Sufficient storage helps guests keep the room tidy and organised.
- Clean and well-equipped bathroom: A private bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower or bathtub. The bathroom should be stocked with essential toiletries and have good lighting and ventilation.
- Seating area: Additional seating, such as a sofa, armchair, or small dining table and chairs, provides a place for guests to relax or dine. This might double up with the functional workspace in smaller hotel rooms.
- Effective lighting: A mix of ambient, task, and accent lighting to create a welcoming and functional environment. Bedside lamps, desk lamps, and overhead lighting are essential.
- Entertainment and technology: Essentials like a television, Wi-Fi access, and charging stations. These should be easy to use and conveniently located.
- Climate control: Individual room climate control systems, such as air conditioning and heating, allow guests to adjust the temperature to their comfort.
- Safety features: Smoke detectors, secure locks on doors and windows, and easily accessible emergency information.
A good night’s sleep is arguably the key component of a hotel stay but, for good reasons, requirements for great hotel room layout go beyond providing a comfortable bed. These come from a variety of sources: your travellers’ expectations, your brand’s goals, and state or country-level rules and regulations.
All of these can be considered the basic requirements that influence hotel room layout. To get started without getting lost, answer the following three questions:
What areas are you creating in a room?
Most commonly there is a sleeping space, a workspace or area to be productive when necessary, and a bathroom. If you are crafting a hotel floor plan for long stays, your requirements may be different and include a space to cook and eat.
How will these areas be used?
Moving through a hotel room should feel intuitive. Upon entering a room, most of us automatically scan for key elements, which in turn generates our response. As guests transition between areas, there should be ease and space for all occupants to move smoothly.
On cruise ships, this sometimes means an extra foot of space to navigate around fold-down beds to get to a balcony. In your hotel room floor plan, this may mean enough nightstand space for two or more.
However, when planning how a hotel room is used, it also includes accounting for maximum occupancy, interconnectedness, and accessibility.
This part of the planning process has to consider the question from a revenue-generating standpoint and includes planning for different room types. Supply and demand in the market should influence what room types are offered. The final result, in the form of hotel room types supplied to your PMS system, influences what your team gets to sell and upsell.
What are the legal, brand, or other requirements?
Depending on a hotel’s location and its affiliation with a brand or collection, there will be specific requirements in place. Many of these pertain to general safety. Depending on your target customer, it can be beneficial to explore corporate travel requirements of companies that supply business travel in your area. Large corporations will query your hotel’s capabilities around subjects that regular consumers might not, such as safety features (as this is often part of corporate policies). If attracting their business is key to your success, it is helpful to be familiar with their needs before making floor plan or layout decisions.
Once your answers to the above questions are clear, your ideas and solutions will take shape and you begin to solve for your specific type of customer.
This is when it is time to advance to the next level, creating separation between spaces in a room while also optimising flow for interaction with the space. For example, a mix of weekday-business-travellers and weekend-family-stays may translate into more flexible layout elements. A hotel room floor plan starts to resemble more than walls and doors, as the paths of the guests who will walk the halls become visible.
If you are part of a larger brand organisation, this is a good time to review their resources, including preferred suppliers and furniture options. Deciding between two or more options is easier once you are clear on your goals and specific requirements.
What is hotel room configuration?
Hotel room configuration refers to the specific setup of beds and furnishing to accommodate different types of guests to match different guest requirements, as opposed to hotel room layout, which is more about the overall spatial design and arrangement of all elements in the room. It’s the difference between having an attractive room (layout) and having a room that meets requirements (configuration). It’s best to have both!
What is an example of a hotel room configuration?
Whether you are planning for construction of a new property, converting from office space into hotel rooms, or simply renovating your existing rooms, there may be a number of factors that influence your layout; such as whether you’re dealing with uniform shapes or more quirky spaces.
Interestingly even between luxury hotel room designs and economy-type floor plans, there are similarities when looking beyond the square footage.
