The World Really is Our Jobsite

Let’s begin at the port. Your cruise ship has just docked at your vacation destination. The time at sea was fun and relaxing – you never really paid attention to the floors beneath your feet, except once, when that drink tray was spilled and you wondered how the server did not slip. That’s because the flooring was part of MAPEI’s Products for the Marine Industry line, which offers products that can not only replicate the look of teak and terrazzo, but do so in a lighter-weight, non-slip and easy-to-clean fashion.

With your baggage collected, you hail a taxi and watch as the sleek town car pulls away from the port and into traffic. A slight incline and soon the daylight is blocked. You have entered a tunnel and are traveling beneath the harbor and into the city. Unknown to you, MAPEI’s Products for Underground Construction and Underground Technology Team (UTT) were instrumental in the construction of this tunnel, providing waterproofing and shotcrete on the invert and on the walls.

Suddenly ⁠–⁠ daylight. You leave the tunnel and are now on the highway approaching an overpass leading into downtown. The highway’s concrete features water-reducing admixture technology from MAPEI’s Admixtures for Concrete line.

Standing strong below, as your car glides up the ramp to the overpass, are the support pillars. If you were able to look closely, you would see that one of them bears the faint traces of a run-in with a car. The driver was fine, but the pillar needed structural repair, so the city crews turned to MAPEI and our Products for Structural Strengthening line. The custom-engineered, carbon-fiber polymer-impregnated wrap repair is almost undetectable, and the pillar is stronger than before. But you will never see or know this fact because your car has long since passed and you are safely approaching your destination – a five-star hotel.

The entrance to the hotel is blocked by a tour bus – perhaps one of the football teams that is in town for the big game? Exciting! But it means that your driver is forced to drive past the main entrance and around through the parking garage in order to double back. As he drives through the garage, you sit up, looking for famous faces. There aren’t any, but you do notice that repair work is taking place. It looks as if the side of the garage has been nicked – the concrete is missing and the rebar is exposed. The crew is working, and as you pass you notice bags of product – MAPEI. What you can’t see as you drive past are the products themselves – anodes, repair mortars and coatings from MAPEI’s Concrete Restoration Systems (CRS) line.

As your taxi drives up to the valet station, the bus is now gone. The valet quickly whisks your bags out of the car and inside. You step into the lobby and are greeted by an open, welcoming expanse that smells fresh and clean. The valet points you to the check-in desk and wheels your luggage across the marble floor. Those imported, large marble slabs have narrow grout joints in between them and are incredibly popular. What you don’t know is that they can also be incredibly difficult to install – without the proper materials. Fortunately, this hotel used products – including primer, waterproofing, mortar, grout and sealer from MAPEI’s Tile & Stone Installation Systems (TSIS) product line – to install the slabs on the floor and also the matching slabs that grace the walls. Not only did they want the lobby to make a five-star-worthy impression, they wanted it to be sanitary, easy to clean and rugged. A lobby must be welcoming, beautiful, durable and clean all at the same time. This one is, thanks to MAPEI. With no evidence of the football team in sight, you check in and head upstairs.

A quick elevator ride – the elevator pit and the cab itself feature products from MAPEI’s CRS, Waterproofing Systems and TSIS lines, including below-grade waterproofing, mortars, grouts and sealers – and you are in your room. But a glance at your watch tells you that there is no time to rest. You have a lunch date with friends at a world-famous restaurant a few blocks away.

It is a beautiful late fall day, so you decide to walk. A block away from the hotel, you notice a park with a playground. The children’s happy laughter echoes in your ears the rest of the way to the restaurant. If you had stopped, you would have seen that the playground equipment sits on top of MAPEI’s sports turf products from our Products for Sports Flooring line. No nails or staples mean safe play, and the artificial turf saves the city thousands of dollars each year in water bills. But there is no time for playgrounds – lunch at one of the city’s most popular restaurants awaits.

Wood. That’s the concept of the restaurant. Everything in the restaurant is either smoked, grilled or served flambé. The walls are paneled and the floor – the floor is hand-hewed planking installed by a local artist, using the very best techniques and materials. In fact, when the restaurant opened, the local museum held an exhibit there. And the press interviewed the artist/installer. Asked how he installed the floor, he said that he meditated over each beam and used MAPEI’s Products for Wood Flooring.

Nothing finishes off a great lunch spent catching up with friends quite like continuing the conversation at a sporting event – a Pro-Am tennis match, to be exact. A quick cab ride, and the three of you are at the Squinzi Sports Complex. Inside are tennis courts featuring the latest in sports-flooring technology from MAPEI’s Products for Sports Flooring line. From the underlayments to the striping, everything is designed to provide comfort and peak performance for the athletes. The stands in which you sit are built with innovative technology from MAPEI’s Cement Additives division.

Game over, your friends want to go for drinks, but you’ve had a long day. You’ll see them all tomorrow at the big game. Passing the entrance to the tram station (which also features MAPEI’s UTT and TSIS technologies), you grab a cab and return to the hotel.

Before heading up to your room, you decide to pop into the sundries shop and grab a sandwich for dinner. Tired, you drop your wallet and bend down to pick it up. Next to your wallet is an abalone shell, or a part of one, and there’s another, and another – no, that can’t be. You suddenly realize that it is a terrazzo floor, so reminiscent of the floors that you’ve seen on vacation in Venice. “How old is this floor?” you ask the woman behind the register, knowing that real terrazzo is hard to find now. “It has been six months since the remodel,” she says. “Isn’t it beautiful? Don’t tell the boss, but I like it more than the imported marble slabs, even though this is resin.” That’s right. The sundries shop floor features products from MAPEI’s Cementitious and Resin Flooring Systems* line.

Back in your room, it is time to grab a quick shower. To your eyes, the bathroom is clean and welcoming. During COVID, the hotel took advantage of the downtime and refreshed the old tile showers without the hassle of a tear-out. Using MAPEI’s unique system from our Floor Covering Installation Systems line, they have covered over the tiles with luxury vinyl tile (LVT) that looks like marble. Stepping out and drying off, you step onto what should be a cold tiled floor and then the carpet tiles; however, you are so tired that you barely register the transition.

Although, to be fair, the flooring was installed using MAPEI’s self-leveling underlayments and low-profile transitions between the ceramic tiles and the carpet tiles. The reason the tiles aren’t cold is because the flooring also features MAPEI’s Mapeheat radiant floor-heating system. The warmth radiating up from the flooring fills the room. Combined with the warm shower and early morning start, it is time to sleep.