Optimisation / UK / Hospitality
Designing the hotel room of the future
"The insight was of tremendous value at all stages of the room development. During proof of concept, it focused us on what was most important, and the trials clearly showed the impact of the new room design."
Business issue
The client is one of the UK’s largest hospitality businesses, with more than 75,000 hotel rooms. Room design is fundamental to customers’ experience, and every few years a new generation ‘room of the future’ is required. The objectives are to improve likelihood to return, visit frequency, booking conversion and deliver operational efficiency – both in CAPEX and OPEX.
Our solution
We deployed a multi-disciplinary approach, blending research techniques never used together in a single project before. We started with an insight review, then direct and indirect trend analysis. This was followed by semiotic excursions, customer journey interviews and Censydiam based groups to understand needs. All this came together in a workshop from which the most promising features were tested using conjoint trade-off, incorporating CAPEX and OPEX to give £ROI.
For more information on this case study, get in touch here.
Impact
There was strong ROI for the new room design, having tested it in four hotels (without customers knowing it was new). It has led to an increase in satisfaction and in value for money, both of which link strongly to likelihood to return, which drives higher occupancy and increased profits. The client estimated it could bring a significant multi-million uplift once rolled out across the estate.
It has also gone beyond the original goal of being cost-neutral, with the final design having a lower operating cost than the current room. This is such a significant impact that the client board report cited the importance of rolling it out to drive better customer experience and lower operation cost. Our clients and customers alike are delighted with the work. This project also won the Silver Award for Best Product or Service Development at the UK Customer Experience Awards 2023.
