Marriott's M Beta Hotel Is a Working Laboratory on the Future of Its Brand

In Charlotte, North Carolina, Marriott has built itself a living hotel laboratory. In the past year, the company has invested millions into reinventing the Charlotte City Center Marriott, a hotel originally built in 1984 and in dire need of a renovation. Marriott International purchased the property in 2013 for $111 million with the intention of transforming it into the first M Beta Hotel, allowing the company to use it as an innovation test lab to collect real guest feedback, as well as serve as a showcase for hotel owners and developers. It's an anomaly, in many ways, to most Marriott hotels, and not just in the way it looks and feels. By owning the hotel property itself, Marriott has carte blanche to test out as many new concepts as it wishes, many of which reflect so many of the trends defining the future of travel and hospitality. Those themes include: [caption id="attachment_201428" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The newly redesigned Marriott guest room[/caption] A greater sense of community, communal spaces. This is best seen the "openness" of the public spaces and food-and-beverage outlets at the hotel, from Stoke Restaurant's open-kitchen concept where guests are encouraged to interact with the chefs to Coco and The Director, the coffee shop that also triples as a co-working space and event space, thanks to its stadium seating set-up. Making guests feel right at home. All the guest rooms at the hotel convey a new more modern look and feel. Instead of tired, traditional, worn-out carpets, you have sleek gray-wood floors. Instead of tubs, most rooms now have walk-in showers. Some rooms have also done away with the traditional hotel desk (although I am thankful my room has not), and closet space/drawers have been somewhat minimized. All rooms have 55-inch flat-screen televisions t