Dear Anne Marie, you were absolutely right with your comment on my latest article 'The Age of Average Hotels'.
Yours is a brilliant supply-chain-level analysis of exactly the same phenomenon from a different angle. Where you follow the money through FF&E procurement and vertical integration, I followed it through OTA commodification and the loss of hotel identity at the guest-experience level. Both roads lead to the same beige lobbies, hollow marketing symbolism, destination/community-extraction and capital power. Thank you for making my argument richer. Keep on going with your mission to make people aware that they can choose more wisely and joyfully!
This is the best breakdown of the beige problem I’ve read, Anne Marie. And it names a distinction I defend constantly.
There’s a world between subtraction and beige. Beige removes soul to cut cost and risk.
Real subtraction removes everything that competes with soul, so the one true thing can finally be felt. Same empty wall, opposite intention. One is a spreadsheet. The other is taste.
Your capital-structure point is the whole game. You can’t outsource taste to a procurement catalogue and expect a sense of place to survive it. A hotel that feels like somewhere was decided by a person who cared, long before any guest arrived.
I’m at the Delano myself in February, so I’ll report back on whether ‘Delano-white’ reads as calm or as absent. My bet, sadly: I’ll remember the light and forget the room.
Sense of place can’t be procured. It has to be lived first, by whoever built it
Thank you! And exactly, I think it’s hard for these chains as they continue getting larger, and roll up more and more brands under them, to move away from broad sourcing contracts. We will see what these next five years bring and whether the market rewards the hotels who go beige or those who source locally
That’s the tension exactly. And here’s the quiet upside for the independents: the more the chains consolidate, the wider our moat gets. Scale can copy a local-looking object from a catalogue. It can’t copy the authority to let one person with taste decide.
Because beige isn’t really a sourcing problem, it’s a permission problem. A committee will always choose the safe piece, wherever it’s made. Soul needs someone who’s allowed to be wrong.
My bet for the next five years: the middle goes fully beige and competes on points and predictability, while the top splits hard between the ones who truly commit to a place and the ones just cosplaying it. The guest feels the difference by breakfast.
Either way, I’ll take the hotel that can still surprise its own owner.
This is such a thoughtful and thorough analysis of the "beige" problem in the hotel industry. I feel like I am walking into an IKEA furniture store when I walk into most branded hotels. You hit the nail on the head as it relates to consolidation with design, procurement, and FF&E manufacturing and the need from investors to be able to manage the cost of their renovations to generate returns over their shorter hold periods. I think another issue driving the beige-ification of hotels ties to the proliferation of brands. Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and IHG each have over 20 hotel brands (with Marriott and Hyatt having more than 30). While the brand teams will tell you that each brand has a specific customer that they target, we know that this is not realistic. What this creates is a major issue for the hotel design teams which are limited in size. They do not have the capacity or time to create a unique design concept for each of the brands - so they create a common thread through the brands and make minor tweaks to create "some" diversification. Upper upscale hotels will have more expensive FF&E and better tile and fixtures in their bathrooms but other aspects of the design will be closer to the upscale and midscale properties in the brand family. Thus, the hotels become beige or gray or some other version of each other. I agree that there is a push to make hotels more unique again - it will be interesting to watch as brands and owners push the next iterations of design and how much it pulls in more locally sourced products.
One of the strange effects of this beigeification is that when you step inside a hotel that bucks this trend (the Six Senses London is one example), it feels a bit jarring, borderline uncomfortable. There is an odd sense of trust that has been built through “beige everything” (simply because it fits in with the world we have become used to living in), and when that trust is cracked through more vivid decor it feels uncomfortable.
Of course, that discomfort is what is needed to bring us back to a more joyful sensory experience.
This is so accurate! I love that you always weave in operational economics into your pieces! I think the distinction between patient capital and investment committee risk aversion is the true root of the issue. If a property is built under the pressure of a 5-to-7-year PE exit horizon, the procurement room strategy becomes a question of how to mitigate risk instead of building what is truly unique to a property.
It really takes long-horizon ownership, such as Kit Kemp at Firmdale or the De Santis family behind GHT and Passalacqua to absorb the lead times, antique sourcing, and friction required to give a hotel actual spatial soul! Superb piece!
Thank you so much! I’m so glad you like how I write these articles. It’s a lot of research and thought for each one, so I appreciate your input. I really do think who owns a hotel impacts so many aspects of a guest experience, and this is yet another aspect of cost cutting on a larger scale that you definitely feel
Coming from a finance/legal background, I appreciate your writing so much because you don't just critique the design, you actually break down the underlying economics driving it! You can feel how much research goes into every essay. Keep them coming!
So impressed you wrote and published this deeply thoughtful and widely sourced piece while at Virtuoso Travel Week!
Captures a contrast I encountered on a FAM to Costa Rica last month amid tours and stays at 3 private villas.
In my home, I felt inspired by the decor of Parrot Cay, minimalism warmed up by textures. When I was young and just out of school, I accused the boys I knew of having the beige disease as they were afraid of settling in, making a decision or a home. Everything was neutral and boring, bereft of personality
But one of the villas I stayed at on the Papagayo Peninsula was maximalist in the best way: it all felt coherent.
Condolences on the loss of your mom. I lost mine 20 years ago and didn't inherit any thing really, which I regret.
I do love Papagayo so much. Thanks, Cassandra. It’s been four years since I lost my mom, but I feel like I still think about her all the time, especially when I consider how my tastes have changed.
I’ve been researching this piece for about a month, but put the finishing touches on it today to get it out the door during the conference. I’m so exhausted ha. Not enough sleep here
Dear Anne Marie, you were absolutely right with your comment on my latest article 'The Age of Average Hotels'.
