Skift Take
While many of the award winners in this year's lineup offer sumptuous hotel experiences, there's a somewhat narrow scope and surprising lack of modern innovation.
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The winners of this year’s European Hotel Design Awards (EHDA), announced during Sleeper Magazine’s Sleep event in London last month, emphasized classic elegance and global hospitality chains.
From The Suites at Aman Canal Grande in Venice to The Rosebery Bar at Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park in London, most of the winners target the wealthy older traveler seeking no shortage of candles, crown moulding and chandeliers. There are however just enough entrants from brands like Ace Hotels and Generator Hostels to avoid these awards from becoming strictly a luxury travel endeavor.
Over the last two years, we've seen a return to timeless appeal in hotel design globally as hotel architects and interior designers have grown wary of the speed with which design trends and technology rise and fade away from one year to the next. That’s further compounded by the ubiquity today of “design hotels” that no longer provide the head-turning spirit of originality and innovation they once did in a market crowded with lifestyle brands.
The European Hotel Design Awards also seem to be a little less representative of the European continent in its entirety than you might expect. Strange, for example, that all three of the F&B category award winners are located in London.
Awards were presented in two main categories: Architecture and Interior Design, with multiple sub-categories for each. There were also three standalone awards for Tomorrow’s Hotel, Outstanding Contribution, and the overall European Hotel Design of the Year, as well as four “Commended” runner-up awards.
Here is a sample selection of award winners among the various categories.
Architecture — Adaptive Re-use & Newbuild
Located in western France on the road to Nantes, the reinterpretation of the 12th century Fontevraud L'Hôtel, France won the Adaptive Re-use award, bridging a pre-Renaissance provenance with a 21st c
