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Larry Traxler is the Senior Vice President, Global Design at Hilton, where he is responsible for overseeing the organization’s Architecture, Design, Construction, Renovation and Prototype efforts. Larry leads Hilton’s new brand launches, brand narratives and design refresh initiatives for all 24 brands across the company’s global portfolio.

Over the last 15 years, Larry and his talented team of global design professionals have worked closely with developers, owners, operators, architects, and designers to ensure that the brand ethos and unique style of Hilton’s +7,600 properties around the world are achieved. Larry and his design team lead Hilton’s partnership with Voyager Space, a global leader in exploration, positioning Hilton as the official hotel partner of Starlab, Voyager’s planned free-flying commercial space station.

Prior to joining Hilton in 2009, Larry was Vice President, Design & Architecture at Hyatt Hotels. With more than 30 years of architecture and hospitality industry experience, his international design expertise spans from early career positions with Jordan Mozer & Associates to his role in Singapore as Design & Managing Director for world-renowned Hirsch Bedner Associates. Throughout Larry’s career, he has also held design leadership positions at award-winning studios and hoteliers, including Wilson Associates and Ian Schrager Hotels.

Larry holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning.

Please describe your introduction to hospitality and what initially drew you to the industry.

Larry Traxler: I’m trained as an architect [and] I’ve lived in that intersection between brand, built environment, and guest experience since straight out of college, working with Jordan Mozer and Associates. We worked with Universal Studios and major restaurateurs [giving] structure and shape to their brands and their guest experiences, whether it be for a movie, a ride or an unexpected experience within their entertainment world. That segued to Disney where we got to work on Disney Quest, which was a city block sized theme park concept that took all of the cool Disney experiences from their parks and movies into a more scalable architectural shell that could occupy numerous cities around the world. 

When I moved to Singapore and started working with HBA in the 90s, that’s when my career crossed over fully into the hospitality world. We focused on design, but also all of the metrics that go into making a hotel viable in India, Indonesia, Thailand, or China. Before that, my design focus was on restaurants, entertainment experiences, etc. Looking back, it is amazing how much brand influences design and the shaping of our retail, workplace, and hotels—pretty much everything that we do today has an overlay of brand built into it.

When considering the brand experience and design for a new Hilton property, what specific elements or touchpoints are most critical in your approach?

Larry Traxler: This a tough one to answer, because in my role as global head of architecture and design, I oversee all 24+ brands in our portfolio. Each of them has a different focus and market niche, so those touchpoints are going to vary across these brand segments. Also, regional customer needs and development influences create variations on what those touch points are, per brand. So, if I’m working in the Middle East for the Canopy brand versus New York City, there’s going to be a very different dynamic for that same brand. For example, rooftop bars and lobby bars that are crucial to the successful vibe of a lifestyle brand in the US aren’t the key driver of guest engagement in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait where alcohol is not permitted. So, how do you create that sense of connection and collection that is so important to hospitality under these new constraints? What is the heart of the hotel when you remove alcohol from the scenario? In the Caribbean and Latin America, culture revolves around coffee so we focus on creating unique opportunities for social collision and meetings around this coffee culture. In China, you can build a beautiful bar, but nobody’s going to sit at the bar— it is just not in their culture like it is in Europe or the Americas.

So, it’s important to consider how every brand has to have consistent touchpoints, but also must morph and mutate to the location where we’re building. Within our luxury brands (Waldorf, Conrad, LXR, etc.), we have key touch points that are more capital intensive. [For example,] the Waldorf clock is a key brand moment for every one of our properties—what that clock looks like and how it’s achieved is a big undertaking. It’s a piece of art and sculpture within the lobby environment. “Meet me at the clock” is a key brand touchpoint— so it takes a lot of thought, investment, and technical detailing to execute.

If we talk about the Hampton brand, those touchpoints are less capital intensive, but still critically important for the success of these hotels. These focused service brands rely on a color or collective group of colors to create the warmth and fun energy that is core to the brand ethos. It might be built around the breakfast experience that’s unique for Hampton or Embassy Suites. These are not super capital intensive undertakings, but the way that you deliver it is really important for our guests and owners. However, I can guarantee that there are key touchpoints that we talk about with every single owner at every kickoff, no matter where we are or where we’re building. It’s up to our team of architects and interior designers to work with the owners’ third-party designers to deliver what that means at that moment in time, for that location.

We’re working on the Hilton design narrative right now [and] we talk about what the guest arrival experience should be—the orientation and wayfinding, how you move through the public areas, etc. Having a sense of arrival and first impression is more important for that full service brand than a lifestyle brand where maybe it’s okay for you to come in and wander through a bar or a restaurant. Within the luxury portfolio, there’s a little more formality to the whole arrival experience. It’s much more important that we create a sense of luxury and touch on all the senses at the point where you pull up to the curb, [whereas] it’s okay if a hotel unveils itself to you in the lifestyle space, over several different visits.

