The values and behaviour of curious and collaborative city explorers
People: Curious, collaborative explorers
A hotel inspired by specific guest values.
This sketch shows a reinvention of what hotel typology could be. Illustration by Sacha Bennett-Ford
Place: A city Hotel
In our current age of blurred boundaries, designing for individuals becomes even more important. Greater flexibility in working and private lives, changes to classic family structures and digitalisation of day to day living have led to societies becoming more complex and more subcultures evolving and overlapping. In order to really reach people, it’s not good enough to picture people in terms of age, occupation and income. We must know and understand their values, goals in life, lifestyles and attitudes. We must make the effort to know them as individuals, then we can design for them. The users set the ethics of the hotel rather than the owner or the operator.
We were asked to create a hotel concept for a particular group of like-minded people. This group are highly social, experimental expeditionists who feel responsible for the world around them and they like to embed themselves in communities. To understand more about what motivates them and influences their decisions we met social scientists at Sinus Institut before considering ideas about what type of hotel would suit them. Their values and ideals may have been niche in 2016 when this was developed but 5 years later many of their preferences have a wider appeal and can be seen in more mainstream markets now.
(12 min read)
Sinus Institut are a market and social research institute whose expertise in psychology, social science and market research allow them to provide holistic and accurate descriptions of social and target group typology. So they can document basic values, lifestyles and goals as well as everyday attitudes, aspirations, anxieties and expectations for the future to understand what moves like-minded groups of people to choose one item or experience over another. They provide an authentic picture of society instead of a statistical construct and their documents are constantly being updated as society changes. Over recent decades we have seen an accelerated rate of increase in the consumer culture, individualism and globalisation which has resulted in some traditionalist values declining and some rapid growth in the modern values like collaboration and responsibility for the planet.
By understanding how members of a group perceive themselves and their environment - what they do and don’t like, how they live, how they think, how they feel and how they make judgements helps us to build environments that appeal to their rational and ethical values as well as engage with the groups aesthetic, sensuous and emotional preferences.
What motivates our target guest?
The group of like-minded individuals we focus on for this project are a niche group, approx 8% of the population. They value individualism, creativity and mobility. They perceive themselves as mobile of mind and of body and they are motivated to travel for long periods of time, to explore and to connect with people. Their lifestyle is highly social and they love to share ideas, recommendations, resources and experiences. When they travel, they like to immerse themselves in the cities they visit, hang out with locals and feel what it’s like to live in the city day to day. These individuals care about the depletion of natural resources, they adapt their behaviour to reduce the impact on the environment and encourage others to do the same. They don’t fill their homes with possessions or trophies and they only lightly impact the space they inhabit. They are likely to have second hand furniture or pieces that are adaptable and original artwork, often just leaning against the wall. A great internet connection is essential because they are digitally enabled and use this as a way to connect with likeminded people across the world. They were named ‘digital avantguardes’ but we thought that conjured up the wrong image so we dropped the title.
To make sure we kept thinking of our future hotel guests as individuals and didn’t fall into stereotypes, we personified them. We gave them names, a back story and personal likes and dislikes.
Ebba and Lucas were our imaginary guests. Here’s a link to get to know them a bit better if you’d like.
It soon became clear that crucially, these individuals don’t stay in Hotels because it would limit their opportunity to immerse themselves in city life. So, as well as understanding the culture of these people we also needed to objectively look at the existing culture of hotels.
What values and behaviour do we associate with hotels?
Hotels and brands vary greatly in terms of values, service and experience. For example, if you enjoy being social and like to work flexibly you might stay at a Citizen M or an Ace Hotel and relax in their lounges and graze on snacks. If you like fine dining and traditional service you might stay at the Langham or The Edition where the doorman will greet you and the Maitre D’ will organise your table. As much as hotels can vary dramatically, we identified key aspects that nearly all hotels have in common:
Hotels typically provide an escape from daily life, they are a place to retreat to for a couple of hours and be taken care of. The staff cook and clean for you and they bring you drinks. Many can arrange theatre tickets for you and some might even carry your bags and park your car. The intention is usually to make the guests stay as easy, relaxing and special as possible and very little initiative is required from the guest.
Hotels have a routine to the day and general rules of conduct. Check-in and check-out times are standard, there are allocated times for breakfast, lunch and dinner and even a time for your room to be cleaned. It is made clear which members of staff make your drink, or organise a taxi or clean your room and these roles rarely overlap. There is also a routine or typical order to the spaces. When you arrive you expect to see reception first, adjacent to a lounge or bar, from here you are often close to lifts that can take you straight to your guestroom. These all create behavioural structure and order. There are usually fixed protocols too. The beds are made in a specific fashion, guests are greeted with a particular phrase, the lighting settings are pre-set and the mini-bar is stocked in the same order in every room. There is consistency and familiarity.
Social interaction with other hotel guests is often minimal. Typically, if people eat at the hotel they dine with their family, friends or colleagues or they order food to their room. The lounge and dining spaces are designed for small clusters of people who either know each other and there’s limited flexibility. Recently public spaces in Hotels have become much more social and vibrant but there is limited interaction with strangers in most hotels. Often the service has become much less formal but staff rarely strike up big conversations with guests, they offer service and professionalism rather than deep engagement and interactions are often fleeting.
Most of these institutional normalities are the antithesis of what our target guest enjoys. So if we wanted to attract them we needed to redefine what it could mean to be a hotel.
