Judith Shinsato has an interesting report in Building Industry Hawaii Online (May 2005) that begins to examine trends in hotel to condominium conversions. While feng shui consciously figures into the design process of some projects she has reported on, the lack of mention of Universal Design is surprising in as sophisticated a tourism market as Hawai'i.
Interestingly, the next piece in her column reports on accessibility retrofitting in private residences.
Doesn't it seem likely that the same needs driving owners to build inter-generational comfort into their private homes will cause buyer to choose universally designed condotels when the industry begins to build them?
On condotels from the article:
Colloquially known as the condotel, the hotel to condo conversion is being driven by a strong residential market, low interest rates, a lack of supply in condominium rooms to meet demand, lower grade hotels that are not earning adequate returns and a strong visitor industry that is doing well with both rates and occupancy, says F. Kevin Aucello, vice president and principal at CB Richard Ellis.
“A condotel is simply a hotel where the ownership of the hotel has been condominiumized from one owner to an owner for each of the rooms and common areas of the hotel. Though the ownership is separated, the property is still run as a standard hotel. (By comparison), a timeshare divides the hotel into rooms, which are then divided into intervals, either 50 one-week intervals, 25 two-week intervals, etc. No renovations are necessary, because only the ownership structure is changing; however, in practice, developers often buy the hotel, renovate it and then sell the units for a better price than if they did not renovate.”
Further Reading:
The print version of the August 8, 2005 edition of Travel Age West also covers the phenomenon in the article "Owning a Piece of Heaven." Here the author uses the term "vacation ownership" to include condotels and timeshares. Noticable here also is the lack of reference to industry utilization of Universal Design.
Posted by rollingrains at August 16, 2005 06:52 PM