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Consulting · Experience and use design, architecture advisory, AMO

Hospitality expert alongside architects and owners

Defining the way of receiving, from the brief onwards.

Renovating a hotel, building a residence, designing a headquarters or a healthcare establishment: plans set surfaces, flows and budgets. They do not say how people will be received there. DELPORTE HOSPITALITY works alongside owners and architects to define what constitutes the hospitality of the place, review the plans and the organisation of spaces, and think through every detail of the way of welcoming, for guests, users and staff, today and for the twenty or thirty years the place will live.

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The assignment

Laurent Delporte enriches the relationship between the owner, the architect and the engineering firm: he challenges the project from the point of view of those who will live there, defines what the place must allow people to experience, and translates it into a brief the architect integrates throughout the design. He also looks at the operational aspects and the organisation of the staff areas, to make sure everything is planned so that teams work in the best conditions and deliver the promise made to the guest. A designer of experience and use, alongside those who draw.

01

Define what constitutes the hospitality of the place

With the owners and the operator, Laurent Delporte sets what will make the soul of the place: its history, its culture, the way it will receive. This foundation then guides every design decision, from the site plan to the door handle.

02

Write the brief

A precise, illustrated and forward-looking document, handed to the architect and the engineering firm: the welcome journey space by space, the resulting requirements, the value engineering recommendations.

03

Review the plans and the organisation of spaces

Every plan is read from the point of view of those who will live there: the guest, the user, the employee. Circulations, distances, back of house, the material details of the welcome, down to the toilets.

04

Think through the uses, over time

A place opens for twenty or thirty years. Every space is designed to live throughout the day, according to needs, with no dormant room, and to evolve with the organisation and the clientele.

Situations encountered on projects

Each situation is real and anonymised. It illustrates a decision taken at the plan stage, and what it avoided once the place was built.

Hotel · restaurant, bar and spa level

A whole level dedicated to guests, and nothing for those who serve them

The situation

On the same level of a hotel under renovation, a restaurant, a bar, a spa and the pantry where everything is prepared for the dining room and the bar. The plans provide everything for the guests. For the teams, no toilets: the only ones are in the changing rooms, in the basement, via the service lift.

The problem

That lift also serves room service and the floors. In the middle of service, going down, coming back and resuming one's post takes up to twenty minutes, at the time of day when the team is most in demand and the guest is waiting. The investor, the operator and the architect considered the matter settled.

DELPORTE HOSPITALITY's intervention

Reading the level from the point of view of those who work there: service flows hour by hour, the real load on the lift, the time of a round trip. Then the costed recommendation of staff toilets on this level and, in the same movement, the versatility of the spaces so that no room remains dormant and the level lives from breakfast to the closing of the bar.

The benefit for the client

An apparent saving avoided, which would have cost years of degraded service, fatigue and staff turnover. A level that earns throughout the day, and teams available to guests at the rush.

Restaurant · service circulation

Sixty metres between the kitchen and the terrace, through the bar

The situation

A restaurant project with several dining rooms and a much-anticipated terrace. On the plan, the kitchen is top left, the terrace bottom right, and the bar in between.

The problem

Sixty metres one way, as many back, one hundred and twenty metres per service carrying trays, and the obligatory passage through the bar in full activity. Dishes arrive lukewarm, waiters cross paths with bar guests, and the terrace that was to be the asset of the house becomes its weakness.

DELPORTE HOSPITALITY's intervention

The path of the dish, metre by metre, traced with the architect and the future chef: a relay pantry near the terrace, a service route that bypasses the bar, the resulting trade-off of surfaces. And the question asked for the years ahead: how will these spaces be used when the clientele and the uses have changed?

The benefit for the client

Smooth service from opening day, teams preserved, and a terrace that keeps its promise for the whole life of the place, not only the first summer.

Headquarters · way of receiving

How does a headquarters receive its staff, its visitors and its partners?

The situation

A company designs its new headquarters. The architect expects a programme; management has a surface, a number of workstations and a schedule, but not yet an answer to the first question: how will this place receive those who work there and those who come?

The problem

The welcome of visitors and partners, that of staff in the morning, what happens on each floor, the places where connections are made, the working conditions, the events the headquarters must be able to host, the desired atmosphere and state of mind, and the way spaces will evolve with the organisation. None of these is an architectural subject; all of them have consequences in the plans.

DELPORTE HOSPITALITY's intervention

The definition, with management, of the company's own way of receiving, then the inventory of uses: an employee's day, a partner's visit, a board meeting, a convention, an evening event. Each use translated into requirements of space, circulation, equipment and atmosphere, gathered in a precise brief handed to the architect.

