ANNA HART THE HYPE

Hotels are increasingly resembling hippy communes, but do we really like other people that much?

Some of us travel in the hope of meeting other people. Some of us travel to escape other people. The hotel industry is betting hard on the former camp. Today we breakfast “family style”, slurping down our muesli (or “granola”, in the universally accepted parlance of the travel trade) perched on benches at farmhouse tables. We’re forced to interact as we mix our pre-dinner drinks at “honesty bars”. If we have some emails to send, we do it in an open-plan lobby, sharing a sofa/beanbag with a fellow “digital nomad”. These are challenging times indeed, for the travelling misanthrope.

And soon, we’ll be sharing kitchens and bathrooms with other hotel guests, awkwardly do-si-doing around the kettle and toaster. Marriott is trialling communal hotel rooms, for up to 16 individual guests, whereby each guest has their own room, but shares a living, dining and lounge area with total strangers.

The hotel chain unveiled this new “communal living concept” at its first ever pop-up hotel innovation lab in Los Angeles. “We took a look at why people travel and what people need,” Toni Stoeckl, global brand leader of lifestyle brands at Marriott International, explained. “Our lobbies have become more communal and social hubs, but we saw a need for something in between.

“There are a lot of opportunities for people to have their shared common space and be together but still have their private space.”

There are several theories behind the hospitality trade’s newfound determination to resemble a hippy commune of the Wild Wild Country variety. One argument is that our increasing reliance on technology and professional digital isolation has us all clamouring for IRL (in real life) connections in our leisure time, craving the warmth and body odours of our fellow humans.

Another theory is that

Airbnb effectively razed the hospitality landscape to the ground, forcing hotels onto the back foot, where they promptly began aping the home sharing site. (Ironically, Airbnb is simultaneously aping the hotel model, and hotels can now be booked on the site. The lines are increasingly blurred between these former adversaries. It’s like Blair’s

New Labour all over again.)

On top of all this, communality is cheap. Unstaffed honesty bars, open-plan work/drink/dine lobbies fitted out in “industrialchic” decor and pack-em-in communal benches are much less costly than the dedicated businesslike work suites of the past, for example.

Hotels going a bit hippy is just part of a much broader trend for communal spaces, of course. Communal dining in restaurants, co-living set-ups and co-working spaces suggest that the future firmly has a “co-” prefix.

According to the prevailing theory, the likes of co-working spaces foster “creative collisions” and organic collaborations. You might think you’re stepping into this “coffice” (that’s a café-slashoffice) for a flat white, but you’ll emerge having agreed to be chief web designer on a new mindfulness app. Oops! Just how communal we really want to be on our travels, though, is very much up to the individual. The hotels that will succeed are the ones that either nail the balance from the get-go, or that offer guests options.

In the former category, I can think of the wonderful country house hotel Hambleton Hall, where guests are enticed to mingle in the drawing room by free drinks and snacks, before we’re all seated separately, with our chosen companion, for dinner. We can tuck in, safe in the knowledge that we have fulfilled our civic duty by being faintly sociable over a cocktail.

These are challenging times for the travelling misanthrope

The alternative is to offer guests options. If breakfast is to be served at communal tables, make in-room breakfasting both free and fabulous. If the lobby is open plan, consider desks in bedrooms, as a nod to the laptop-toting traveller.

If the communal spaces are utilitarian and buzzy, balance this with bedrooms that feel both intimate and luxurious, private spaces worth lingering in.

Because if there’s one lesson I’ve learned from my travels, it’s that other people are both heaven and hell.

To read more travel articles by Anna Hart, see telegraph.co. uk/travel/team/anna-hart/

Cheers to spontaneous interactions