How Hospitality Spaces Can Benefit from Interior Sliding Doors

The hospitality design industry is unlike any other. When it comes to hotels, restaurants, resorts, and spas, the built environment isn’t merely one component of a larger picture—it is the dominant feature, capable of making or breaking the success of any venture. Interior design must combine form and function to an unparalleled degree. Every detail is important. That’s why designers are constantly searching for creative solutions that help them meet today’s challenges.

Technology Points to New Paths for Hospitality Design

Technology is revolutionizing the hospitality industry, heightening the guest experience and transforming the spaces where people relax, socialize, and experience new things. These days, guests want to stay connected.
They want to share their experience with the world through social media and other platforms. They have higher expectations than ever. Every nook and cranny of every room must serve their needs. Spaces must be highly functional, giving guests what they want, when they want it.
Of course, hospitality venues must provide more than mere function or even convenience—they must provide an experience. Spaces are no long just spaces; they’re snapshots, unforgettable moments in time. To get the best results, designers must create physical environments that set the mood and capture the imagination.

Breaking Down the Hospitality Industry

The lion’s share of hospitality projects revolves around hotels—nearly 60 percent, according to an Interior Design survey of industry giants. Beyond that, there’s restaurants, cafes, nightclubs, spas, banquet rooms, business centers, and more.
The hotel market, in particular, has shifted dramatically over the years. These days, guests want both luxury and home-like comfort. They want the best of everything, along with a sense of cozy familiarity. Meeting these competing demands can be tricky, but it can also be rewarding since the result is often a creative leap forward. At the end of the day, designers must be able to balance the functional demands of a hospitality venue with the warm, intimate feel of a residential space.
Not only that, but bustling downtown areas are seeing an uptick in hotel construction. Where once suburban accommodations were more common, designers are now noticing a shift toward more urban locations. According to industry experts, only about 20 percent of hotels used to be located in urban areas. Now it’s more like 50 percent. That has implications for how designers imagine their built environments and how customers interact with them.

The All-Important Guest Experience

No matter what the setting, guests and patrons expect much more than they did 15 or 30 years ago. These days, they look for:

• Personalized experiences
• Unique settings
• A warm and inviting space
• Sustainable design
• Smart technology
• Luxury they can feel and see

In order to impress the modern business traveler, designers must learn how to find innovative solutions that deliver the kind of experience people anticipate. That’s why so many in the hospitality industry are turning to sliding interior doors.

How Sliding Glass Doors Can Benefit the Hospitality Industry

Room dividers and interior doors improve the customer experience through clever construction and beautiful design. They can help architects and designers increase the charm and functionality of any interior in a number of ways.

• Enhance the dynamic usability of each space. Sliding doors offer easy access. They also save space, since they require no outward clearance. Finally, they combine on-demand privacy with open-air designs, allowing for light to flow through without sacrificing the sense of separateness.
• Increase the aesthetic appeal with beautiful glass options, trim options, frame designs and frame finishes.
• Maximize natural lighting by allowing sunlight to flow through different spaces in a building.
• Minimize costs. Room dividers are both more affordable and more flexible than other space solutions. They also offer energy efficient lighting, heating, and cooling, since they allow air and light to flow from one area to another.
• Ensure compliance. It’s not all about the door itself. It’s also about the accessories. Buildings that provide public access must meet strict guidelines laid out by the Americans with Disabilities Act. That means ADA-compliant locks, levers, and handles are essential for the modern hotel, restaurant, or spa.

Combining Sociability with Privacy

The days of discrete, closed-off spaces have come to an end. People today want open spaces that provide a warm, convivial atmosphere. That being said, they also want a place they can call their own, a place they can retire to when they want to leave the world behind. In other words, people want both privacy and sociability. That places a heavy burden on designers to create spaces that provide the benefits of a social atmosphere with the comforts of home.
Those demands appear to be contradictory. Fortunately, interior glass doors are versatile enough to give guests the best of both worlds. That’s because open-air dividers and frosted glass doors provide on-demand privacy without interrupting the flow of the room.

Aesthetic, Multi-Function Solutions for Hospitality Spaces

A diverse set of hospitality venues can benefit from innovative space solutions. Here are some of the many ways designers can incorporate sliding glass doors into their next project:

Spas

Spas are the essence of luxury. When customers step foot into a day spa, they expect to unwind in a clean, beautiful, relaxing environment. They also expect the best of everything. Sleek, modern glass doors are the perfect way to enhance their experience and heighten the sense of luxury.

• Dressing rooms: Frosted glass doors provide both protection and seclusion.
• Massage rooms: Separate message areas require frosted glass room partitions that maximize both flexibility and privacy.
• Waiting rooms: Separate the main spa area from the waiting room with a beautiful glass sliding door, swing door, barn door, or pocket door featuring contrasting trim.
• Shower doors: Frosted glass shower doors are a modern, hygienic solution for communal shower areas.

Hotels

Hotels present the greatest challenges to designers since they fulfill so many functions. They also present the greatest opportunities. Guests often spend more time in a hotel than they do in a restaurant or spa, so the experience must be immersive.

• Lobbies: Interior doors and partitions allow for a creative structuring of an interior environment.
• Conference Rooms: Business travelers require more than home-like comfort; they require office-like functionality. Interior glass doors allow designers to section off conference rooms without obstructing light or the visual connection between spaces.
• Bathrooms: Suspended interior sliding doors offer a more modern take on the hotel bathroom experience. An aesthetic alternative to the traditional solid, swing-out doors, they’re also more functional, saving space in the hotel room while creating a more open feel.

Restaurants

• Separate Dining Areas: Many restaurant owners want to separate dining areas without cutting them off from each other or separating one group of patrons from the larger dining experience. Glass room dividers are the best way to achieve that goal. They separate one space from another without interrupting the visual flow of the room. Whether you want to section off a wine tasting room, an event space, or simply a separate dining area, a glass divider can do it with style.
• Event/VIP Rooms: Most restaurants have a dedicated space to accommodate events or VIPs. A room divider screen offers a flexible solution for restaurant owners who want to heighten the dining experience. What kind of divider designers choose depends on what kind of experience an tesablishment hopes to provide. Frosted glass, for example, provides maximum privacy, while transparent glass offers more openness.
• Kitchens: Glass partitions can separate the kitchen from the dining area while still giving guests a sneak peek at the culinary process. In a day and age when diners want to know what each ingredient is, where comes from, and how it’s prepared, such transparency can give people added confidence.

Beautiful, Versatile Solutions for Hospitality Establishments

Space Plus, a division of The Sliding Door Company, is dedicated to helping hospitality businesses get the most out of their design. That’s why we’re constantly innovating and constantly staying up on the latest industry trends. Our sliding door solutions are designed to maximize utility and boost the aesthetic appeal of any space.
Contact us today for a FREE consultation at (888) 869-1850.