Hyatt and gravitytank Give Lab Attendees a Look at Hotels of the Future
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| Clay Boylan sketches his idea at The Hotel of the Future CIW Lab sponsored by Hyatt Hotels Corporation and gravitytank. |
“Breakfast has been the same for the past 10 years.”
That was one of the sticky notes participants of the Chicago Ideas Week (CIW) The Hotel of the Future Lab posted on a bulletin board during an exercise to share their hotel experiences.
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| Lab attendees share their ideas on colorful sticky notes. |
But during the two-hour event Hyatt’s chief innovation officer, Jeff Semenchuk, showed everyone that things can be different. The Lab, which was sponsored by gravitytank and Hyatt Hotels Corporation, was one of about 100 hands-on experiences people dove into during the fall event Oct. 14 – 20.
And when it comes to reimagining the hotel experience, Hyatt has been busy.
Semenchuk and his colleagues have experimented with user-centered designs for the past two years to create a home away from home for their guests. On Oct. 20, they collaborated with strategists from innovation consultancy gravitytank to walk a group of about 35 CIW Lab participants – mostly frequent travelers – through their creative process.
“We are so excited to get insights and ideas from a lot of wonderful people who spend a lot of time in hotels,” Semenchuk said. “So instead of us telling them what we are doing, we take this as an opportunity to ask them, ‘If you were to design your ideal hotel, what would it look like?’”
The Lab started with an empathy interview exercise at gravitytank’s spacious River North loft, where participants shared their visions of future hotels in pairs to find common themes.
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| Salima Mangalji, 25, explains her idea to her teammates. |
Christi Gidcumb, a consultant who travels almost every week, said she wants to meet new friends during her hotel stays.
“It will be awesome for people who don’t know each other to have dinner together (at the hotel),” the 33-year-old said as her partner, Yong Zhang, a department head at GD Medicine, nodded.
After the sharing exercise, the participants broke into teams of five to brainstorm ways to improve their hotel experience. Guided by Hyatt and gravitytank staff, they sketched their ideas on paper cards, posted the drawings on bulletin boards and rearranged the cards into a coherent story, debating about which big idea they would pitch to the entire group.
“Make it huge,” Scott Beveridge, gravitytank’s lead strategist, instructed his team. “Make it as big as you can.”
The innovation his group came up with? An integrated phone app that could act as front desk, room key, menu and more.
To illustrate their idea, Beveridge’s team rehearsed a skit, using foam iPhone models as their props. Their performance earned a round of applause from the audience.
“It’s pretty cool,” team member Pete Tavara said of the activity. “It’s pretty hands-on. I like it a lot.”
Semenchuk said he hopes the participants walk away not just with ideas to improve their hotel experiences, but with a new way to approach other problems in life.
“It’s possible to design the future by being intentional about understanding people’s deep emotional needs and aspirations,” he said. “I hope they will be inspired and take it back to work challenges, even home situations.”
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Written by: Jia You
Photography by: Jia You
