Park Inn by Radisson - Hotel Designs Review

Hotel Designs

Europe's fastest growing brand? One of the first Reviews on HotelDesigns was the Review of the Park Inn Berlin , then the first hotel of a newly franchised brand being introduced to Europe by SAS Hotels,which became Radisson SAS and is now Rezidor. Alongside the Radisson Blu brand, Park Inn formed the core of a startlingly ambitious programme announced by Ritter to grow the group to 700 hotels by 2012. With Park Inn now approaching 100 and the group as a whole reaching 300, the policy of growth continues unchecked by the current banking crisis. Ritter considers that there may be a fall of 5 - 10% in openings as owners struggle to gain finance, but Rezidor continue to announce new management contracts through our news columns at a seemingly unabated pace I took advantage of a day with Rezidor management before Christmas 2008 to ask both Jacques Dubois, responsible for the Park Inn brand, and Kurt Ritter himself to recommend the best hotel to visit to see the best current iteration of the brand, as an exemplar. This is partly because I know that the Park Inn Berlin has been considerably amended over the 5 years (I had a quick look inside in August 2008 but was unable to photograph any of the 1,000 bedrooms as it was fully booked), but also because it is inevitable as a brand grows that the brand concepts and design guidelines develop, and I wanted to see in what way this development is occurring. As a designer I wanted to see what role design is playing in the implementation and maintenance of standards and how Rezidor's own design management programme is ensuring consistency of the product.	Graphics at Liege is successfully integrated with the exterior architecture. Click the image to see how they have aged since Berlin, the first Park Inn
The reception desk at Leigh uses the brand colours behind what are almost Redisson individual check in islands.	Liege reception flows into the bar and restaurant for economical staffing. Click to see the separate bar in Leigh	"what role design is playing in the implementation and maintenance of standards"
Of course with the two senior managers recommending different hotels my curiosity was stimulated, so I arranged to see both, visiting Leigh in late February 2009 and Liége about a month later. Was I comparing like with like? Is the design and are the brand standards common through both? The answer is of course, yes and no! To add to this dissonance I asked the question in the Park Inn at Heathrow, and again this is both representative of the brand, but is also not... Firstly Heathrow. An old Post House sold off after Granada raped the Forte brand in the late 1990's, this 880 room airport hotel lies inside the M25. Unfortunately for Rezidor their franchise of the Radisson Blu brand is constrained in the UK by another Carlson franchisee, the Radisson Edwardian Group (see the Miniview s New Providence Wharf and the Mayfair Hotel ) leaving Ritter muttering grumpily that the Heathrow property should have been a Radisson Blu, so it is not surprising that this major conference hotel should be unrepresentative of the brand as a whole.It does however have the standard Park Inn bedroom - or at least a minor variation on that standard, for while it has the same colour timber, similar casegoods etc., there are interesting minor variation between all the hotels it seems in the implementation. Despite these variation it is all still recognisable the same product, the same brand.		Leigh lounge furniture colours echothe branding - click for a larger image of the lobby and restaurant

Park Inn by Radisson

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