Retrofitting Hotels For A Post-Covid Opening

Architects suggest a blend of design tweaks and technology to deal with issues of hygiene and social distancing, without investing heavily in redesign for the immediate future, and a game plan for the long run

- Nisha Shukla

Even as social distancing will be the new norm soon after the world opens its borders, and airlines and hotels gear up to fly and receive people, how we experience hotels and travel will change perhaps for a rather long time to come.

To start with, hotels have to put in place an infrastructure that allows social distancing and ramp up hygiene practices. For a while, the contactless experience will be the new normal. Hotels across the globe are altering their existing design layouts to implement the measures spatially.

Reimaging the spaces

The coronavirus pandemic has brought about a sea change in hotel operations and will hugely impact the way various spaces in the hotel will be designed and imagined. Architects and interior designers have been called upon to introduce short-term measures and new concepts for built spaces in hotels, in a bid to practice the new norm.

An industry that is already highly conscious about its hygiene practices and often measures its quality of services on sanitation levels will see a gradual shift towards adopting clinically hygiene standards. Several hospitality brands have incorporated certain SOPs that include maintaining considerable amounts of hygiene levels and social distancing. These SOPs and evident transformations will also result in amendments in design.

“The alteration will be manifested in habitual changes; sterilization may be subsumed as a part of the design itself and we may need to introduce pre-sanitisation areas in hotels. Also, the current air-conditioning systems, return air quality, indoor air quality and other technical aspects would need major attention to ensure that apt standards are maintained,” says Architect Khozema Chitalwala of Designers Group.