Cuttingly contemporary

Ten years on and LW Design continues to set new standards for hotel interiors

LW Design Group has spent the last ten years designing some of the region’s most iconic hotels. The company’s bulging portfolio includes such hospitality royalty as Raffles Dubai, Grosvenor House and Hyatt Regency Dubai, to name but a few. So when Jesper Godsk, the company’s creative partner, says that The Media One Hotel is the first of its kind, one can only believe it’s true. CID caught up with Godsk to find out exactly how The Media One is setting new standards for contemporary hospitality design in Dubai.

What was your brief for The Media One Hotel?

The brief was for a very modern, contemporary hotel with a more design-orientated drive. The owner, Al Jaber Group, also wanted a hotel that people would talk about. They wanted this hotel to be a modern statement of what Dubai can do. I think it is the first of its kind; it’s the first hotel in Dubai to take modern design to such an extreme.

There is the Hilton by the Creek, which is similar, but that is at the other end of town, so there is definitely room for others. The Media One Hotel focuses very much on the young and the trendy. There are definitely some bold statements in this hotel – a full glass wall separating the bathroom from the rest of the guestroom, for example. This will lose some customers but it will also gain some customers.

What makes it so modern and unique?

We worked a lot on the lighting and on changes in the lighting. This was done by DPA Lighting who we partner with all the time. I think it really works. There were a lot of other gimmicks that we put into the hotel. Maintenance wise, of course, it’s a pain, but I think the benefits are much bigger. You have to have something that people talk about and we only had a certain amount of space in the lobby to make that impact. The other thing is that everything flows together.

Why is there such a lack of highly contemporary hotels on the market, do you think?

I think investors like to safeguard themselves by appealing to a broader segment of the market, whereas with The Media One Hotel we have narrowed it down to a very specific audience.

Last month there were days when the occupancy rate in this hotel was over 84%, which shows that there is room for something as specialised as this.

There are a lot of new hotels at this end of town – we designed the Bonnington Tower which officially opened last month; that is also a modern hotel but the target market is a little older than The Media One.

Then you have the Radisson Blu in Media City which has a more traditional design in the rooms, whereas the rooms in The Media One are very sexy.

What did you do with the rooms?

The rooms are 24m², with a very odd shape. So how do you design a room that has very little space, and still include all of the things you need as a four-star operator? The biggest challenge was that the Dubai tourism board changed their regulations so that you could no longer just have a shower, you also had to include a bath tub in the rooms. We got away with not having a bidet, so it was the toilet, bath tub-come-shower and, of course, the wash basin. The original design only had a shower in it, but I actually quite like the bath tub, which is quite avant garde in its shape. It also has a shower curtain, which some people think is not great but I think it really fits with the product.

I like the openness of the rooms. We tried to make sure that when you come in you can see the whole room through the glass.

Did you have to hold back with anything? Were there elements that were too modern for the client?

Actually, no. We had to create two options, one that was conservative, and the one that we have now.

I was very happy that immediately, without any hesitation or doubt, Al Jaber picked this one. As I said, there were no restrictions. They went all the way; we had their full trust and complete carte blanche to do what we wanted.

I think investors really need to consider their target group and not think that they can do everything. There are so many nice rooms on the market now so it’s very difficult to come up with a completely new room concept. You need more than just a good room, you have to have the whole package, which means the lobby, the people and the service. Restaurants and bars have also become a major factor, I think. And location, of course. Even though they are doing their best to make the traffic better, people still select what part of town they want to stay in very carefully, and each part of town has space for a similar kind of hotel to this.

What are the key ingredients of a successful hotel?

You have to have a good operator and an owner who knows what they want – and can stay loyal to that.

If you have that, you’ll be fine. We do a lot of restaurants; we’ve created over 100 bars and restaurants over the last ten years.

We know a lot about food and how to get a restaurant to work. We have made our mistakes as well, but I think design is only one third of the product – you have to have the food, and you have to have the concept.

A good example is Okku, which is a very successful venue with extremely good operators. They are very good at marketing themselves. They have been loyal to the concept of drinks, then food, then drinks again. They have a real long-term vision. It has been a very expensive journey for them but they are definitely getting it right. There are a lot of new places where you have operators from outside coming in and making an independent investment.

This has also changed the market. The benchmark, even just five years ago, was Buddha Bar, and there wasn’t really any competition at the time because bars and restaurants were still being run by the hotels themselves. And then, suddenly, this new entity came into the market.

Independent investors are more likely to push for the extra revenue because investment is not linked to a larger hotel, where the restaurant is only a small part of it.

With independent operators, the outlet is the whole investment. As a result, you will sometime see a very different level of commitment from these independent investors.

What else are you currently working on?

We have an architecture practice as well, so in terms of architecture, we are working on an Ibis and Novotel in Syria. We also have a beach resort, which is quite trendy, in Syria. We have the Centro roll-out, which is ongoing – we now have two Centros coming up in Syria and one in Beirut. When it comes to interiors, by summer we are going to open a new Gary Rhodes restaurant in Dubai; and by the beginning of next year we are of course going to open Grosvenor House II, which is going to be big, and will have some big names for restaurants and outlets.

What is the Syrian market like? How open are they to modern design?

It’s quite surprising. Our project there will be quite contemporary, with open bathrooms and a very design-orientated approach. It’s a new Rotana. We have worked on a lot of projects with Rotana over the years and they are one of the operators that we really enjoy working with. They are very receptive to new ideas.