A Novel Hotel on Wheels: LHQV

By Constance G. Konold

Friday, 12th May 2006 published on http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=1326

The last time I saw Ann Michele Worrall she was a gorgeous streak of fuchsia and Yves St. Laurent maneuvering through the traffic on Boulevard St. Germain – on two wheels.

Waiting at Boul'Mich for the light to change myself, I hailed her down. She, like I, has opted for a quixotic international career and passionate lifestyle love affair with France rather than the boring comfort of our mutual motherland, which will go unnamed until it starts putting its French back into its fries.

"What's new?" I ask, while admiring her hard-bargained second-hand bicycle, which she claims is the fastest way to get around Paris these days.

"L.H.Q.V.," she smiles broadly at me, pointing to her Gucci tote bag in a paler shade of pink, leaving me utterly confused because I am looking for the signature beige-on-brown monogram of another French homonymic luxury line of ladies handbags.

"L.H.Q.V - Les Hôtels Qui Voyagent", she clarifies, as I sink deeper into confusion. "You know, 'Hotels that Travel'".

Oh. Sure. That L.H.Q.V., taunts my brain while hoping to mesh gears fast to save face. What else has the hotel sector invented now to daze and amaze us, I fret, because I'm supposed to be on top of hospitality news – and here's something refreshingly innovative and unknown to me.

To my relief, she says, "Let's grab a 'grand' crème'", and leashes her bike to the nearest café table. "I'll show you."

Les Hôtels qui voyagent, it turns out, is Ann Michele Worrall's brain child, conceived from 27 years of international hotel experience and 17 of organizing housing and hospitality contracts for the Olympic Games in Atlanta and Sydney, and hatched while studying at INSEAD. The concept is a quantum leap from the nomad tent and Quonset hut to a portable, modular luxury hotel in a kit that takes one man only three hours to assemble with no tool more complicated than a monkey wrench.

A vision of pre-fab barracks with Philippe Starck interiors teases my mind.

Sensing my doubts, Ann Michele opens her satchel and spreads some delightfully appealing color mockups on the table for me to admire. No pipe dream, this portable four-star modular luxury hotel that can be used and reused many times, shipped all around the world or from city to city to meet exceptional temporary housing needs: Ann Michele has had an Australian architect draw up the plans and a French inventor devise the crucial joinery. In 2005, a first prototype was produced in Alsace just several months too late for use as relief housing after the tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka. (That model is both earthquake- and storm-resistant, with an alternative configuration that also makes it floatable.)

An events organizer when she's not teaching master's-level corporate strategy in the hospitality sector, Ann Michele sees Les Hôtels qui voyagent as a novel accommodations solution for special events. The modular, tensile structures are optimized for quick installation and breakdown, which doesn't keep them from having Christian Liaigre-style design or luxury interiors that could eventually qualify for four-star status. Outside walls and roofs double as giant 24/7 video projection screens. Mobility and easy assembly of these temporary hotel units allow for proximity to events or feng shui placement.

My mind instantly treks off to Hainan and I feel a sudden surge of serotonin as I remember the perfectly feng shui-ed and typhoon-proofed Sofitel Boao Resort and Conference center, built six years ago to host the annual "Boao Forum for Asia". The miracle of that hotel is that it was built in only eleven months, thanks to 100,000 workers imported to Hainan for that specific "event" and housed in a temporary shanty town that would eventually be burned to the ground and dug in as fertilizer for the in situ golf courses.

Suddenly, I get it. Les hôtels qui voyagent could have lodged those 100,000 Chinese workers in four-star decency and the Chinese then could have shipped the reusable units back up to Beijing for the next Olympics event. Man, I'm way ahead of the game now!

I ask Ann Michele if, for instance, a major hotel chain could conceivably be 100% mobile. The "LHQV Roaming Hotel & Resort Group" begins to take shape in my mind. Let's see, we can place 20,000 rooms on the Riviera during the Cannes Film Festival, then move them to Spoleto for some opera, hit Fez in time for the sacred music festival, head north to Salzburg for a week of Mozart and finish curled up close to Munich in time for Oktoberfest. I love it!

Ann Michele's voice plucks me back to earth again by explaining how the world may just not yet be ready for her "LHQV logic": superstar corporate sponsorships, branding for maximum surprise and innovation, focus on ecological and demographic well-being, and cost-cutting.

Suddenly, I'm feeling very disappointed to think that this novel and genial hospitality innovation may not be marketed this year. I'd just been daydreaming about reserving the very same hotel room in three separate countries...

So, with much encouragement to Ann Michele to launch her revolutionary LHQV concept fast, I help her pack her hotel back into the tote bag, stow it on her wheels and watch her vivid and fashionable silhouette strike off elegantly down the bus lane to court investors for the 4 million euros to build the first 100 rooms – which shouldn't be a problem given that she's already had to turn down 100 million euros in orders. Someone else out there thinks it’s a good idea.

Well, maybe I'll get my hotel room on wheels next year.