Journeys through space and time

Some of you may know that I designed and am developing Somnus-Neu® – which will change the traveler experience within hotels. I’m going to outline why I think the time is now.

As a frequent traveler for 20 years I pretty much lived in hotel rooms – I’ve been through the $6.00 a minute phone charges – they’ve gone now. I’ve been through the carrying 20 different adaptors to get online via dial up – different calling codes, country codes, access numbers in the days of America Online, and they’ve pretty much gone. I’ve been through the $15.00 rent a flic rip off movie charges, which aren’t gone yet but they will be soon. I’ve spoken to Scott Williams who was head of marketing for the Starwood group and talked about low take up rates on these “charge through the nose” movies, so I would say the writing is on the wall with that.

I’ve also noticed that me and most of the people I know that spend a lot of time in hotels spend 90% of the time in their rooms on or in the bed -working, sleeping, being online, watching T.V or movies and I know that the desk and chair is favored by less than 10% of people.

I also know that 97% of travelers want music in their rooms.

For those 20 years I was living in hotel rooms I worked in the music industry, as a sound engineer, and a production designer – for 17 years I worked with the Red Hot Chili Peppers ,  also The Fun Loving Criminals, spent months on the U2 Popmart tour, toured europe twice with Motorhead, was in Germany with the Pogues when the wall came down, watched the crowd pull MTV’s camera crane down in the Hammerstein Ballroom when I was Production Manager for Janes Addiction 97 come back U.S tour, played rock in rio to 150,000 with Nirvana, Chili Peppers and Alice in Chains the list goes on.

Lots of things happened, lots of stories adventures and changes, but 2 things that struck me, the music business changed right before our eyes, after having a heated discussion with Mettallicas manager as they were suing Napster I realized that the force of the rising tide was much much bigger than one man or one band or even one way of doing things. Which is essentially what happened – the music business got trumped by not adapting quick enough, by not being agile, by being greedy and by what really came down to ripping people off, the bands and the fans, and they got their ass’s kicked.

The other thing that is clearly evident – people respond to experience – put 50,000 people inside a stadium they react, put 50,000 people inside a stadium inside the show itself and they REALLY react.  People respond to stimuli. If you can personalize that experience and make it unique to the person, then you’ve really won.

Hotels will need to change – people aren’t stupid, they know that over paying for out of date movies when streaming media is everywhere is not cool, they know that access to the internet is pretty much a given in this day and age and will only continue to become better, faster and more accessible. They carry Mp3 players and want to be able to listen to music, they use google maps so they can find their way around a new city, they talk on trip advisor and discuss the hotels they liked and didn’t like. So the business model that relies on extra charges for things that are essentially free will have to shift gears.

The single best advertising a hotel can have, is all the guests talking about what an amazing experience they had, the business model will have to revolve around great experience, being better, having a point of difference, standing out from the crowd, getting people to talk and come back, refererals etc

Do I think it’s for everyone?  No, some people aren’t comfortable with technology, some people don’t hold design as something important, and there will always be places for this type of person. But what I am saying is that there are lots of other people and they’re pretty smart. You might be one of them