DEVELOPMENTS IN THE HOTEL INDUSTRY : DESIGN MEETS HISTORIC PROPERTIES

The fast growth cultural tourism has undergone since 1980 is a direct result of the rising interest for art, culture and history, which can be explained by demographic, social and cultural changes. These changes are, at the same time, the direct force behind the emergence of the lifestyle hotel. Taking into account the process of standardisation (box hotels) of the international hotel industry, it reviews the irruption of alternate hospitality models and their consolidation as cultural tourism products, identifying three main product-market combinations: historic establishments, design and design-historic hotels. These productmarket combinations intend to provide an identity-fit to the tourists thus greatly assisting in the cultural tourism experience as a whole. An analysis of the lifestyle hotel product is undertaken in order to give insight into the future of the niche. 1. CONSUMER DEMAND AND CULTURAL TOURIST BEHAVIOUR 1.1 Demand evolution The fast growth cultural tourism has undergone since 1980 is a direct result of the rising interest for art, culture and history, which can be explained by demographic, social and cultural changes. These changes will be discussed here as far as they influence the choice of the hospitality product as a factor of the guest’s cultural experience. With regard to the demographic factors, the strong increase of senior citizens in the Western world has significantly extended the market for historic hotels since the interest for culture and culture grows with one’s age. Furthermore the “grey wave” consists of a growing number of retired, active, moneyed people in excellent health. These so-called whoopees (wealthy, healthy, older people) dispose of leisure time and much money which they like to spend for holidays and travel for they are experienced travellers. Thanks to the increased life expectancy due to better life circumstances, the ageing generation is still active in sports and other recreational activities, which make them feel young in spirit: the phenomenon of down ageing. All this makes this market segment an interesting target group for the luxury hospitality industry. Simultaneously, at the bottom of the demographic pyramid, a reverse process is taking place caused by the decrease of birth-rate, numbers of households and persons per household. Less children are born per household, there is a growing number of independent working women, there are more singles. All of them being symptoms of the individualisation within the Western society, these demographic developments create markets for a relatively new hospitality product, the design hotel. The most important target groups for this supply is constituted by the dinkies (double income, no kids). In social and cultural respect, both the historic and the design hotel benefit from the rising level of education: the higher people are educated, the more frequently they travel and the wider the interest is they show for history and culture. Being good-informed and critical consumers, familiar with travelling, they want value and quality for their money. For senior citizens quality and safety matter as choice criteria, price is of secondary importance. For the two earner households who have less time because of their busy lifestyle, time is money. 1. 2 Trends in tourist behaviour The behaviour of the cultural tourists has to be viewed and understood in the light of the demand evolution. The statistics concerning holiday duration show the increase of shorter trips several times a year. Dinkies use break out holidays in hotels to escape from their busy professional life and to get charged up again by shopping and cultural activities. This holiday pattern stimulates cultural tourism in historic cities. With respect to accommodation, food and beverage, the modern guest wants good quality for a reasonable price and appreciates personal service and attention by the hotel employees. Because of the increasing individualism, there is a need for tailor-made products and services reflecting the guest’s personal tastes and requirements, instead of a standardised supply. This explains the growing demand for one person rooms without surcharge. Comfort and conveniences play a huge part: the guest wants to be pampered and expects from a holiday accommodation the luxury he has at home and even more. As consumers living in the so-called experience economy, tourists are increasingly searching information which enables them to “experience” the destination instead of simply obtaining facts about “how the destination is”. Travellers have become especially concerned not with just “being there” but with participating, learning and “experiencing the there” they visit (Pine II and Gilmore, 1998). This trend for tourism suggests that travel has become a means for finding personal fulfilment, identity enhancement and self-expression (Cho and Fesenmaier, 2001). And so the modern hotel guest is searching for unique experiences, new challenges and multi-entertainment in the form of action, emotion and (aesthetic) adventure. The lifestyle hotel is a hotel product meeting the needs of this special interest market and the same goes for eatertainment, a combination of eating and entertainment, for example a medieval banquet livened up by troubadours, dancers and acrobats. Another relevant trend is the rising interest for local, regional and national history and culture as an expression of the own identity. As far as this search for authenticity is a reaction on the uniformity and the large-scale effects of globalisation, it can be called localisation. Averse to commodization, the post-modern Western is driven by nostalgia. Not only historic hotels respond to this “back to the roots”-trend, but also the regional gastronomy and the supplanting of fast food by slow food. 2. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE CULTURAL TOURISM PRODUCT AND THE HOSPITALITY PRODUCT 2.1 General definition of the cultural tourism product A cultural tourism attraction, such as a monument, does not make a tourism product. To become a tourism product the attraction element has to be embedded in a whole of services and facilities varying from accommodation and catering to information and transportation. On the basis of the elementary definition of the tourism product as an addition of attractions plus accommodations plus transportation, the cultural tourism product can be defined as consisting of: (a) the core product: the cultural attraction (monuments, museums, cultural events) plus the related specific cultural tourist services, like information an education rendered by e.g. museum guides (b) the additional product: the general tourism product elements – either apart from or incorporated into the cultural attraction itself consisting of : • general tourist facilities and services rendered by: tourist organisations and travel intermediaries : tourist offices, national tourist organisations, tourist clubs, travel agencies, tour operators primary tourism enterprises (companies which have their core business in the tourism sector and serve first of all tourists as customers): hotels, holiday parks, campings secondary tourism enterprises (companies which provide their products and services in the first place for the local population but which are also frequented by tourists): catering industry (restaurants, cafés), retail (shops, banks) • transportation infrastructure: accessibility (by own or public means of transport), signposting, parking facilities, private and public transportation facilities: car, coach, train, plane, boat, taxi , city bus, underground (figure 1). Figure 1. The cultural tourism product cultural attraction facilities & services transportation infrastructure