For the modern hotel guest, the hotel is meant to feel more and more like home and is also supposed to look more like home, and that is one of the reasons why investors are drawn to the world of design boutique hotels. A design boutique hotel is a small hotel with about 35-50 rooms, in an urban location, where an influential interior designer has given it its special chic character.
Hotel groups now see beyond conventional borders to optimize the stay for their hotel guests. One example is Accor Hotels who got together with LinkedIn in 2016 to introduce ‘Business Check’, that helps its users to find his/her business contacts currently staying in the same hotel and get in touch with them directly via email.
New ideas to develop business and finding new partners that leads to finding more customers attract public attention. New players are entering the hotel market attracted by the fact that the hotel business is constantly growing. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council the world tourist rate (arrived/departed) tourist has increased at an astonishing average of 3,1%.
In order to differentiate and create added value over home share companies like Airbnb and Onefinestay, the focal point is now to bring people together and to connect with our hotel guests in a way that is unique to the hotel world.
Which takes us to our next big trend, humanity and our staff, which is our biggest and most important resource. In these multi-media focused times, we tend to think that everything should focus on the latest technology, but we also need to pay attention to the inside. Real beauty comes from within, and it’s the same with the hospitality industry. We need to empower our employees for them to feel more part of the journey and deliver exceptional genuine service.
Going local and bringing in local culture has previously meant locally sourced products, concepts or food like being able to see locally produced cheese if staying in a hotel in St. Moritz or having Aesop shower gel in the bathroom in a hotel in Melbourne.
But we can now see another meaning to local, and that is seeing it as starting thinking of the local community more. Historically hotels had a role of community centres where the most influential people gathered, and we need to bring back that concept again to modern hotels.
Accor Hotels’ CEO Sébastien Bazin hit the nail on the head when he said:
“Ninety-nine percent of what we have done for 50 years has been based on the guy coming from outside of town,” “A traveller, from a different city, from a different country, which I think is interesting, but not too smart.
Because we missed a population which is 100 times greater and better and easier: The guy living next door. The local inhabitants.
‘They live around the hotel, or they go to an office around the hotel, and
90 percent of them never dared coming into the property, because they’re fearful that we’re going to be asking, ‘What’s your room number?’ They don’t need a room, but they may need a service.” Bazin said.
We need to see what’s happening overall in consumer behavior where we can see a global shift towards less opulence and a more lean and genuine luxury hotel experience. Everything doesn’t have to be gold-coated to be called luxury. Think less caviar and more bespoke services and exceptional experiences.
Staying in a hotel is an experience above anything else and we used to think that the stay ended the moment the hotel guest walked out of the lobby to explore the city, when in fact that is only the beginning of what we can offer them.
A hotel stay should now be seen with a more holistic approach where we can offer high-end tours and activities for the leisure traveller and social media solutions for the business traveller, like ‘Business Check’.
At the luxury end of the spectrum there is always room for creativity.
