As a commercial property manager of a hotel, event center, or hospitality facility in Greater Chicago, you want people to choose your property for their meetings, gatherings, or vacations.

You want guests to choose your property because it is a safe, welcoming environment and has the right touches that make it attractive compared to the competition. You want to be a destination rather than just a place to stay. This creates value for your guests, as well as your business.

Nothing attracts more attention than the right commercial landscape amenities that can elevate curb appeal and entice visitors and guests to stay a while.

raised planter with annuals in front of a chicago commercial building

The right impressive touches at your commercial site can create big impacts that can elevate your property.

These types of amenities can include:

Let’s discuss some outdoor amenities for hospitality facilities that property managers can focus on in Greater Chicago and their key benefits, so you can maximize impact and ensure your property stands out from the rest.

Landscape Features For Hotels That Are Worth the Investment to Drive Business

A simple, well-maintained landscape isn’t enough today to stand out in a competitive commercial marketplace.

This is why you need commercial landscaping amenities that work for you and not against you.

The right landscape additions will do some key things for your hotel, event center, or hospitality facility, including:

Enhance Your Guest Experience: Create memorable, relaxing spaces that appeal to diverse demographics and encourage social media sharing.

Increase Your Revenue: Drive higher room rates, additional sales from dining or bar areas, and event rentals.

Give You a Competitive Edge: Distinguish the property with unique, luxurious, and sustainable features.

Boost Guest Retention: Foster loyalty with family-friendly and wellness-focused amenities.

Maximize Space Use: Transform underutilized outdoor areas into functional, year-round attractions.

Align Trends In Your Space: Meet the demand for wellness, sustainability, and lifestyle-oriented travel experiences.

Increase Your Property Value: Boost long-term value with visually appealing and low-maintenance amenities.


Let’s dive into some of these specific outdoor amenities for event centers and related facilities, to give you some good ideas for the kinds of spaces that can boost your curb appeal, business, and positive attention.

1. Resort-style pools and Water Features

All types of water features add a sensory appeal to your commercial space, boosting a relaxing atmosphere. This is why they make great commercial landscaping amenities.

By building visually striking pools, spas, or fountains, you can create a luxurious environment that draws people into the area and encourages them to linger and return again and again.

To enhance relaxation, add waterfalls or misting features to these spots.

2. Outdoor Lounges and Fire Pits

Outdoor amenities for hospitality facilities bring a retreat feeling to your property.

Fire pits draw people into their warmth with practicality but are also incredibly attractive additions to stage an employee cookout or entertain out-of-town clients. On top of that, outdoor lounges and fire pits create a nighttime ambiance that can be enhanced with artistic lighting, including pathway illumination to accent and event lighting.

kids playing near an outdoor patio and firepit

Remember to design comfortable seating areas with modern fire pits for evening relaxation around these additions. You can even incorporate features like pergolas, heaters, or retractable shades to ensure year-round usability.

3. Dining and Bar Areas

Naturally, dining and bar areas allow guests to relax, eat, and network.

While everyone expects you to have places for this, you can stand out by creating open-air dining patios with outdoor kitchens or bars that elevate the food and beverage experience.

These outdoor amenities for event centers can be designed uniquely and invitingly, creating memorable experiences for guests and increasing food and beverage sales.

4. Rooftop Gardens or Terraces

You can install vibrant rooftop gardens to offer breathtaking views and quiet spaces for reflection or private events.

These outdoor amenities for event centers can also showcase your eco-friendly values. Eco-friendly designs reduce water and maintenance costs while promoting sustainability — a growing priority for guests.

5. Walking and Jogging Paths

If the guests staying at your hotel, want a space to exercise or enjoy time outdoors, creating an outdoor amenity for hospitality centers in the form of a meandering walking path can give you a competitive edge over other similar facilities in the area.

brick walkway in a chicago landscape

Adding benches along the way, intriguing and lush landscaping, soft lighting, and even fitness stations or stretching areas can amplify the desire to use walking and jogging paths.

6. Yoga or Meditation Gardens

Wellness tourism is on the rise. It combines travel with activities that enhance physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

While wellness can include regular exercise and proper nutrition, it is also about engaging the mind.

Landscape amenities like yoga and meditation gardens encourage guests to immerse themselves in these types of activities to reduce stress and create emotional balance. The result for your guests is improved overall well-being.

7. Pickleball, Bocce, or Outdoor Gaming Areas

Add recreational options as your hotel landscape features that encourage guest interaction and attract families or groups.

For instance, having a lawn area with games for guests is another way to encourage them to choose your hotel over others.

employees playing ping pong outside a landscape commercial property

Some hotels have even included things like pickleball and bocce ball courts. Providing a social, outdoor area for your guests gives them more reason to engage with your hotel.

The more fun they have now, the more likely they will return for a future stay.

