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Child's Play
The littlest customers mean big business
By Tara Mastrelli
Maybe it's because for many young, double-income families traveling with the kids has become the norm; or maybe it's because technology has created a super-savvy well-informed generation of children; or maybe the rooms are just more fun to design. Whatever the reason, it's evident that the littlest customers mean business at hotels around the globe.
It's Personal
For Personality Hotels owner Yvonne Lembi, the trend of catering to kids is personal. During a trip to New York City a few years ago, her youngest daughter, sick with jet lag and for home, would not stop crying. "Then in came Barney sheets on the rollaway, and that actually stopped the crying. And I said, "So help me God, the next hotel I design will have a kids suite," remembers Lembi.
She created her first, the Zen Kids Suite at Hotel Metropolis, a few years ago, and after seeing its success, tasked designer Lisa Sayed with creating a few more, which she didn't mind at all. "[Designing a kids room] is more fun because I'm able to be more creative and more colorful, and free spirited," says Sayed, who created both the Little Divas Suite at Hotel Diva and a kids suite at Hotel Union Square. For the Little Divas Suite, she used a bright palette of red, hot pink, and yellow; modern children's furnishings from Design Within Reach; and a signature character, the Divette (and her counterpart, the Devo).
 Family Affair
Lembi says that she designed the kids suites as large family suites to ease the financial burden on working parents who would like to travel with their children, and maybe even bring the nanny along. "These kids suites allow the parent to have their own privacy and not go broke in renting two additional rooms," she says. "It's more of a value to the parents."
At the Hotel Union Square, where the kids suite is based on the history of San Francisco, Sayed provides reading materials on local history, educational games like "Where Am I in San Francisco," and, as in the Divas Suite, an Apple computer, a drawing table, and a karaoke machine. "I like traveling with my children, and I want them to be comfortable," explains Sayed. "So I tend to bring things from home to entertain them. It's nice to be able to go to a boutique hotel and have the luxuries of your home life. We also give them a goody bag when they check in."
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