Health and wellness have rapidly worked their way up the priority ladder in a lot of people’s lives in the last couple of years, becoming an essential part of their routines, even when they’re away from home.
With people now venturing further afield and reigniting their travel bug, it is essential for hotels to take note of this shift in mindset. Ensuring this is reflected in the services and facilities that they offer makes it easy for people to continue their fitness and wellbeing journey while travelling.
Although hotel gyms and spas have become somewhat of an expectation, it’s not one size fits all when it comes to design. It’s important to plan your design to ensure that you’re not just ticking a box, but providing your guests with an exceptional experience that will keep them coming back.
Here are the key mistakes to avoid in your hotel spa and gym design.
1. Not Knowing Your Guests
Taking the needs of your target market into consideration when designing your gym or spa is an absolutely crucial element of the planning process.
Knowing your guests will provide you with useful insights to help make the space right for them.
For example, the colour palette that you use should be carefully considered to evoke the intended emotions and feelings of your guests.
If you’re creating a wellness space for couples to escape the hustle and bustle of daily life, you’ll want to incorporate biophilic design into the space. The use of muted tones and natural elements, such as plants and wood, will help create a tranquil atmosphere.
Having a well thought out hotel spa design will enhance your guest’s experience by stimulating relaxation.
Contrary to this, if you’re creating a gym space for young, high net worth professionals to perform HIIT workouts, you may want to incorporate smart technology, energising colours and dynamic lighting to make them feel motivated.
2. Not Having the Right Type of Flooring
Your hotel gym design should be approached in the same way that a commercial gym would be in terms of ensuring that the materials used are appropriate for the purpose for which it is going to be used.
Think about the type of workouts that your guests will be doing in the space. If they’ll be using weights you’ll want to ensure that the gym floor is durable and can withstand high impact.
In a spa, you’ll want to choose the flooring that creates a sense of warmth. Depending on the location of your spa, you should consider investing in an underlayment to minimise the amount of noise travelling through the space. Your guests are there to relax after all, so any unwanted noise could be detrimental to their experience.
3. Not Having a Good Balance Between Function and Aesthetics
While you may be tempted to make design decisions solely based on aesthetics, it is essential that you consider how functional these choices are.
For example, you may have a layout in mind that is innovative and visually appealing. But if this makes it harder for your guests to navigate their way through the space, it’s going to negatively impact their experience.
The aim should always be to create a functional fitness space that meets the needs of your guests fused with stylish design choices that complement the purpose. Find out more about gym layout design, and how to improve customer experience using layout techniques, in our recent blog article.
4. Not Having Enough Space
The key is to be practical and realistic with your designs when deciding what is appropriate for the available space.
Having an open space will allow your guests to comfortably and safely manoeuvre around to perform their movements.
As always, think quality over quantity. It is smarter to limit the amount of fitness equipment in order to create more room, rather than it being overcrowded and increasing the potential for injuries to occur.
Rather than trying to offer everything, invest in the right wellness and fitness facilities. State of the art equipment that works with your floor space and ceiling height will mean your guests will have a much better experience.
5. Not researching the current and upcoming trends
While you shouldn’t base your entire design solely on trends due to their ever-changing nature, it can pay dividends to do your research.
In recent years there has been an uptake in demand for thermal heat experiences, such as halotherapy, along with many people now looking to take a holistic approach to their wellness, “fusing movement, meditation and mindfulness”, which could influence your design choices.
Although sustainability is not a trend, it’s now at the forefront of a lot of consumers’ minds and bears a significant amount of weight when it comes to people deciding where they want to spend their money.
Ensuring that your facilities are environmentally friendly and sustainably conscious will not go unnoticed by your guests and could help with retention and setting you apart from your competitors.
Contemporary spa and gym design for your hotel
Investing in our team of specialist interior architects and designers to design a hotel spa or gym can make the world of difference.
With over two decades of experience in the health and wellness sector, we’re experts in creating stunning hotel gyms and spas that enhance the guest experience.
We are able to guide you through utilising your space and tackling your pain points.
For more information, have a look at some of our recent hotel wellness design projects and sign up to our newsletter below to receive regular wellness design updates.