Ron Swidler Is Looking To The Future Of The Hotel Experience
The Gettys Group CIO is invested in what’s ahead in hospitality
(Ron Swidler via The Gettys Group)
Ron Swidler’s career in the hospitality industry began as a case of being in the right place at the right time. Specifically, waiting tables at a Northern Italian restaurant in Chicago in 1988.
“I was waiting tables when the founders of The Gettys Group happened to come in and sit at my table,” Swidler tells A HOTEL PODCAST. “They were just starting The Gettys Group in the same building (as the restaurant) and I overheard their conversation. I kept going back to the table and refilling the water. I wanted to hear as much as I could about what they were doing.”
Swidler approached the Gettys team and informed them he was seeking design opportunities. After an invitation to show his portfolio, he landed a part time job with the agency while continuing to wait tables “until (they) had enough work to bring me on full time.”
“We've had more and more real estate developers come to us...who have said, I want to bring that feeling of being in a hotel into our office building and provide amenity spaces to our tenants, our existing tenants, and also to court potential new tenants because hospitality has this reputation for style and design and comfort and welcoming and all those things.” - Ron Swidler
In the present day, Swidler is Chief Innovation Officer at The Gettys Group, the Chicago-based firm that specializes in branding, design, development, and procurement in the hospitality industry. The agency has an impressive portfolio of hotel projects, ranging from Rand Tower in Minneapolis to Jumeirah Beach Resort & Spa in Dubai and more.
(Bellagio Hotel & Casino via The Gettys Group)
One such standout is the agency’s work at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, with Gettys Group chosen for the guest room renovation project out of a number of other competitors.
(Bellagio Hotel & Casino via The Gettys Group)
“It's a very prestigious project and part of what (the Bellagio was) looking for was a paid competition,” Swidler explains. “They were asking us and some of our competitors to develop room concepts for them. And interestingly, not just develop the initial design direction, but actually the furnishings and finishes that would go into the room. So they would make sure that it fit with their budget.
“So our team, which was built up of designers and people who were seeking inspiration, we're centering the idea around Lake Como, which is of course the story of Bellagio (in Italy). The way that the light hits Lake Como in the morning and in the evening. We ended up generating a beautiful design solution, and we rendered these beautiful watercolor drawings of what the room would look like, and we came prepared to win the job. And gratefully, the MGM folks selected us and we've been continuing to work with them over the last couple of years in order to realize this renovation.”
(Tribune Tower via Dave Burk Photo)
Beyond hotel development and design, Gettys was also heavily involved in the Tribune Tower’s recent conversion to residential units in downtown Chicago, in addition to the branding for the project. The longtime home of the Chicago Tribune newspaper offices opened to residents in 2021, with luxury units ranging in value between $900,000 to north of $7 million.
“We were selected to do the branding for the project as well as the interior design and the procurement,” Swidler reveals. “The story we are trying to tell is the rich story of the Chicago Tribune. Remember, this is a place that the people who are capturing the news, articulating the news, presenting the news to Chicago and the world every day were housed in this building. So think about it as like a beacon of information. And so we wanted to make sure that we honored the history of the building and the architecture in the storytelling that we created for this.”
(Tribune Tower via Dave Burk Photo)
“But it has 54,000 square feet of amenity spaces,” Swidler continues, “which is an enormous amount of space for spa and fitness and club space and welcome lobbies and rooftops and all of these spaces that are available to the people who are residing in the building. All of that was taking what we call hospitality infused kind of perspective or sensibility and applying it to residential because that's an interesting new kind of evolution.”
(Hotel Of Tomorrow Project via The Gettys Group)
Evolutions in hospitality are a longtime focus for Swidler and The Gettys Group. This is evidenced in the Hotel Of Tomorrow Project, which launched in 2004 as a think tank to predict and activate the future of the hotel and hospitality experience for the industry and consumers alike.
The initiative was reimagined in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic, with more than 300 hospitality professionals remotely brainstorming what’s next for hotels. Topics ranged from sustainability to AR and VR and more, with attendees showing up “as avatars on this airship that we created floating in the metaverse,” Swidler details, adding “it wasn't just a matter of talking about what might this extra layer of experience be, and how might it affect the hospitality industry, but we were experiencing it for ourselves for better and for worse.”
Hear more from Swidler, including his approach to teaching higher ed courses throughout the world, the boutique service companies within The Gettys Group, and much more on his A HOTEL PODCAST appearance below.
Find more via The Gettys Group and the Hotel of Tomorrow Project. And subscribe for more from A Hotel Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.