The benefit for the client

An architect who answers defined needs rather than square metres, a headquarters that welcomes instead of housing, and spaces designed to evolve with the company rather than be redone in five years.

Room · detail

How is a guest received in the bathroom?

The situation

In a room project, the bathroom is treated as a technical room: surfaces, networks, equipment.

The problem

Yet it is the most intimate place of the stay, and the one where details show the most: where to put a toiletry bag, where to hang a towel, where the light is for shaving or make-up, how the bath fills, what the guest hears from the bedroom.

DELPORTE HOSPITALITY's intervention

A review of the room and bathroom at the height of use, gesture by gesture, from the first evening to the last morning, shared with the interior architect before orders are placed.

The benefit for the client

A room the guest finds "well thought out" without being able to say why, and online reviews that say it for them.

Healthcare · hospital and clinic

Recreating, in a hospital, the services and the connections that keep the promise to patients

The situation

A healthcare establishment undertakes the reorganisation of its spaces. The project is technical: flows, standards, surfaces. The question of how patients, families and caregivers will be received there has no answer yet.

The problem

Services that each work for themselves, waiting areas that isolate instead of reassuring, caregivers whose working conditions do not let them keep the promise made to patients, and patients who meet no one.

DELPORTE HOSPITALITY's intervention

The definition, with management and the teams, of the way the establishment receives, then its translation into the spaces: recreating the services around the patient journey, creating the places where patients and families meet and de-stress, improving the working conditions of caregivers so they can deliver that promise, and rethinking the moments of everyday life, from the wait to the meal, as moments of care.

The benefit for the client

Patients who feel expected and less anxious, teams who work in spaces designed for them, and an establishment whose welcome becomes a reason to choose it.

Residence · twenty-five floors

Selling uses, not square metres

The situation

A developer designs a twenty-five-floor residence, part hotel, part housing. The programme provides apartment types by surface. Nothing yet says who will live there, how, or what story each apartment will tell.

The problem

In many countries, a residence is sold by the square metre and under a brand, without anyone having thought about what the client will do inside. The result: interchangeable apartments, hard to sell to a precise clientele, and a residence without a soul.

DELPORTE HOSPITALITY's intervention

The definition of client types, then, for each, the uses of the apartment: how one arrives, receives, works, sleeps, grows old there; the story each apartment and each floor tells; the organisation of shared services around these uses. All gathered in the programme handed to the architect and to the sales team.

The benefit for the client

Apartments designed for an identified clientele, therefore sold faster and at a better price, and a residence that stands out by what it allows people to experience, not only by its address.

Residence · programme

Twelve rooms, and a precise idea of the house

The situation

A project owner creates a small boutique residence on the Mediterranean coast, in the spirit of a family home. The plans exist, part of the choices are made, and the owner wants an outside eye before going further.

The problem

Reviewing the plans and taking stock with the owner: what is already in place, what remains to be decided, what can be improved, and how to show the place at its best. Without this review, the family-home spirit risks being diluted over the decisions of each contributor.

DELPORTE HOSPITALITY's intervention

The review of the plans with the owner, space by space, then a complete inspiration brand book: the vision, the ambition, the welcome philosophy, and the design of the spaces down to the smallest detail, handed to the architect, the decorator and the future teams.

The benefit for the client

A coherent project from the first plan to the opening, a clear list of what remains to be done and what can be improved, and a house with a signature before it even has guests.

What Laurent Delporte brings to the architect, the engineering firm and the owner

An eye that challenges and enriches: the programme and the hospitality brief upstream, the review of plans and the organisation of spaces during design, decisions during the works, the preparation of the teams for the opening. This know-how, born in luxury hospitality, Laurent Delporte regularly brings to residences, headquarters, healthcare establishments and places that receive the public.

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Frequently asked questions

When should you join the project?

As early as possible, ideally before the architect's brief: that is when the way of receiving can still shape the plans. A later intervention remains possible, as a critical review of plans and layout proposals.

Is it only for hotels?

No, and that is precisely the point: Laurent Delporte regularly brings this hotel know-how to other worlds. Hotel and housing residences, headquarters, clinics and hospitals, boutiques, cultural venues: wherever people are received, the same questions arise, and the same method answers them. Who comes in, who waits, who works, and how to take care of each of them.

How do you work with the architect and the engineering firm?

As a pair, on the owner's side. Laurent Delporte brings the experience of people, the uses and the culture of service; the architect and the engineering firm bring design and engineering. The hospitality brief gives them precise material to answer the client's real needs, and the plan review enriches every stage up to the opening.

How is an assignment billed?

On quotation, according to the time spent and the thinking provided, after a first conversation about the project. The programme and brief phase can be undertaken on its own; support during design and works is proposed afterwards, depending on the duration of the project.

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