Dear Jennifer, congratulations on receiving top marks on your thesis! As you noted in your thesis, hotel concept development has barely been addressed in academic literature, so why did you choose to tackle it as the subject of your bachelor thesis? What sparked your interest – besides our close contact during your mentoring year?

Thank you very much! I remember a conversation with a fellow student who enthusiastically told me about your work at MAp. My first thought was: “Hotel concept creators? Is there such a thing?" As probably many others, I had never heard of hotel concept development. A bitter conclusion when you consider that the subject is all the more important nowadays. After all, the hotel industry is facing completely different challenges than it was 10 years ago, when free WiFi was a unique selling point.

During my time as a flight attendant, I had the privilege of staying in many well-known hotels around the world. In contrast to the hotel chains, which can pull a suitable brand out of the drawer for every guest need, independent hotels have to develop their "concept" themselves.

The complexity already begins here; a hotel concept sounds fancy, everyone claims to have one, but in truth the term is abstract and difficult to define. So on the one hand there was the hotel concept development, which from a theoretical point of view is almost undefined, and on the other hand there was the urgency for unique and competitive hotel concepts in practice. A paradox that was made for research work ;-)

Before we get into it, how would you define what a hotel concept is? And why is it so critical to the strategic planning process for hotels?

The simple answer is: a tailor-made and long-term oriented document for the strategic direction of the hotel project. However, this definition would not do justice to the term “hotel concept.” A hotel is much more than a restaurant and overnight accommodation. It is a place of encounter, interaction and sensory experiences. Furthermore, it is also a property and a business model where the needs and expectations of a wide variety of stakeholders meet. As a result, a harmonious interplay of so-called hard and soft factors is required in order to develop a coherent and holistic hotel concept.

The hotel concept is like a puzzle. To solve it, you need a methodical approach and creative imagination. Specifically, a strategic basis is required. This results from a well-founded analysis of the market, environment and trends. An individual concept can then be formed from this, which takes into account aspects such as architecture, design, sensors but also the direct and indirect influences on people and the environment. The result of this development process is a clear “raison d’être” for the hotel project.

What did your study set out to achieve? And what approach and methods did you use to reach this destination, i.e. your overall aim?

Although there are numerous studies on hotel management and project development, to the best of my knowledge, hotel concept development has not been discussed much in theory or in practice. Consequently, with my thesis I wanted to make a small but significant contribution to this existing knowledge gap.

To do this, I wanted to research how the industry understands the term “hotel concept” and how widespread hotel concept development is in the Swiss hotel industry. To this end, I conducted interviews with industry experts, hotel owners and managers. The research focus was on non-branded hotels in rural areas. The exploratory nature of my research enabled me to develop a deep understanding of the topic and to gain insights into the status quo of hotel concept development.

You interviewed both industry experts and hotel managers/owners: what did your findings reveal in terms of their understanding of what hotel concepts are and their practical use? What did you deduce from this?

Basically, the industry experts as well as the hotel owners and managers found it difficult to define a hotel concept in words. This is because a concept is more often associated with an idea than with a strategic document. It is not uncommon for the concept to be understood as part of the business plan in practice.

While the industry experts are generally of the opinion that a hotel concept should be as holistic as possible, hotel owners and managers primarily associate it with their hotel product. For example, they named the extraordinary interior design or the diverse gastronomic offer as important for “their” hotel concept. It was noticeable that the questioned hoteliers developed their concept based on experience, assumptions and gut feeling. Some even honestly admitted that nothing was planned in their hotel, but simply made. This approach is contrary to the expert opinion and the current literature, which suggests that a concept should be based on facts. As a result, it was not surprising that in the five out of six hotel projects examined, no written hotel concept was developed using a strategic planning process.

These facts strongly suggest that written hotel concepts are the exception rather than the rule in the Swiss hotel industry (unless an external consulting agency is involved). A possible reason for this is the fact that the purpose and benefits of hotel concepts are simply too unknown in the hotel industry.

What do you see as the risks to not having a proper hotel concept in place for hotel managers/owners? As it relates to the hospitality industry as a whole, what can we do to mitigate these risks and ensure hotel concept development becomes more commonplace?

Hotel projects are usually long-term, costly and risky projects. I believe that if you want to sail to a distant destination, you need to know the right course to actually get there. Only very few people manage to steer “on gut feeling,” so navigation is the only solution. This guiding document is a holistic hotel concept for all stakeholders involved. Without a hotel concept, however, those stakeholders and partners involved run the risk of losing the course or missing the right one from the start. This may only show up after the opening in the form of operational and financial difficulties. That is why it is important to deal with the hotel concept at a very early stage of the hotel project, regardless of whether it is a new building or renovation.

