Spatial and experience design as a driver for growth

From a business perspective, the guest experience and desirability matter a great deal, as they affect the volume and timing of sales, the level of spending, customer reviews, and the likelihood of repeat visits. Desirability creates a sense of urgency – the greater the appeal, the greater the concern over future availability. Therefore, operators who make their offers more attractive and experiences more enjoyable are likely to see higher sales and more advance bookings. The question is how?

As spatial designers who specialise in hospitality, our objective is simple. It’s to drive hospitality revenue and profits by creating places and experiences that guests love, and using strategy as a foundation for high-quality design. It is all about creating exceptional hospitality experiences for both guests and operators.

How design shapes the customer journey and experience

Every hospitality venue has a unique and complex personality. Some aspects are tangible, some intangible, some are virtual, while others are experiential – such as aesthetics, service, value and overall quality of experience. These are all touchpoints within the customer journey, and they all shape the guest experience and desirability. The guest experience encompasses everything from the initial impression during the booking process to the experience itself and the memories formed afterward.

Choosing a hospitality or leisure experience is a personal decision, often driven by emotions such as the need for escapism, connection with others or nature, and downtime. Images provide potential customers with a sense of the guest experience and impression of what to expect. Is it cheap and cheerful or higher quality? How good are the facilities? Do they appear modern and well-maintained? How do I feel about spending time here? Is the food offer inviting, and is it a place where I’ll want to spend time? Can I imagine my friends and family enjoying themselves here? Do the leisure facilities evoke feelings of excitement and fun?  

While customers may not be aware of it when booking an experience, experiential design plays a significant role in the conclusions that they reach – it is therefore an important sales tool.  Furthermore, the first interaction with a customer touchpoint is often visual, and therefore, interior and exterior architectural design helps form first impressions and shape perceptions of quality and value. It also allows hospitality operators to tell their brand story and to reinvent and evolve as younger customers enter the market. As well as providing visual guidance, interior architectural design sets the stage for guest experiences and influences consumer behaviour. For example, if a restaurant or holiday park has a pleasant aesthetic, more guests are likely to visit, stay longer, and return. Similarly, arcades or competitive socialising zones that are immersive amplify the experience, leading to greater engagement, more fun, and higher spend.

Strategy and cost efficiency

Since quality means different things to different people, achieving something that one group considers exceptional often requires a degree of personalisation. However, this must be balanced with demand. The starting point, therefore, is understanding which customer segments are right for a particular hospitality and or leisure operator and determining the size of that market. Alongside this, it is essential to capture the essence of what makes a venue special—the unique qualities that a target audience will find particularly appealing. All of this requires a blend of both art and science, combined with local knowledge.

While being price-competitive is important, leading on price is difficult, as it requires razor-thin margins and tends to attract the most price-sensitive guests – who are also often the least loyal. At the opposite end of the spectrum are guests with low price sensitivity who demand exceptional quality – a market likely too niche for most operators. Somewhere between the two lies a middle ground, representing the majority of guests who are motivated by a combination of price and quality. The key is finding the optimal balance – and to a certain extent, this relies on achieving a high degree of cost efficiency.

Delivering high-quality guest experiences and value for money, while also making a profit requires that quality and cost efficiency coexist in harmony. Well-designed hospitality and leisure facilities that are valued by guests, and don’t cost the earth to implement, help to achieve this balance and give hospitality operators a competitive edge. This is where high-quality design and refurbishment experience, coupled with specialist industry knowledge, come into their own. For example, the cost of getting the wrong wall colour is roughly the same as getting it right. And while higher-specification finishes do cost more, combining high-quality interior architectural design with a good specification can result in an excellent finish at a fraction of the cost – thereby maximising cost efficiency. With diligence and forward planning, high-quality interior architectural design can provide customers with what they want at the right price, and hospitality operators with what they need at the right cost.

Value is a two-way street

Value-led guests want a high-quality, engaging, and memorable guest experience. If a hospitality or leisure offer is compelling enough, they will pay a slight premium for it and book earlier to avoid disappointment. In return for delivering a high-quality guest experience, hospitality operators can expect better margins, increased visibility and sales, and greater customer loyalty. Additionally, in return for keeping guests entertained with a broad range of high-quality indoor and outdoor hospitality and leisure experiences, hospitality operators can expect a higher and more consistent level of on-site spend.  These conditions lay the foundations for customer loyalty and organic growth.

Timing

Right now, it does feel as if we are going through a period of considerable change. I had an interesting experience of this when I started my first business in 2000, just after the dot-com crash. At the time, and with some experience behind me, I was pretty confident that I knew what the identity of my new business would be. However, as I was working on strategy two things happened. First, it dawned on me that the industry and economic landscape had changed, and then I realised that these changes had formed a new opportunity – one which turned my original idea on its head. This was a lightbulb moment and it led me to a new and very different plan. Off the back of that, with a modest investment, I was able to build a valuable company that employed over 50 staff, in just over 5 years. The key to this was strategy and timing, and getting the two in sync. This is what allowed me to catch the next wave as it was unfolding, and from there, the project felt more like a downhill race than an uphill struggle. It also goes to show that while change can be challenging, it can also create some fantastic opportunities.

How we can help

Our goal is simple: to create environments that guests love and to enable hospitality businesses to thrive. We start with strategy, as it lays the foundation for and informs high-quality design and capital investment ideas. From there, we identify the areas where the most value can be realised, conduct feasibility and impact assessments, and develop plans and design concepts — providing operators with all of the information they need to make informed decisions. If a plan is agreed upon, we can then implement it either as a turnkey design-and-build service or by working within an existing supply chain. The founders of Gutxi are; Mark Green who brings over 25 years of hospitality and architectural design expertise, and myself John Gaughan, and I bring over 25 years of business strategy and business development experience. As a team we offer a unique blend of creative design and commercial experience. Behind us is a team of engineers, designers, fit-out project managers, and consultants with a broad range of specialist skills.

We design and build environments for leisure, sports and entertainment, social eating and drinking, quick-service dining and takeaways, competitive socialising as well as general resort facilities. Our customers include leading holiday park and resort operators as well as a host of restaurant, bar, entertainment, and leisure resort operators.