Hoteliers like to think that they provide homes away from home for their guests, but the reality is that no matter how luxurious the room, between meetings it can be a lonely place for the solitary business traveller.
It is also true that public areas of hotels, such as bars and restaurants, do not necessarily offer a relaxed informal environment conducive to unwinding with a book or newspaper, or to finishing off the day's paperwork with a coffee or a cocktail.
For many, the solution is to check into a room or suite on one of the hotel's executive floors. These will generally offer a lounge with a limited complimentary food and beverage service and often other facilities such as broadband internet access, small meeting rooms and photocopying facilities, as well as a selection of international newspapers and magazines.
The lounge gives the executive a home base for informal meetings with business contacts, and an opportunity to interact with fellow guests. For the hotels they provide an opportunity to showcase the finer points of their hospitality.
InterContinental Hotels & Resorts makes a feature of its executive-floor lounges, aiming to capitalise on the unique characteristics of each location. The Club InterContinental lounge in Sydney commands spectacular views of the harbour and Royal Botanic Gardens, while the lounge at the InterContinental Hanoi Westlake is just metres above the waters of the lake. The Club lounge of the InterContinental Bangkok is the highest in town, and commands spectacular cityscape views, particularly at dusk during the evening cocktail hour. All are geared equally to business or to just unwinding.
Equally fine views are to be had from the Mandarin Oriental Club Lounge in Kuala Lumpur - a hotel in the heart of the business district and next to the spectacular Petronas Towers - and at the Oriental Club in Singapore, both of which could have been designed to impress business contacts.
Peninsula hotels also recognise the importance of club lounges to business guests and as part of the Peninsula Hotel Beijing's recent US$35million renovation the Club Lounge doubled in size. It too commands fine views of the city.