Skift global trend for 2013: Affordable design at hotels

A new breed of hotels popped up in Europe this year and is slowly making its way around the world. These so-called budget or smart luxury hotels feature clean, bright designs and rooms that cost less than the high-end design hotels that emerged in the late 1990s and spread through the early 2000s. Designed with young, tech-savvy travelers in mind the concept includes large community spaces, compact rooms, free Wi-Fi, and lots of outlets. The most well-known is CitizenM, which cuts its costs by designing and assembling identical rooms that are then stacked into a finished product. A similar hotel The Superbude 2 in Hamburg, Germany took the award for European Hotel Design Of The Year.

» Get your daily dose of Skift: subscribe to our newsletter, RSS, Twitter or Facebook.

As established hotel brands look to renovate and redesign their older properties, they’ll likely pull components from these smartly designed, fledgling brands. They can also take a cue from Carlson’s value Park Inn brand, which is rolling out more than five dozen new properties across Europe and Asia and has revamped bland, older structures into bright, modern spots like Park Inn Antwerp.

Further Reading:

• CitizenM: Pre-fab luxe hotel chain runs with the Ikea model
• Hamburg hotel created for ‘next generation’ travelers wins European design award
• The Daniel Hotel in Vienna

Click on the icon below to download the full 15-page report:
13 Trends That Will Define Travel in 2013