I see a great opportunity here for hotel consulting agencies as well as industry associations and universities, which can take up the topic further and spread the necessary know-how. For example, students at the Graubünden University of Applied Sciences develop a hotel concept directly on a case study. As young professionals, they can use this knowledge to bring new impulses to companies.

Now that you’ve successfully defended your thesis, what are your post-graduation goals and plans? How do you want to change the hospitality industry?

During my research time, I received great positive feedback and interest from the interviewees surveyed. I'm pleased because it shows that the industry is already rethinking. As a practitioner, however, it is important for me not to lose an understanding of the daily challenges in practice, despite having all the theoretical basics. After all, we don't just want hotel concepts that sound good on paper, but also ones that work in everyday business over the long term. This is a tightrope walk that I will certainly take on in the future.

As always, our final MAp meets question: what makes a hotel experience a truly outstanding one for you personally?

Being a “guest” is always a very personal experience for me and it becomes unforgettable when I am in harmony with the place and the people around me. It doesn't matter whether it's a luxury resort or a guesthouse - because the feeling of "arriving" is not created by star categories or brands, but from the heart.

The start of each new year brings with it a spate of articles touting the most anticipated and hottest hotel openings for the year ahead, and despite the pandemic, 2021 was no different! Just take a look at this Forbes article and this Conde Nast Traveller article to get a sense for the new offerings flooding the market this year alone.

The hotel landscape looked very different 20 years ago, when there were less offerings, bigger players and clearer differentiation between brands. Today, the market is saturated. And if you factor in the disruption of new entrants, such as Airbnb and the like, it is no surprise that customers struggle when faced with so much choice.

So how do hotels discover, create and maintain their competitive edge? How do they distinguish their offering and add value to guests? How do they remain relevant to today’s consumers? The answer is with a strong and sustainable hotel concept.

A hotel concept is the basis for everything that follows. It’s the foundational idea that defines your hotel’s brand, character, product + services, sales + marketing, and more. It curates a distinctive identity in the market and in the eyes of your clearly-defined target group.

Furthermore, it acts as a strategic and creative outline on how to realise a hotel venture by piecing together various elements (“soft” and “hard” facts) and outlining to all stakeholders HOW your hotel should look and feel and WHY that is.

At MAp, we craft our hotel concepts around the following key elements:

• Purpose: WHY you exist beyond making profit. Read here why defining your purpose beyond making profit will actually make you profit.
• Principles: Your vision, mission and values.
• People: The people you are serving with a solution to their problems, as well as the people you are working/partnering with to make an impact.
• Story: The unique story that you – and only you – are telling in order to emotionally connect with your people.
• Positioning + USPs: What differentiates you in the market.

These constituent pieces, together, form one complete whole, laying the foundation of your hotel project.

Whether you are a hotelier looking to develop a boutique hotel or are part of a hotel group looking to reposition your existing hotels, a clearly-defined and sustainable hotel concept offers many benefits:

• Gives you clarity on the what, how, why
• Aligns your stakeholders around a shared purpose and vision
• Enables you to use resources more efficiently (think time, money, etc.) - but also the resources of our planet
• Makes you stand out from the crowd (as you know what you stand for)
• Creates a better future for your hotel and business, for people and planet

Hotels with strong concepts are able to demand a premium price, provide a coherent guest experience, sell and market themselves smartly, recruit talented staff and a community following, and have a marketable platform when pitching for investors and partners.

Our holistic and end-to-end process for developing hotel concepts consists of the following steps:

1) Concept Discovery: Set the groundwork by looking inwards at your goals, motivations, strengths and weaknesses, and outwards at your competition, the market and innovative trends.

2) Concept Development: Using the insights collected in the Discovery phase, address each of the key elements of your hotel concept in order to define its core idea.

3) Concept Activation: Translate your hotel concept into the operations of your hotel, by applying it to your product + services, brand, and sales + marketing.

4) Concept Implementation: Identify strategic partners and ensure they are aligned and in keeping with the hotel concept, all the way up through (re-)launch.

With a strong hotel concept in place, your hotel stands out from the competition. But more importantly, it stands for something. So before kickstarting any type of hotel project, make sure you first establish what your hotel concept is. As MAp says, “First the concept, then comes the rest.”

In need of some inspiration? Check out our Hotel Concept Trends 2021 blog post.