How might we transform a work culture that delivers on ICON’s brand values, consistent from backend to front?
- Project date: 2016 October - 2017 January
- Project team: Developed in collaboration with Hsiao-Han Liu, Vasinee Saeng-uraiporn, Victoria Koo, Yu-Wei Zhang
- Project client: Hotel ICON
- Project location: Hong Kong
- Project tutor: Ronald Jones
- My role: User researcher, Research analyst, Design director, Graphic designer.
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Project background
The goal of the project is to envision the future of hospitality and the implications to issues of authenticity in experience. In this project we worked with Hotel ICON Limited, which is the world leading teaching and research hotel that integrates learning and practical training in a fully operating-service environment.
In view of hotel ICON's upcoming renovation in 4-5 years time, consider how the concept solutions prepare for the new guest experience, as well as if by designing and manipulating the hospitality experience, can we still claim it to be authentic?
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The research
In order to unpack authenticity in hospitality and understand what authenticity means, we have done interviews, hotel observations, competitor & trend analysis and hospitality case studies.
The second part of our research is a qualitative study in Hotel ICON to understand the dynamics of the hotel and gather insight from staff & guest shadowing, interviews and co-creation workshops.
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Key insights
- Authenticity has become the future of hospitality. The definition of hospitality is evolving and expanding by following people’s tastes, desires and satisfaction which is about real authentic experiences and genuine interactions.
- Authenticity cannot be designed but can be triggered. By providing an experience consistent with values of trust, honesty and empathy, it creates unique and personalised service interactions.
Therefore, the future of Hotel ICON is to create the conditions for triggering the authenticity of the organisation internally and deliver externally to guests.
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The solutions
To build the future of hospitality in Hotel ICON, we propose "Aura", changes in 6 areas. See the image below.
Below is a video for future scenario of Hotel ICON.
01 HOLISTIC INDICATOR
Happy staff equals happy guests. We propose to enhance overall psychological wellbeing of staff by creating new success measures (technical skills, personal soft skills and wellbeing as key assessment metrics) and new career progression.
02 CULTURE OF MENTOR
To strengthen staff engagement and retention, we propose to build management-staff, and cross departments’ staff relationship to better exchange the experience and inspiration, thereby keeps the organization professional yet with fresh thinking.
03 TEAM SPIRIT
To build Hotel ICON’s spirit and positive work atmosphere, we create regular opportunities for staff to enhance communication across departments, deepen relationships and creates the aura which guest can feel.
04 SEAMLESS SYSTEM TOOLS
It integrates all devices on one platform as we found that time can be saved by reducing task repetition, call interruptions and improving internal communication between teams.
05 INTERDISCIPLINARY WAY OF WORKING
This is to encourage staff to be more collaborative across departments, and apply holistic approach to work. We will equip teams with design thinking tools to provide them with new ways of thinking & problem solving in their daily work.
06 COLLABORATIVE WORKSPACE
The idea is to create a conducive environment for informal interactions in a relaxed environment, this encourages more dialogue and creativity for interactions across the organization.
All in all, these 6 areas of change helps establish Hotel ICON as the industry role model, pioneering authentic leadership, interdisciplinary practices and transformative engagements.
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Exhibition of work
The project was exhibited in WIP show 2017 in Royal College of Art.