Once we get into the guest room, you have to think logically about how you break down those spaces—you have a sense of arrival, you have the grooming area, you have the rest and relaxation zone, you have the work zone, you have the social zone—and how those get interpreted in the different brands are very different. For instance, the walk-in closet is an important part of a luxury guest experience for the Waldorf brand. Accommodating a five-fixture bath is also very important. But, for our other modern luxury brand (Conrad) – a great shower and no tub is acceptable. This brand relies on sophisticated modern detailing and materials to deliver a more relaxed sense of luxury.

We have core “hard” brands and then we have “soft” collection brands. The collection brands are all about creating a unique narrative and a story around why that hotel is there—it is essentially a brand of one. Building a compelling storyline and weaving that concept throughout the whole hotel from the lobby to the guest room is critical to their success.

You have to think about brand-making in every aspect of the hotel design and how that unfolds during the guest stay. For instance, if you open a drawer within an LXR property, there might be an emerald green color that is prominent throughout the property that reminds you where you are. Within the Waldorf and Conrad brand, we don’t try that hard to remind the guest that they are in this brand, because this cultural currency has already been built over decades. But in an LXR, Curio, or Tapestry, a brand of one, you have to be more overt in that communication of what the brand is and how it speaks to the guest while on property.

How has your approach to the brand experience and design of Hilton properties changed over time?

Larry Traxler: I’ve had the unique experience and joy of being able to launch brands from scratch. When I first started this process of creating a brand from an architectural and design perspective, I used to think that [certain] things were immutable—these are the core pillars of the brand, and these will never change. We were eight brands when I joined [Hilton] and we’re 24 now. Every single one of those brands has been created in-house, from a noted white space in our brand lineup. We identify a developmental or customer need that we don’t have a brand for and we make sure that we are not cannibalizing any of our other brands.

What I’ve realized over time is that you must think about brands like children. They’re going to grow up and they’re going to change as they mature and the world around them changes. How does this brand mature over time? How will it age and adapt to new market drivers? How do we allow it to grow and stay fresh while still being respectful and identifiable to its brand essence?

Within certain brands, it’s really important to think about scale and how we grow them quickly. How do I apply something that is consistent and understandable and memorable across one thousand properties and what is the risk of that item not being able to stand the test of time? What that means in terms of brand evolution, how it grows up, how it matures, and what those transformational moments are, is important.

So, I actually think about that out of the gate now—these are the core principles, this is the foundation for this brand, but how do we let this mature and how do we build room for it to grow in the future, [yet] not step on another design principle in our brand family—how do we stay fresh and relevant, and not become stagnant and boring?

How have the expectations of your guests changed and what role does brand strategy play in answering these changing expectations?

Larry Traxler: That’s the million-dollar question. It has changed dramatically over the course of my time in the hospitality industry, never more quickly since 2020 and that moment of pause that we experienced during the pandemic. Since then, it has taken a dramatic turn towards lifestyle experience, experiential design, and creating unique types of environments that people want to be in. Hotels have always been the host of key moments in people’s lives—you have anniversary meals, get married, or have a wedding reception in a hotel and it stays with you for the rest of your life. When I started with HBA back in 1997, hotel programming was fairly predictable, and their spaces were compartmentalized. A hotel design achieved differentiation through materials and finishes and how high the ceiling was or what their views were. Now, we think about everything through the lens of how to create a unique experience and a point of differentiation. How do we escape the sea of sameness? How do we create a meeting space that people want to be in, that’s memorable? They’re not white boxes anymore. Lobbies aren’t just places to flow through, to check in, and maybe grab a drink—they have become places to work and to socialize over the course of the day. So, everything has to do more—double duty, triple duty. Things have to be flexible to the guests needs and demands. F&B spaces have to be a lot more dynamic. They have to compete with destination restaurants around the world and social media has raised the bar on everything that we do. Guests won’t come to our hotel restaurants if you don’t create something that’s compelling and memorable.

