Modular Construction in the Hospitality Industry: Why major hotels have chosen modular builders
If you’ve been following modular construction for any amount of time, you know that the key advantage of modular compared to tradition construction is time savings.
How much time savings? That depends on the project and the modular firm that’s building it. Within the industry, you have modular builders who take a relatively standard approach to construction within their manufacturing facilities, achieving efficiency mainly through the elimination of construction delays resulting from weather challenges and labor shortages. Then you have modular builders with full-scale manufacturing facilities leveraging the latest rapid production technologies to yield additional time efficiency. The more optimized modular construction facilities tend to accelerate the production of hospitality projects by 50 percent or more compared to traditional construction.
In recent years, major hotels like Hilton and Marriott have utilized modular construction in new hotels, pointing to greater adoption of modular manufacturing in the hospitality industry by hotels large and small. Hilton has tested modular hotel construction in multiple cities. Notably, it’s five-story hotel in California’s Bay Area, the Hilton Garden Inn, was completed in roughly half the time it takes to build a traditional Hilton hotel.
Marriott has been a champion of modular hotel construction for years, completing more than 30 modular hotels which on average have been completed in half the time of typical hotel builds.
“In North America, the construction process hasn’t changed significantly in 150 years and it’s ripe for innovation,” said Eric Jacobs, Chief Development Officer of Marriott International.
CitizenM Hotels, a hotel developer and operator building affordable luxury hotels, attributes their profit margins on new hotel builds in part to standardized production. They have built several hotels using modular construction to reduce construction time, minimize construction noise and pollution, and achieve greater energy efficiency. This international developer is one of the first hotels to build a hotel entirely with prefabricated rooms. Parts are gathered and assembled in their Europe-based facility before being shipped to locations around the world like the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
Two of CitizenM’s most notable US-based hotels are located in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. The five-story Menlo Park hotel in California stands at 89,000 square feet and is comprised of 161 guestroom modules that create 280 total rooms. The CitizenM New York Bowery Hotel is one of the tallest modular hotels in New York City—a 20-story hotel comprised of 210 modular units that represent 300 total rooms.
These prefabricated hotels are only a few of numerous examples of modular construction in the hospitality industry, which is gaining traction as hotel developers successfully slash construction timelines using standardized methods. While the design approach to each modular hotel is different, the primary benefit of prefabricated hotels is consistent: up to 50 percent reduction in total construction time. In many cases, these cutting-edge projects also reaped cost savings and greater design flexibility.