Do not disturb
Meanwhile at the Citizen M hotel in Amsterdam, check-in is done through a self-serve computer and each of the hotel’s rooms comes equipped with a ‘mood pad’ that allows guests to control lighting, temperature, curtains and television to create the perfect ambience.
Closer to home, low-cost UK hotel chain Premier Inn has recently opened its first high-tech hub hotel, in London’s Covent Garden. Central to its offer is a new app that allows customers to book a room, check in, order breakfast and change the temperature or lighting in their room. The app also acts as a kind of concierge, providing customers with a list of things to see and do, as well as recommendations for places to eat and drink in the surrounding area.
With these sorts of automated services becoming more commonplace, it seems these days you can stay in a hotel without having to exchange more than a few words with staff or fellow guests. This is in stark contrast to the thinking behind that other major trend in travel: sharing economy-style businesses such as Airbnb, which offer local recommendations and unique, sociable experiences.
Smart and social
But does a high-tech hotel have to mean a human-interaction-free stay? And is that what hotel guests want? Not according to Dr Federico Casalegno of the MIT Mobile Experience Lab in Cambridge, near Boston. His team are currently working with Marriott hotels to develop a different, more social type of smart hotel.
“The hospitality industry is currently undergoing a huge transformation,” says Casalegno. “Spare Room, Airbnb and mobile apps have, in the past 10-15 years really disrupted the business model of how hotels interact with clients and how they make profit.”
As a result, Casalegno and his team at the Lab, which focuses its work on using personal mobile devices to “unlock potential in the physical world”, are working with Marriott to attempt to innovate within the domain of hospitality. Currently, he says, this means leveraging cutting edge technology to give Marriott guests a better experience. “We’re really interested in seeing how you can design a hotel lobby or a physical space when the so-called internet of things is becoming more and more real,” explains Casalegno. “How can you blend physical and digital data into a unique new experience?”
According to Casalegno, the goal of the project was not to design a smart home, or even a smart room, but instead to design a “physical space where intelligence supports social interaction and connectivity.” In order to do this, the team designed a fully working prototype for the Marriott hotel in Cambridge, near MIT, that Casalegno describes as an “ecosystem of services and technology”.
This ecosystem consists of three interlocking elements: a mobile app, a visualisation screen and an interactive table. The mobile app allows guests to check in to the hotel – so far, so standard smart.
But the difference here compared to other high-tech hotels is that once that guest signals that they’ve arrived at the hotel, the app looks into (with relevant permissions) that guest’s social networks, such as LinkedIn, to see what potential connections could be made with other Marriott guests during their stay.
The app also asks the guest to share their interests (such as culture, food, or fitness). Then any potential connections, such as a colleague from the same company, a friend from school, or someone with the same interests, will be flagged up to the guest. The data will also appear anonymously on the centrally-located visualisation screen, and the concierge at the hotel will have access to this information in order to offer tailored services to guests.
A new level of hospitality
“When we tested [the app] in the Marriott in Cambridge, the concierge saw that there were guests interested in yoga, so they hired one of most skilled yoga teachers in the city, and the hotel gave a free yoga lesson,” says Casalegno. “They also saw that there were people interested in startups, so they organised a wine, cheese and startup event. This brings the notion of hospitality to a different level: hotels can customise events and host clients in a very different way.”
The third element of the ecosystem is an interactive table. When a guest places their smartphone on its surface, the table glows, creating a visual display if two people sitting at it are friends, colleagues or have a shared interest. In theory, Casalegno believes that this table could, and eventually will, be replaced by any physical object: a chair or a bar could just as well support this type of social interaction. The object itself doesn’t matter, he says, it’s about physical objects providing visual cues to allow strangers to connect; about objects recognising individuals personally and providing useful, tailored information.
While the current project is based on hotels, Casalegno believes it could easily expand beyond traditional hospitality to airports, shopping malls and university campuses. In the future, he believes this coming together of physical and digital data will be commonplace, and this will dictate where designers’ focus should be.
“Just think, five years from now, every table, every couch, every lamp, every library could be somehow connected and able to talk to you through your watch, your mobile, or through your smart jacket.
“So how do we design for that?”

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