I would say, across every single one of our brand segments, the demand for thoughtful design has been amplified—design has been democratized. People expect a Hampton property to look different and have a sense of place. The old notion of “consistent and comfortable” has gone out the door and people want unique design and experiences. They want to know where they are when they wake up in the morning or when they walk into a lobby. They want a connection with the place and some sort of a regional nuance and understanding that they didn’t experience in their last hotel. That’s across all brand segments. It used to only be expected in luxury hotels; then it became core to luxury and lifestyle brands; then luxury, lifestyle, and full-service brands—and now it’s across all brands. It’s a very exciting moment for people in the design world, but also challenging because, as we turn up the volume across all brands segments, you start getting creep between those brand segments that might cause brand confusion. All of these brands, as they aspire to be memorable and lifestyle-driven with fun art and great food and beverage—they start becoming a little bit the same. So, then you have to rely on your brand strategy and consumer insights teams to tell you who the core customer is in this segment and understand what they are looking for. If you’re not careful, you can end up with a brand that lost its reason for being or people just don’t understand it. So, we are continually adjusting our brands. We are continually going back to our consumer insights and strategy teams and asking questions. How is this perceived? What does this guest think about the shower experience? What does this guest want from their sleep experience? What are they really looking for in dining, meetings or in the club lounge? We’re doing that at a pace much faster than we ever have in the past. Literally, every six months, we’re adjusting our brands based on where things are moving. In the context of new construction, it takes three or four years to build a hotel, so that’s a lot of adjustment and anticipatory design and changes and discussions with owners.

This isn’t really new, but it is happening at a faster pace than ever before. It goes all the way back to Ian Schrager when I joined him in 1999. He always said that if the locals aren’t drawn into our bars and restaurants then the hotel guests aren’t going to want to stay there. So, let’s create a bar that the locals want to come to, and then the hotel guests will fight to get in there. He saw that before a lot of other hotel companies did.

Also, what we’re doing from an environmental and social connection perspective is a lot more important today thinking about ESG and sustainability and how we’re communicating our efforts in that space is more critical now than it ever was in the past. Corporate and social are blurred and you have to respond at all levels.

How does brand strategy influence your bottom line in terms of ROI? 

Larry Traxler: This would be a great question for our Brand Strategy / Innovation team who are constantly thinking about what core strategy moments impact ROI and how do we allow our hotels to stay ahead of our competition. One small example of this is the propensity for guests to stay at a hotel, to pay more, and to return [based on] the shower experience. How likely are guests [going] to choose a hotel based on whether they can expect a walk-in shower vs. a tub with a shower curtain? We used to think that it was fairly easy—if you’re a family, you’re going to want a tub because you have little ones. In reality, that’s not the truth. We used to think that if we put 100% showers in our hotels, we would see a rate increase because guests were more likely to pay more for that elevated experience. In reality, we now have proof that 20% of the guests actually prefer tubs and they are not going to pay more and they might not come back if they only have a walk-in shower solution.

Whether we’re talking about showers, premium coffee, the sleep experience, club lounges—how does [all of this] impact the ROI of the hotel? How do we make sure that we position these properly so that it doesn’t just become a loyalty play for our diamond and gold guests? We used to think that we just intuitively got what our guests wanted. Now we understand that they’re complex and they’re changing constantly, so the brand strategy and the consumer insights teams give us hard numbers that take away a lot of that subjective guesswork.

There are a lot of design aspirations when you start a new project as you have a blank sheet of paper to make it all things for all people. But, when it comes down to it, there are certain metrics that make sense for a hotel to make money—the cost per key, the square feet per key, the amount of meeting space per key, the number of F&B venues for any given location all come into play. There are objective reasons why certain things make sense for certain markets and certain brands and then there are subjective drivers that you sometimes have to talk owners out of in order to make their projects successful. Everybody starts off a project with no budget and grand dreams of finishing in two years, but if you don’t apply some discipline out of the gate, those dreams quickly die and your project won’t get realized if you don’t respect the metrics behind what makes a hotel successful.

Hospitality is seeping into every aspect of our lives and that is a great thing for us. I’m working on several of our regional and global headquarters and it’s been an interesting exercise to overlay the hospitality experience with the built workplace environment. We then not only communicate what our brands are all about, but we keep our team members in the office excited about some of the really cool things that we’re doing everyday in our hotels. So, whether that be the dining, retail, or magnetic hubs where we encourage ad-hoc meetings and connections similar to what we would do in a hotel—it’s all bleeding into each other now.

What do you see as the next frontier within the hospitality landscape and how can an integrated brand strategy respond to this evolution?

Larry Traxler: Two different things enter my mind. We are working with Voyager Space on the Starlab, so space tourism is a huge business in the immediate future. By 2030, it’s estimated to be something like a $3 billion industry, and then it will double and triple after that. Leading up to that, more immediately, it’s adventure travel and thinking about what that means to different people.

Our recent announcement, partnering with Autocamp and thinking about glamping and staying in the great outdoors—this has been in the works for a long time. We’ve been thinking about how to thoughtfully get into this space and several of our hotels are built around mountain biking culture. This means that the lobby is designed differently, we have a bike repair workshop, and even the guest room is designed differently for those types of guests. So, thinking about adventure travel, being outdoors, being able to experience the natural environment in new ways. This and space tourism working closely with Voyager and NASA on what that means for the future.

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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and originally appeared in the August 2024 Design Innovation Edition of the BU School of Hospitality Boston Hospitality Review.

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