Andy Ross will never forget the hotel stay that tested his sense of propriety. The open layout and glass partitions meant he could see all the way from the bed to the ongoings in the bathroom — and beyond.
“It was not only that you were fully exposed when you were in the bathroom, but you also had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked directly into the office building next door,” he said. “So there was no sense of privacy and I remember how shocked I was. Then I thought, ‘This is kind of fun. I can work through my insecurities and make it work.’”
The managing director of the Brenton Hotel in Newport, R.I., has since seen modifications — like frosted glass — to the concept to not only “secure modesty” but give hotel designers another tool in their belt.
“You can immediately open up what was dark and cavernous and make it feel big and bright,” he said.
As hotels emerge from the pandemic, a renewed interest on design and function will be top of mind, down to every square inch of the bathroom, as owners look to layout and convenience as fresh marketing fodder.
To be sure, some potential hotel guests consider the minimalist design principle an epic fail of both form and bodily function. The commotion over visible commodes frequently blows up Facebook groups like Girls LOVE Travel, where one woman crowd-sourced opinions from 1.2 million fellow adventurers to find a romantic property in Amsterdam for her and her boyfriend. Her number one request?
“The luxury bathroom should have a toilet that’s part of the bathroom and not entirely open,” she said. “To whoever had this dreadful idea of a toilet basically in the room, I prefer a bit of privacy!”
She and others like her, however, may find such opportunities dwindling like toilet tissue supply at the beginning of a pandemic.
Covid-19 made properties designed with “modern and minimalist aesthetics likely to prevail in hotel design post-pandemic,” said Kate Mooney of Occa Design in Glasgow.
“It should come as no surprise that cleanliness will be at the top of every hotelier’s agenda,” she added.