Creating a concept for a hotel room of tomorrow for Hotel Haaga Central Park
I was the Project Lead and together with a team of four developed a hotel room concept of tomorrow for Hotel Haaga Central Park. We utilised multiple different tools and methods, conducted extensive research, identified new customer segments, developed multiple prototypes and tested them with customers. Our concept creates value for the hotel, increases customer satisfaction and well-being, and offers innovative new products, services and experiences.
Project details
Hotel Haaga Central Park
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4 months
Me, Ninni Helminen, Hansku Vihervaara, Anh Hoang
Service Designer, Project Lead
Hybrid
Practices
Methods & Tools
Service Design, Concept Design
Literature Search, Market Review, Trend Review, Benchmarking, Survey, Interviews, Affinity Diagram, Lotus Blossom, Personas, Brainstorming, Brainwriting, How Might We, Point of View, Value Proposition Canvas, Customer Journey Map, Business Model Canvas, Service Blueprint, Prototyping, Testing, Moodboard, Figma, MS365, Gantt Chart
Background
Hotel Haaga Central Park is a small and independent wellness-focused hotel in Helsinki. They have 120 rooms, 2 suites, various meeting rooms and event spaces, and a diverse offering of wellness services. They are a Green Key certified and Sustainable Travel Finland recognized hotel committed to sustainable and environmentally friendly practices. The hotel is said to be for people who want to relax, live comfortably, and tread their own paths.
Our objective was to design a hotel room concept for the two suites of the hotel. We could design either a different concept for each room, or one concept for both. Our concept should create value for the hotel, support and increase customer satisfaction and well-being. The rooms should offer innovative new products, services and experiences for the hotel and its customers. We should ideally identify and present new customer segments, create customer personas, and customer journeys.
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The desired outcome was to deliver a full concept book for the hotel room of tomorrow. Our concept should include innovative, trendy ideas, products, services, and experiences. We should predict and describe the different functions and design ideas of the room. We should present the new customer segments, personas, and customer journeys. Our concept book should also help producing creative contents for the Finnish Hotel of Tomorrow 2.0 project this was a part of.
Quick Navigation
Gathering understanding
Survey
We began the project by creating and releasing a comprehensive survey to understand the perception of wider audience on the ideal hotel room experience.
We asked basic demographics, most common reasons for staying, how frequently they stayed at hotels, factors influencing the choosing of a hotel and their level of importance and evaluating given features in hotels in terms of importance for them. We asked them to describe what was their ideal or best hotel room experience like, explain the most memorable hotel room they had ever been to, what made it so special, what they liked the most of and what special features or amenities they especially paid attention to. What annoys them the most in hotel rooms, what do they typically miss or lack the most, what they wish hotel rooms had that they currently do not. What amenities or services they wish hotel rooms would provide to enhance their stay, and how could they better meet their needs and preferences. How do they envision the hotel room of the future to be like. Evaluate given features and their level of importance, what other features do they find important when choosing a hotel room and why. How likely would they use the given features if they were available.
We used a lot of open-ended questions to gain deeper, more thorough, subjective, and qualitative insights of the topic and not limiting them to given options.
Visiting the hotel
Then we met with the key persons and visited the hotel. We got a tour around the premises and while touring the premises we asked questions, did observations, took pictures with our phones, recorded discussions with a permission, wrote down notes on our phones and notebooks, and took measurements of the suite. After touring we interviewed the two key persons.
We wanted to gain understanding of the current situation of the hotel and deeper insights on this project. We asked about how did they market and sell the suites and services and what kind of partnerships they have. What kind of occupancy rates, length of stays, and reservation processes they have. What kind of customers the suites have and what kind of data they could give us. What did they more specifically want from these rooms and these concepts – more customers, new audience, bigger return of investment – what is the main driver behind this and do we have any kind of limitations. What have been the most liked and disliked features in the current rooms, and what do they get the most feedback about. What are the main goals and priorities in terms of guest experience and service delivery. How does the hotel differentiate themselves in the market. What challenges do they foresee in the future and how do they prepare for them. What market trends and customer insights have influenced the decision to develop this concept. What else should we know and take into account.
Literature search, market and trend review, benchmarking
After the hotel visit, for the next few weeks, we continued with our research to build understanding about the key topics. We did research and literature search and utilised AI to give most recent and relevant sources and keywords. We learned about wellness and well-being, wellness tourism and trends, Green Key Certification, Hotel Haaga Central Park, and their customer reviews on other platforms. We looked into hospitality trends, megatrends, and innovation. We benchmarked innovative, creative hotels in Finland and abroad. We explored Gen Z and Millennials for potential new customer segments using AI given hashtags in Google, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.
Interviews
We contacted and met Ari Björkqvist, the author of the publication of Concepting the Hotel of Tomorrow 2009, for a semi structured, in-person interview. We had read his work about the rooms he designed and wanted to further hear his insights. We sent him a set of 13 interview questions prior to the interview and gave a presentation of our findings from the survey and insights from the visit at Hotel Haaga at the before the interview began.
