The airport hotel as business space

Abstract

This article seeks to contribute to debates about the mobile nature of contemporary economic practice, through a discussion of some key themes in the evolution of airport hotels as business spaces. It argues that despite being emblematic of a hypermobile business elite, the nature of hotels as business spaces requires careful unpacking. The article begins by discussing the evolution of the airport hotel, charting the shift from basic lodging standards to recent developments of five star airport hotels. It then seeks to explain the locational geographies of airport hotel development, in response to these new trends. Finally, the article describes how the business traveller is conceived of and (speculatively) catered for by airport hotel operators and designers within a discourse of connectivity, before providing some counter-examples of how such claims fail to address the hotel's place within the complexity of airport spatial organization.

Conceptualising business mobilities: Towards an analytical framework

“…A small literature within the wider sociological work on 'mobility' has begun to investigate mobile working practices and the way in which employees in, for example, many professional or business services and other knowledge-intensive industries increasingly work whilst either travelling or in temporary locations (e.g. hot-desks in client firms or business facilities in hotels etc; and see McNeill 2009). From a practitioner perspective, there are a range of issues such working practices create that need careful assessment in relation to corporate business mobility strategies: these include whether or not mobile working is as effective as conventional officebased working; whether it is suited to certain employee functions as opposed to others and what impact such demands have on employees in terms of human resource management (e.g.…”

Market segmentation and the changing budget hotel industry in urban South Africa

“…A review of existing social science literature on urban hotels reveals a number of studies by scholars across a range of disciplines including business, human geography, economics, sociology and tourism. Several themes are observed, including the historical evolution of urban hotels and their role as part of the heritage infrastructure of cities (Teo, 2001;Teo & Chang, 2009;Azmy & Atef, 2011), hotel turnaround and decline (Solnet et al, 2010), the relationship of hotels to urban space either as landmarks within cities or statements of civic pride (McNeill, 2008;McNeill & McNamara, 2009, the impact of hotels in post-communist transformation (Niewiadomski, 2009) and the role of hotel design and the design of hotel spaces (Rutes et al, 2001;McNeill, 2009;Lee, 2011). Other strands of scholarship on hotels and cities concern location decisions about hotel developments (Wall et al, 1985;Bégin, 2000;Urtasun & Gutiérrez, 2006;Rogerson 2012a) and the impact of market segmentation and the appearance of a range of differentiated forms of hotel development (Aggett, 2007;Rogerson & Kotze, 2011).…”

Theorizing global business spaces

“…McNeill and McNamara 2009). An example is the provision of meeting rooms in new European 'budget' hotels or motels (firms such as Travelodge, Ibis, Premierlodge) that provide temporary business spaces across road transport networks.…”