Exploring Stakeholders’ Perspectives on Hotel Design

This study investigates the current defining parameters shaping hotel design and planning, exploring the views of the key stakeholders involved in hotel design. Hotel design and planning are analyzed by a number of exogenous and endogenous tourism development parameters including tourist motivation, destination socioeconomic and cultural characteristics, and institutional framework. The methodological approach used is threefold. First, the qualitative approach, involving an analysis of the relevant published scholarly literature, reveals cross-national parameters shaping the prevailing design for professional tourist accommodation developments. Second, previous studies and secondary data are analyzed to frame the case study of Athens in terms of understanding tourism development patterns and drawing upon the institutional framework and guidelines governing the tourist accommodation units design towards obtaining critical information. Third, in-depth interviews of key informants are conducted using a structured technique. The sample consists of three main groups of experts involved in the hotel design process; the owners, the managers, and the architects or designers. Findings of the current research point out to a significant number of particularly complex aspects and parameters to be complied with, in order to update and modernize tourist accommodation establishments and meet modern-day tourism essential requirements. In addition, this study goes on to argue that it is necessary to establish a deeper multilateral engagement and cooperation of the broader group of the relevant stakeholders.