A reader sent in a comment to my blog the other day saying it’s great that we’re renovating the Courtyard lobbies, but that he’d like to see renovations in the guest rooms as well. We are renovating our guest rooms and here’s what we’re doing.

Every few years, we take a serious look at our guest room design. Since 2000, we’ve made many improvements to our Courtyard guest rooms. We’ve introduced many new items including desks, armoires, a new decorative headboard and a new bedding package. Those patterned bedspreads are history! Currently, we’ve turned our focus on to the room’s décor with a brand new design package. But renovating is a cyclical process and not all hotels complete their renovations at the same time, which explains why it might take a while to see all the changes.

The new design package we created has a global theme to reflect Courtyard’s almost 800 hotels around the world. We began rolling it out at the beginning of this year, so it’s just starting to make its way into our Courtyard hotels. The color palette is warm and inviting and contains soft gold tones, warm browns and striking red highlights. One of my favorite parts of the new design is the accent wall we created over the headboard. It’s red with an interesting, Asian-inspired print.

Another very important component of our new guest room is flexible functionality. Today’s travelers want a room that will give them options to help them work and relax. For example, the new desks are multi-level and mobile. The top level of the desk is stationary, but the level below pulls out so you can work or eat in front of the TV. We also created a bi-level coffee table. The lower level is the perfect height to be a footrest and the top level is great for spreading out work or having a meal. You can even work in bed because we’ve added electrical outlets to the headboard and more and more of our hotels are adding WiFi in the rooms.

I know that good lighting is important to our guests and we’ve been changing up the lighting in the room too. We developed our own compact fluorescent light bulbs. They’re whiter and warmer so they give off the look of an incandescent bulb. They make the room brighter than before but are far more energy efficient.

And, we want you to feel at home in our hotels, so we’re implementing some cues you might use in your own house. For example, we improved the window treatments in the rooms by putting the big, heavy blackout drape closest to the window and inside the room we are using a lighter, more delicate sheer drape. These drapes, which have horizontal stripes, feel much more like something you’d see in a home, and also make the room feel wider. The new carpet has horizontal stripes too – that also makes you feel like you have more space to spread out.

So, as you can see, it’s not just the lobby that’s getting a makeover – it’s the guest rooms too.

That’s it for now. Thanks for helping me keep Courtyard on the go.

Brian