writerguyfl

Without having proprietary data or doing a lot more research, I'd say it's hard to know if Hilton Corporate is consciously moving away from the atrium set-up. Most of the limited-service brands like Hampton Inns come with cookie-cutter floorplans. But newly-built full-service properties often come with site limitations. If you don't have a huge plot of land, the architect has to get creative in order to fit everything into one building.

There appear to be five Embassy Suites listed on the New and Coming Soon pages of the website:
https://embassysuites3.hilton.com/en...els/index.html
https://embassysuites3.hilton.com/en...els/index.html

A quick glance at those hotels' web pages doesn't provide much in the way of details. There aren't extensive images or renderings. So, it's tough to know 1) if they are new builds, 2) if they have site limitations that preclude the ability to include and atrium, or 3) if they are being rebranded from an existing hotel, or 4) if they are adaptive reuse of an existing building.

That said, one of the new properties appears to have all exterior entries: Embassy Suites Tucson East. It's the "outdoor" atrium concept that formeraa talked about. Although that property was definitely reflagged. It used to be a Radisson Suites brand, I believe.

Source: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g60950-d75216-Reviews-Embassy_Suites_by_Hilton_Tucson_East-Tucson_Arizona.html#/media/75216/127978496/?albumid=101&type=2&category=101

To put it another way, we're dealing with a very small sample size. As such, it's difficult to know if Hilton is discouraging developers from including the atrium or if it's just due to the limitations of the particular sites where these new hotels are being built.