Can Hotels rooms afford to be boring?

I have been very surprised to see how a well-designed product can disrupt the conventions of a boring product such as headphones.

Electronics usually become redundant and out of touch within months because of new features that brands try to sell us all the time (TV, HiFi, Phones...). When it comes to headphones, it is more difficult as it only serves up to 3 functionalities: listening privately your music, cancelling noise around you and being fashioned. This last aspect was totally ignored for decades and now we can see two leading brands that were not in the market a few years ago: Beats by Dr. Dre and SkullCandy.

These two brands took a dull product and made it ‘In” and interesting by disrupting what we knew. Red became fashionable.

Big overhead phones have to be visible from a distance. We want to make sure everyone notice the color, the logo and how cool we look.

I keep thinking what if the hotel industry took this way of thinking when they re-design what we already experience in hotels rooms and surprise us. Does the Wow factor only applies to brands like W Hotels or smart hoteliers like The Seven or Citizen M. Do you really need to have a lot of money to rethink what a hotel room should be in the future?

Standard rooms with International brands like Holiday Inn, Premier Inn, Novotel are boring but it's OK because they try to reach a worldwide audience and disrupt to the minimum the everyday traveller.

But if you are independent, surely you should stay away from these models and look up more to products like Yotel or Le Citizen and be creative. Travellers remember much more unique products and tend to talk about them with their peers (word of mouth, review sites, Facebook, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr)

So re-think about your hotel room. Change the décor. Change the setting. And share your picture of your new designed room to guillaume@hotel-blogs.com .

I will make sure your contributions are shared on our Facebook wall and that the winner with the most votes gets some free advertising on HotelBlogs.

Each entry has to mention your hotel name, location and if possible your Twitter or Facebook name.

Good luck!

Comments

[Balisquare]

Surely no one wants to stay in a hotel room when a boring hotel must make its occupants comfortable

[Mark Waugh]

no its not afford to be boring
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[Hotel Finder]

Great article. Keep up the good work. Thanks.

[rhinoplasty procedure]

Surely, they can't afford to be boring with the presence of other good hotels. Travelers can pick an array of good hotels in any area.

[Guillaume Thevenot]

@Martin - I need to check this Hotel Taylor. I come across the 9 hotel as well the other day nearby Gare du Nord. Seems like a nice hotel with a touch of innovation in there.

[Martin Soler - Hotel Marketing]

Hi Gillaume, totally agree with you. Chains can be boring because their guests want consistency across the world. So it's got to be a one-size-fits-all type of look. But independent hotels can't afford it. I wrote about it on my blog some time ago, not only is this important for marketing it's going to make a huge difference in ADR. It's an investment that every hotelier should do. The owner of Hotel Taylor in Paris managed to redo the entire hotel for pretty little money and check it out now. It's one of Paris' most famous affordable boutique hotels. It's a long way from The Seven and other's like that but with about 5% of the investment of The Seven, Hotel Taylor is making about 30-40% of the turnover.