FRAME’s editor in chief Floor Kuitert explores the latest developments and innovations in the hospitality sector with Kristofer Thomas – a writer, editor and presenter specializing in design, architecture and the hospitality industry.

Thomas oversees content for the hotel design exhibition HIX, where he curates and organizes the HIX Talks programme of panels and presentations exploring the future of hotel design. Reflecting on key takeaways from the industry event, their conversation touches on the rise of niche interest travel, the contradiction at the heart of sustainable hospitality design, AI’s potential influence on travel experiences, and more. Next month’s FRAME Magazine will feature the full conversation, but here’s a sneak peek at some of the key themes.

The rise of niche interest travel

Floor: Looking to the future of hospitality, which types of guests do you think designers and operators should prioritize? What do you see – or even anticipate – as the most significant changes in consumer expectations?

Kristofer: One of our breakout panels at HIX LDN 2024 was a conversation about the rise of niche interest travel, and how operators are turning to increasingly focused activities and guest profiles to inspire highly specific hospitality experiences. Major investors such as Starwood Capital have already ventured into more concentrated offerings, with brands like Graduate Hotels catering explicitly to student guests and the forthcoming Field & Stream Lodges built around outdoor recreation, while high-profile one-off properties such as the David Rockwell-designed Civilian Hotel – set in the heart of Manhattan’s Theater District and channelling a long list of Broadway references – show that there’s a real appetite for projects that aren’t afraid to drill down into a hobby, activity or interest, and even potentially alienate a few people along the way, if it means providing a more substantial product for their ideal user. After a decade of hyper-personalization, it’s natural that consumers have come to expect ever more specific products and spaces that not only cater to them as individuals, but also to the communities they belong to or wish to engage with.

Title image and above: Kooo Architects’ ThéATRE Tea Pavilions are more than just places to taste tea – they’re spaces for people to engage with tea culture while promoting sustainability in urban settings. Photo Yumeng Zhu

Contradiction at the heart of sustainable hospitality design

Floor: The event also included a panel discussion on responsible tourism, exploring how hotels can ‘give back more than they take, preserve the integrity of a locale, and foster a sustainable relationship between people and place’. This reminds me of a conversation about zero-waste hospitality we had a while back with Ade Herkarisma, director of architecture and development at Indonesian lifestyle and hospitality brand Potato Head, and Spanish designer Andreu Carulla. It raised an important question: Is sustainable hospitality really possible? Even responsibly designed and operated destinations often attract an influx of visitors from around the globe – possibly even more so because of their sustainability efforts – which can inadvertently undermine sustainability over time. How can we ensure that a hotel’s entire ecosystem is sustainable in the long term?

Kristofer: This is the great contradiction at the heart of sustainable hospitality design: it is entirely possible to create self-sufficient, closed-loop, zero-waste, minimal-footprint hospitality experiences, but the process of using them inevitably ends up offsetting much of the good work. The majority of guests will always need to travel to a destination, and, as you say, the more popular and recognized one of these projects becomes as a bastion of ‘sustainable hospitality’, the more guests seeking out these kinds of experiences it will attract. One of our speakers noted that the most sustainable solution is for a hotel not to exist at all, and unless operators and designers take full control of the wider travel, construction and tourism industries that feed into this issue, a truly sustainable ecosystem will be difficult to achieve. That said, these spaces still hold significant value in the movement towards something far better; landmark developments such as Hilton’s Passive House-certified Hotel Marcel and the forthcoming energy-positive Six Senses Svart imagine a future where hotel use is actually a benefit, and the design advances made here will apply not only to the hospitality sector but also to those with which it interacts.

More immediately, however, it was noted that one of the most common challenges faced by designers looking to create more sustainable spaces is often the lack of any real measurement or quantification that encompasses the many different dimensions of sustainability – from carbon emissions to social impact – within the Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment (FF&E) procurement process. With this in mind, I’m interested to see what the Monark software currently being developed by Belgian studio WeWantMore can do, as it promises to remove much of the complexity by sorting the myriad factors of environmental impact into a traffic light system that ranks suppliers and materials.

Designed by Snøhetta in collaboration with Arctic Adventure of Norway, Asplan Viak and Skanska, the forthcomingSix Senses Svart exemplifies how hotel design can support a more sustainable tourism industry. Located next to Norway’s Svartisen glacier, the site-specific hotel will generate more energy than it consumes. Photo Plomp

Technology-enabled experiences

Floor: Another interesting question came up during the talks: Will the influx of technology change the way we experience a destination? This got me thinking about the wider impact of technological innovation on the hospitality industry. One example that stands out is the MM:NT Berlin Lab, a concept by Adina Hotels, part of TFE Hotels, developed in partnership with Häfele, a supplier of architectural hardware systems. It’s a six-room hotel that operates in continuous beta mode, where operators can implement real-time feedback. This agile approach to hospitality allows the design to evolve with travel trends and guest needs. What makes it unique is its user experience-driven ‘laboratory’ setup. End users are constantly involved in shaping the space, making it a truly dynamic and adaptive model. Do you think technology can help hospitality operators keep up with the changing expectations and needs of guests? And beyond examples like the MM:NT Berlin Lab, how do you see technology playing a role in achieving this?

Kristofer: MM:NT Berlin Lab’s creative lead Philippa Wagner gave a presentation as part of our breakout talks stream this year, and I think it’s one of the more interesting uses of technology in the hospitality industry at the moment. It speaks to a big shift in hospitality design, where designers and operators are increasingly ceding control of spaces and experiences to end users. While hospitality design has always been about responding to the desires and demands of guests, the accelerated nature of cultural trends in the digital age means that more traditionally fixed spaces can quickly be left behind until another renovation is deemed feasible, by which time things have already moved on again. For operators willing to experiment with dynamic spaces, I think this kind of technology-enabled, collaborative approach can definitely help them keep up in this regard, although I do predict some pushback on the horizon. The expanded use of technology to inform design and spatial experience in real time through guest feedback would naturally reduce the scope for a brand to dictate its own aesthetic or operational standards while curating an established experience that’s known to be effective and timeless regardless of current trends. It’s hard to imagine a legacy brand like Raffles or Claridge’s giving guests too much power to change their experience; part of the appeal for much of the hospitality industry is that these are established, fine-tuned operations that anticipate your needs and desires without you ever having to express them.      

Kristofer Thomas believes that AI’s most effective role will be to enhance existing hospitality experiences rather than create entirely new ones. Breda startup ScenTronix and EveryHuman, for example, have developed an AI-powered perfumery machine that creates unique eau de parfums based on individual preferences and learned data. Photo courtesy of EveryHuman

The impact of AI

Kristofer: I think a most realistic, effective and overall useful application of AI will be in its ability to enhance and support existing hospitality experiences, rather than act as an engine for entirely new ones. Now that AI has spent a few years in the public consciousness, guests have a better understanding of what the technology actually entails, and so too how they might prefer it to be used. Naturally, this factors in some of the concerns that have arisen around issues of privacy, safety and the downright weirdness it has shown itself to be capable of. After constant headlines about invasive hacks and the lingering effects of previous data breaches, such as those that hit Starwood and Marriott between 2016 and 2020, potential users may not be as willing to share the kind of intimate preferences and personal information they once were, limiting the effectiveness of any data set and how closely it can influence a hospitality experience. With this in mind, those operators and designers looking to incorporate AI into their products may want to be careful about the boundaries they choose to push. 

Read their full conversation in the upcoming issue of FRAME Magazine, Issue 160, out next month.