We addressed 4 key behavioural aspects in the development of this new hotel model for our guests.
Summary by Simon Nowroz
We created a fictional hotel to focus and develop our concept. Then we would build a physical space to explain and demonstrate the ideas to others.
A hotel for people who wouldn’t stay in a hotel
We based our hotel concept in SE London and discussed ways to fully immerse it in the local area, to become an anchor for the local creative community. The sketch at the top of this article illustrates the proposal.
Firstly, the host role is very fluid. Instead of a formal receptionist or manager your host would be available to chat with you, organise a key for your room, but they are not standing still waiting for you to need them. It’s important that the host is creative themselves. In this case our host, Carl, might be sketching or reading or talking to one of the guests about the new restaurant he just tried. He will always be available when needed, but instead of waiting and anticipating guests he is relaxed and in the moment. These more fluid staff-guest relationships would impact some of the hotel layout and the typical divide between public space, private space and back-of-house space is blurred allowing for more initiative and choice.
You can see above that locals would be encouraged inside every day to work, teach, socialise or eat, therefore, creating a place to build long friendships with people or just have a great conversation. Inspired by a sharing economy; materials and equipment could be shared or hired and teachings could be traded. It’s easy for large groups of people to eat together and cook together at this hotel and the guests feel empowered to take control of the environment.
The culture is always evolving - the people who stay here leave their mark, either through recommendations, through art they made while they were there or through recipes or books they left behind. On any given day, the hotel is only that specific environment because of the people. The connection you feel to the hotel depends on the people who were there before you and at the same time as you. Guest ‘A’ might’ve found an amazing guitar repair shop to recommend and Guest ‘B’ might’ve pinned up a sketch of Carl the host or their photographs of some interesting protestors last week. Guest ‘C’ might have an infectious laugh. In a more static environment you are only interacting with the space and the staff, here it’s the other guests that make the space unique.
Demonstrating the concept
The last part of the challenge was to build a physical environment to demonstrate the hotel concept. We had a 4m x 7m exhibition space to do this. Our hotel concept needed to be as committed and passionate as its guests, it must convey the key issues.
Firstly, this is an inclusive space. People often hesitate when they see a threshold or a defined entrance, deciding whether to cross it or not. Our hotel should feel inviting and accessible to all people so we broke up the boundary line of the space. By not having a threshold we could entice people in without hesitation.
We used individual pods to represent the guestroom, a private shower room, the social spaces and the public bathroom to provide a snapshot of the entire hotel in one small space.
We put a communal table at the heart of the space and invited makers and creatives to work there, talk to each other and talk to the guests as you can see below.
This communal table used induction cooking tech so in the evening we could warm drinks on it or cook on it and eat together, showing how this table has many uses and the guests determine how it is used.
Most of the ideas encouraged socialising but not all spaces are social. We considered the public bathroom to be semi-private because at times people have great talks in public bathrooms (below, centre image) We decided the shower room was the most private space so the shower area was raised off the floor to demonstrate this. (below, left)
We consider the guestrooms in this hotel to be more sociable and open than usual so we created a clear view from the bedroom to the public spaces to act like a window and allow the energy of the public space to flow into the guestrooms. We also proposed guestrooms that could flex to have more or less guests on any given night as they have friends join them. To show this flexibility the double bed in our space converted into a single bed and even into a sofa, similar to the image below.
The design of the space was really well received. It became animated really quickly and people understood the approach before we explained it.
The most thrilling time for us was about 30 minutes after the 3 day exhibition had opened. The ideas were coming to life. People were making themselves at home in the space.
This just kept increasing with time, people started adding their recommendations, talking to the makers we had in the space, learning new skills, reading about and talking about all the collaborators. People would come and work in the space too. When designing any interiors you create behavioural prompts through spatial volumes and materials, furniture arrangement, lighting and accessories but it’s only once people use the space that you see if people behave as you expected. It was great when our concept was awarded first prize in the competition but the real joy was seeing people use the space in the way we’d hoped.
We took a highly collaborative approach to the design, this was complicated to direct and manage but resulted in a very stimulating environment. (More information about the design approach can be seen here.) One aspect that made the collaborations simpler was that we had chosen to be experimental and by embracing this it became OK for this to not be ‘perfect’. There can be no innovation without tolerance of failure. Besides, if it was ‘perfect’ on day one then people wouldn’t feel comfortable to develop and adapt it and we would’ve missed the entire objective.
It can be a little nerve wracking to aim a design at a precise group and it can feel safer to appeal to the masses but when you target a niche group design appeals not only to those individuals but also people who aspire to be like them or who want to try it on for size and what better place to try out an alternative lifestyle than in a hotel.
It was fantastic to work with Sinus Institute, they have been collecting data since the late 1980s and their research is always evolving. Recently they have been comparing transnational similarities against local values which is fascinating to understand as globalisation increases. As part of this they explain how regional culture, traditions and customs are slow to change and I’m hopeful that embracing this will lead to more depth in more localised and authentic design. You can find out more on their website.
Influencers and collaborators were Joanna Varettas, Anna Kirkham, Nicola Law, Dunia Tigris, Florent Duperrin, Ieva Buthietka, Dan Craner, Jose Sirera, Khue Thuy Tran, Matthias Arnold, Peter Martin Thomas, Joel Butler, Leanne de Barros, Gemma Seitzer, Harry Owen, Tortie Hoare, Simon Nowroz, Claudine O’Sullivan.