Here are three traditional examples of hotel room layouts to get you started:
1. Standard hotel room layout
The standard double, queen, or king hotel room layout is frequently drafted in a rectangular space, with only the bathroom as a separate space with a door.
The separation between the sleep and work area is often achieved through the positioning of desks with views and the use of headboards or materials that contrast the rest of the room. Depending on the square footage, the use of armchairs or a sofa adds an element of relaxation or flexibility in occupancy.
2. Luxury hotel room layout
Traditionally, these luxury hotel room layout (Premium or Superior room) utilise a layout very similar to your standard hotel room layout but incorporate distinguishing features such as:
- Additional square footage
- Access to premium spaces such as balconies, views, or luxury appliances, such as bathtubs with jets
- Additional or larger beds
Based on what is possible within the overall hotel room floor plan of the property, this presents an opportunity to create premium space you can upsell pre-arrival or at check-in. Knowing your market and customer helps in selecting room elements that resonate with your target audience.
3. Hotel room suite layout
Guests booking rooms with separate bedrooms expect clear separation between their sleeping space and the area where they may choose to work, relax, be together as a family or have a business meeting. This means a bedroom door is expected. Suites with separate bedrooms often add the versatility of having a kitchen space, either in a separate room or designated area.
Based on the type of customer you most likely will attract, you can plan the space around their needs: quietly shutting doors and black-out curtains for families, or an additional small bathroom for guests who may have business visitors. These features go a long way in anticipating needs and breathing life into the new hotel suite room floor plan.
4. Studio hotel room layout
In smaller hotel rooms, layout becomes even more important – no square centimetre of space can be wasted. The key to successfully navigating this challenge is to prioritise the essentials and intelligently use multifunctional furniture to cover off multiple checkboxes.
For example, a seating area can also be used as a dining area, or a small breakfast bar can cover off cooking space and work space at the same time.
Keep in mind that guests who book studio hotel rooms are not necessarily going to look for everything as part of their room layout – they know they will need to compromise on some aspects. The key is to learn what those aspects are for your unique audience.
Benjamas Kitsaengklai,
Assistant General Manager
Ping Nakara Boutique Hotel and Spa
Best hotel room layout ideas to use
Every hotel and every hotel room will have a different best use-case for different hotel room layouts. However, there are a few key fundamentals that will make it easier to maximise your guest’s experience, no matter what space you’re working with.
Multi-functional design elements
Once you move from a layout to a design, your options increase.
Multi-functional elements provide a chance to personalise a guest’s space: this is a theme that Motto by Hilton embraced in creating flexible spaces that connect up to three rooms.
Structural elements like this take foresight at the right time. However, handing over autonomy to your traveller in how they utilise their space during their stay can be achieved in other ways, too.
Design elements to consider are small ottomans that provide additional seating in rooms with potential additional occupancy; swivel desks creating open space or a choice of view; or kitchenette areas with raised seating as an additional workspace option.
Optimising small spaces
Hotel companies, large and small, from motels to resorts, are working on optimising small spaces: Marriott are working on further pushing those floor plans to provide more functionality in smaller spaces. In your property, maximising small spaces can be done through simple features such as fold-down desks, stacking side tables, open wall hanging solutions instead of wardrobes, and sliding doors. Even a 5-star hotel room layout plan can work within a small space.
Versatility is key when maximising what is already there. Rewiring an entire property to provide more power outlets closer to the bed quickly becomes unnecessary when turning to versatile layout elements.
For example, a nightstand lamp that uses one power outlet but provides four USB charging outlets. Mirrors and light colour palettes are other efficient ways of creating space visually.
Creating a local connection
A growing trend in hotels and interior design is blurring indoor-outdoor boundaries. This is often achieved through working with and enhancing magnificent views. However, great views are not required from your hotel rooms to offer your guests a connection with their surroundings. Consider incorporating visuals of local sights to elevate the experience, such as the Super 8 headboard canvases that showcase local attractions. These are easily and frequently shared on social media while improving online footprint alongside the traveller’s experience.
