2012 Hospitality Giants: Firms and Fees

Wing Leung and Mike Zimmerman -- Interior Design, 10/1/2012 2:00:00 AM

Gensler's Shore Hotel in Santa Monica, California. Photo by Ryan Gobuty/Gensler.

Hospitality income has been a power­house coming out of the Great Recession. Fees jumped 24 percent in 2012, from $444 million the previous year to $550 million. That's 43 percent of the total $1.3 billion interior-design pie, by far the biggest rainmaker in the industry (office space was the next highest at 26 percent). In 2011, 14 firms worked on nothing but hospitality jobs. This year, it's 21. And the hospitality Giants forecast another 11 percent jump in fees in the coming year.

Although employment is up, salaries are not. Fees-per-designer jumped from $120,000 in 2011 to $133,000, but salary growth across the board has been flat three years running. Designers are still averaging $65,000, managers and job captains have slid slightly to $90,000, and principal/partner salaries sit unchanged from the $150,000 they were in 2009. The top three most admired firms were Yabu Pushelberg, Rockwell

Group, and Tonychi and Associates.

*Go here for a slideshow of projects by firms new to the hospitality giants.

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2012 Hospitality Giants: Growth

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