25hours Hotel Seeks to Carve Out a Cultural Soul in Dubai's Financial Hub
Photo Credit: 25hours Hotel.
Skift Take
It's not always apparent in the hyper-luxury narrative, but Dubai has a growing creative class. And 25hours is catering to it with a lobby and hotel that feels like a heartbeat in the middle of a financial district in the city. They are first movers for a coming flood of more lifestyle brands seeking a footprint in the city.
On Experience
Colin Nagy is a marketing strategist and writes on customer-centric experiences and innovation across the luxury sector, hotels, aviation, and beyond. You can read all of his writing here.A great hotel lobby is like a coral reef. It refreshes every day with different fish. It is a liminal space, a place for socializing, for rushing out to a meeting, for a nightcap. And increasingly, as the world has migrated away from offices into remote and hybrid models, a place to work.
This comes with some friction: there's nothing worse than a beautifully designed space interrupted by an overzealous Zoom call, or incessant WhatsApps played out loud. It has been a forcing factor that has seen hotels try to jury rig new ideas for work to spill out into common spaces without disturbing other guests.
The original gangster in this work/play approach was the Ace Hotel in New York when it opened. The management made a decision that it was OK for people to post up and work. And their decision paid off: the lobby of that hotel was buzzing morning to night, and felt like the beating pulse of the city, all while it was in a neighborhood that, at that time around a decade ago, had not yet found its footing. The alchemy in the approach was co-workin