Yours is a brilliant supply-chain-level analysis of exactly the same phenomenon from a different angle. Where you follow the money through FF&E procurement and vertical integration, I followed it through OTA commodification and the loss of hotel identity at the guest-experience level. Both roads lead to the same beige lobbies, hollow marketing symbolism, destination/community-extraction and capital power. Thank you for making my argument richer. Keep on going with your mission to make people aware that they can choose more wisely and joyfully!
This is the best breakdown of the beige problem I’ve read, Anne Marie. And it names a distinction I defend constantly.
There’s a world between subtraction and beige. Beige removes soul to cut cost and risk.
Real subtraction removes everything that competes with soul, so the one true thing can finally be felt. Same empty wall, opposite intention. One is a spreadsheet. The other is taste.
Your capital-structure point is the whole game. You can’t outsource taste to a procurement catalogue and expect a sense of place to survive it. A hotel that feels like somewhere was decided by a person who cared, long before any guest arrived.
I’m at the Delano myself in February, so I’ll report back on whether ‘Delano-white’ reads as calm or as absent. My bet, sadly: I’ll remember the light and forget the room.
Sense of place can’t be procured. It has to be lived first, by whoever built it
Thank you! And exactly, I think it’s hard for these chains as they continue getting larger, and roll up more and more brands under them, to move away from broad sourcing contracts. We will see what these next five years bring and whether the market rewards the hotels who go beige or those who source locally
That’s the tension exactly. And here’s the quiet upside for the independents: the more the chains consolidate, the wider our moat gets. Scale can copy a local-looking object from a catalogue. It can’t copy the authority to let one person with taste decide.
Because beige isn’t really a sourcing problem, it’s a permission problem. A committee will always choose the safe piece, wherever it’s made. Soul needs someone who’s allowed to be wrong.
My bet for the next five years: the middle goes fully beige and competes on points and predictability, while the top splits hard between the ones who truly commit to a place and the ones just cosplaying it. The guest feels the difference by breakfast.
Either way, I’ll take the hotel that can still surprise its own owner.
This is such a thoughtful and thorough analysis of the "beige" problem in the hotel industry. I feel like I am walking into an IKEA furniture store when I walk into most branded hotels. You hit the nail on the head as it relates to consolidation with design, procurement, and FF&E manufacturing and the need from investors to be able to manage the cost of their renovations to generate returns over their shorter hold periods. I think another issue driving the beige-ification of hotels ties to the proliferation of brands. Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and IHG each have over 20 hotel brands (with Marriott and Hyatt having more than 30). While the brand teams will tell you that each brand has a specific customer that they target, we know that this is not realistic. What this creates is a major issue for the hotel design teams which are limited in size. They do not have the capacity or time to create a unique design concept for each of the brands - so they create a common thread through the brands and make minor tweaks to create "some" diversification. Upper upscale hotels will have more expensive FF&E and better tile and fixtures in their bathrooms but other aspects of the design will be closer to the upscale and midscale properties in the brand family. Thus, the hotels become beige or gray or some other version of each other. I agree that there is a push to make hotels more unique again - it will be interesting to watch as brands and owners push the next iterations of design and how much it pulls in more locally sourced products.
Exactly. The soft brands continue to proliferate like rabbits!
One of the strange effects of this beigeification is that when you step inside a hotel that bucks this trend (the Six Senses London is one example), it feels a bit jarring, borderline uncomfortable. There is an odd sense of trust that has been built through “beige everything” (simply because it fits in with the world we have become used to living in), and when that trust is cracked through more vivid decor it feels uncomfortable.
Of course, that discomfort is what is needed to bring us back to a more joyful sensory experience.
This is so accurate! I love that you always weave in operational economics into your pieces! I think the distinction between patient capital and investment committee risk aversion is the true root of the issue. If a property is built under the pressure of a 5-to-7-year PE exit horizon, the procurement room strategy becomes a question of how to mitigate risk instead of building what is truly unique to a property.
It really takes long-horizon ownership, such as Kit Kemp at Firmdale or the De Santis family behind GHT and Passalacqua to absorb the lead times, antique sourcing, and friction required to give a hotel actual spatial soul! Superb piece!
Thank you so much! I’m so glad you like how I write these articles. It’s a lot of research and thought for each one, so I appreciate your input. I really do think who owns a hotel impacts so many aspects of a guest experience, and this is yet another aspect of cost cutting on a larger scale that you definitely feel
Coming from a finance/legal background, I appreciate your writing so much because you don't just critique the design, you actually break down the underlying economics driving it! You can feel how much research goes into every essay. Keep them coming!
Thank you!!
This is such a great look at the supply chain that I frankly had no idea about and more travel media need to know
Thanks so much Chris. That means a lot coming from you
So impressed you wrote and published this deeply thoughtful and widely sourced piece while at Virtuoso Travel Week!
Captures a contrast I encountered on a FAM to Costa Rica last month amid tours and stays at 3 private villas.
In my home, I felt inspired by the decor of Parrot Cay, minimalism warmed up by textures. When I was young and just out of school, I accused the boys I knew of having the beige disease as they were afraid of settling in, making a decision or a home. Everything was neutral and boring, bereft of personality
But one of the villas I stayed at on the Papagayo Peninsula was maximalist in the best way: it all felt coherent.
Condolences on the loss of your mom. I lost mine 20 years ago and didn't inherit any thing really, which I regret.
Best of luck during VTW
I do love Papagayo so much. Thanks, Cassandra. It’s been four years since I lost my mom, but I feel like I still think about her all the time, especially when I consider how my tastes have changed.
I’ve been researching this piece for about a month, but put the finishing touches on it today to get it out the door during the conference. I’m so exhausted ha. Not enough sleep here