8. Native Landscaping

Use region-specific plants in your commercial landscaping amenities to reduce water consumption and maintenance while showcasing your hospitality facility’s eco-friendly values.

Native plants usually take less care and energy to grow, but you still have to follow proper planting rules, which means placing plants in the soil they prefer and ensuring they receive the right amount of sunlight and adequate moisture.

The ones we like to use are called nativars, new garden plants developed from native sources. Nativars allow landscape designers to retain the benefits of native species while making them accessible for more modern landscapes. They are hardy and adaptable to our soils and environmental conditions, making them lower maintenance and more supportive of wildlife, particularly pollinators, insects, and birds that eat insects.

commercial planting bed nice annuals perennials shrubs and shade trees

Nativars can be better versions of the original native species, providing more compact size, cleaner foliage, better color, or tidier appearance.

9. Solar-Powered Charging Stations

When guests need to recharge their phones or tablets, finding a place to do so can be challenging. You can incorporate solar-powered charging stations into your outdoor amenities for event centers, aligning with sustainable hospitality trends.

To make outdoor charging seamless, you can incorporate solar-powered charging stations as furniture, such as benches, tables, or charging poles.

These can be ideal for common areas, employee break stations, golf courses, or trailside.

10. Rain Gardens and Bioswales

Green infrastructure – or the natural or engineered system that mimics the functions of natural landscapes to manage stormwater – can be good landscape amenities that also help manage stormwater runoff.

Examples include rain gardens, bioswales, and detention ponds.

If you experience flooding in a low-lying area of your commercial landscape, for instance, turn those wet spots into attractive rain gardens, especially after rain. Rain gardens have beds that use porous soil to grow plants that thrive in wetter environments.

These versatile gardens can be as small or large as necessary to fit your space. With a rain garden, you lose your drainage issues and gain improved water quality, a habitat for birds and butterflies, and a low-maintenance, gorgeous addition to your commercial site.

Commercial Property Manager? Check Out Our Ultimate Guide to Landscape Maintenance

To create a rain garden, a commercial landscape designer starts with a man-made depression that is designed to collect rain runoff. The garden is then filled with gravel or small rocks, mulch and rain garden plants to slow water movement and absorb excess water. It also removes pollutants in the water before it reaches nearby storm drains.

A bioswale is a conventional ditch or swale, modified and planted with appropriate native plants to increase water percolation and pollutant removal as stormwater flows through it. They’re planted with native plants that receive and absorb stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces like parking lots, walkways and driveways. 

Another stormwater runoff option is a detention pond. This structure collects stormwater by storing it and releasing it slowly until it drains. A retention pond, on the other hand, is designed to permanently hold water.

11. Outdoor Wedding, Event Areas, or Large Lawn Spaces

As part of your outdoor amenities, you can design adaptable spaces for weddings, parties, or corporate events, such as gazebos or amphitheaters.

Outdoor venues offer breathtaking natural backdrops that require minimal decoration. From lush gardens to scenic lakesides, the natural environment can enhance the beauty and ambiance of your event or wedding, making it a memorable experience. It can also enhance photos.

Large lawn spaces typically provide more room for guests to move around, dance, and socialize. This can be particularly beneficial if you have a large guest list or want to incorporate unique elements like food trucks or lawn games.

12. Adventure Playgrounds and Interactive Water Play Features

Install safe, engaging play areas as part of your landscape features for hotels to create places to play for families with children.

commercial playground structure

You can even add splash pads or interactive fountains for summer fun.

13. Private Cabanas or VIP Areas

For your premium guests, secluded, upscale seating as part of hotel landscape features creates an exclusive feeling and experience.

These additions give you facility a resort-quality amenity that people remember and return to for special occasions.

14. Artistic Landscaping

Install eye-catching sculptures, lighting, or seasonal flower displays to create Instagram-worthy moments.

People want to take pictures and remember their travel experiences. When you offer artistic landscapes that are meticulously maintained with seasonal updates that provide year-round beauty and functionality, you create these moments.

Looking for Some Great Outdoor Amenities For Your Greater Chicago Hotel, Hospitality, or Event Facility? Call KD Landscape

When you provide elevated commercial landscaping amenities at your hotel, event, or hospitality space, you boost revenue, attract repeat events, and create memorable experiences.

But you don't want to design these alone. You need an expert to help bring the right artistic touches that truly enhance your property.

commercial HOA account manager and property manager customer reviewing inspecting a property

If you’re unsure where to start, call KD Landscape. We can do a thorough walk-through of your site so our landscape designers can develop creative solutions to build designs that simultaneously serve multiple purposes and look great, making your property stand out from the rest.

Ready to see how KD Landscape can transform your Chicago hotel with outdoor amenities and commercial landscape design and installation in Greater Chicago? We’d love to share our professional expertise with you. Get started today with an on-site consultation. Together, we can help you elevate your business image and reputation.

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