It’s amazing how little has really changed in the hospitality field during the last 50 years or so. Yes we have the corporate chains, centralised design and procurement (some delusional executives might even claim that this is corporate branding and identity), neutral palettes, en-suite loos, beige, in-room loos, auto-charged mini-bars, beige, big oversized beds, beige, non-functional multi-functional in-room vanities cum desk, brown, in-room windows for bathrooms (which we usually have the blinds drawn for privacy that apparently walls can no longer do), brown, flat-screen TVs (hurrah!), brown, rugs instead of carpet, brown, iPod chargers giving you a wake-up call instead of a human being, taupe, Blu Ray, taupe, personalised guestroom aromas, and the superficial list goes on especially with my favourite non-descriptive colour, taupe. But it’s not really design, is it?

In reality hospitality design all boils down to one thing: PEOPLE. Okay, that is more than one [person] but this too is one of the inherent challenges facing designers since we actually started paying attention to the guest and not the colour scheme: everyone is different. Depending on your point of arrival, we should not just be recognising that the younger generation – or whatever the current demographic enumerator we choose to call them now – are the only ones travelling now and in the near future. They too will grow up.

If we take a look at projections from the1950s and 1960s, the concept of hotel design was literally out of this world. But even as recently as the early 2000s we were still seeing design forecasts for hotels of tomorrow, -future, -2020 etc all showing a lot of Sci Fi and very little substance or indeed reality. That being said, who could have predicted how personal electronic communications devices (ECDs) would revolutionise the way we do business, interact with each other and the effect these would have on where and how we travel?

Indeed, the humble telephone in its portable guise has become an indispensable and inseparable part of the modern psyche; a technological comfort blanket in this 24-hour-per-day, seven-days-a-week, need-to-be-in-touch society that we are spawning.

Our phones are used to search and research destinations, properties and reviews. At the hotel we can now check-in, open our guestroom doors, check our bill, internet bank the payment and reserve our ticket home on our ECD, iD, webD thingy, whilst listening to the latest pop album, slaying dragons and daemons and updating our progress through the lobby to our personal social online community obviously agog at our audacity.

But will technology replace design and thus design replace comfort? According to Raj Chandnani, vice president and director of strategy at WATG, technology is one of the most important design considerations that is transforming their approach to planning spaces. Technology is allowing WATG to personalise the guestrooms with music, video content and lighting levels. Technology is supplementing and highlighting design, not replacing it.

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