LUXURY HOTEL & HEALTH CENTER | Joaquin Galan Vallejo

Would it be health tourism for high level customers an added value in consolidated tourist areas?

- Malaga airport (Costa del Sol) received around 20 million of visitors last year, apart from millions of tourists that arrived by cruises, high-speed train or Highway.  

- There is a market segment of high purchasing power, which can be retired people or not, who suffer some chronic disease that requires them to organize their life close to a Hospital, for example, the diabetic patients.

- As a pioneering project in this market sector, the design of a Hotel’s project (five stars) that includes a Dialysis unit area, located into the remodeling of a historical building (with the collaboration of a multinational healthcare company). The minimalist design of the new Hotel achieves to put in value the other building (this business model may seem innovative here, but it already exists in other developed countries, and logically will improve the tourist offer of this area.

- Anyone who has had the experience of designing a new Hospital could have  heard the sentence "A hospital must look the most like a hotel, because a patient is the only user in a building that he did not choose it". It tries to sum up, in great part, that materials, facilities, typology, design of rooms, communications, etc. are usually similar between hotels and hospitals.

- We are aware that there are less complex facilities, needs programme, technical normatives, etc. in a Hotel as compared to Hospital, but at the same time we  allow more flexibility in its design. This project, sited near the airport, in front of the sea and well-connected with the rest of the coast, could be a good example.

P.S. It seems a paradox to me that after so much time trying to improve the comfort of Hospitals learning from Hotels, I may have the opportunity to fit both typologies (Healthcare and Hospitality), in the same project.