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We conducted interviews about brand awareness of Hotel Haaga Central Park to measure the level of recognition and familiarity of the brand. To get qualitative data in addition to the survey data, we conducted interviews and asked the participants to describe their own idea of the hotel room of tomorrow. We also conducted interviews with three industry experts, meeting two interior designers and a lighting expert, gathering valuable insights into design and lighting solution considerations in hotel room experiences, as well as future predictions.
To help visualise timelines and milestones, we generated a Gantt Chart for our project. Gantt Chart is a great tool to provide a visual representation of the projects schedule allowing everyone easily to see the project plan, how it is progressing and are we on schedule. It also allows the participants to grasp when there is overlapping in task initiation during the project.
We created preliminary profiles with I am – I want – What annoys me -model using Post-its, drafted a quick customer journey on paper, identified issues and created solutions for two biggest issue areas using drawing on paper, Post-its, and Lego's.
These exercises helped us identify weaknesses and opportunities during the different stages and continued to strengthen the common topics, themes, criteria, and idea for our concept that had begun to formulate during our research. We also identified preliminary design drivers for the project.
Gathering insights
Next we met to go through some of the survey results and discuss the key findings. We already got many great insights, certain themes continuously came up, and the basis for the concept continued to build stronger. We agreed everyone would go through their research data and highlight the key points, write them down on light yellow Post-it notes, preparing us for the Affinity Diagram we would do next. We used MS Excel and MS Forms to analyse the survey responses and extract the meaningful insights from the responses. We created persona cards from this data for further use, but in the end did need them.
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Filtering had been done throughout the research process, as we gathered the data and insights that seemed most relevant and left out the rest. When gathering the key insights for the Affinity Diagram, we did the same – only the most important and relevant insights from our notes and materials were written down on the Post-its. This was done based on all of our individual judgement. We had gone through all our research ourselves, so we knew it the best, we could identify which had come up the most during our research and which was most important.
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Before the next meeting, we visited the hotel once more. The other suite had been booked when we first visited the hotel, so we went back to see and document it now that it was available. We used Remarkable2 tablet to write down notes, ti is a great, modern tool for taking notes, as it combines paper with digital and allows easy sharing with others. We also drew the way to the room from the reception and got a floor layout from the reception to help in the creation of the customer journeys later on. The Green Key folder was also available only in physical form, so to get the current practices of the hotel, we had to browse the folder there. We took pictures of the main insights to consider later on while developing the concept.
Affinity Diagram and Lotus Blossom
We met for a full day working together at Oodi library in one of their working spaces. We began with Affinity Diagram to categorise and analyse our vast amount of data together and identify the key insights from it. We had not had enough time to prepare all the Post-its beforehand after all, so we began by writing the rest. Then we placed all the Post-it’s on one wall, almost 300 of them, and read them out loud one by one. This helped us to paint the image of recurring themes and key factors in our mind, hearing them coming up again and again.
Next, we started identifying categories, each telling a category they would collect all the related Post-its of, place them vertically from top to bottom on another wall and the topic name on the top of row with a different colour. Similar categories we placed next to each other. One gathered all Post-its related to sleeping, other related to room design, other related to sustainability, and so on. This way we would not accidentally collect the same ones but would work in harmony. Some of the categories where more narrow, some more broad, as different individuals we grasped the concepts of the topics a bit differently. Every here and then we paused to look at the walls, thinking and discussing. We kept going until we could not place any Post-it’s under any categories and these were filtered out.
We rearranged some of the Post-it’s to see if we could delete the smaller categories and combine them under bigger ones. Affinity Diagram was great for these first steps as it helped to gather, analyse, arrange and categorize vast amount of data, but we found using it for further categorization a bit difficult, as many of the insights could be under many different categories and the categories could be named in so many different ways. We now had the main categories and could identify their subcategories, but to go deeper we changed to Lotus Blossom, which considers the interconnectedness of things better. It helped us to filter the categories recognised with using the
Affinity Diagram to further define the design factors.
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We identified the main categories, then began placing the related themes around them, working in harmony just like with Affinity Diagram. From Affinity Diagram and Lotus Blossom insights it became clear that we had 6 main design drivers where all our categories could be placed under. In the end we collected the Post-it's from the wall and combined some of them together, so in a way we did a third categorisation.
Later on we digitised both Affinity Diagram and Lotus Blossom insights from the Post-it´s Using MS Word and MS Whiteboard.
Customer Segments
The next week we gave ChatGPT the digitised Affinity Diagram data to create customer
segments and profiles. We used the following prompt: “Your role is to act as a Service Designer. You have gathered data from your research, and your job is to now create different customer profiles based on the data given. The data will be given to you in two or three parts.” These profiles were a really good foundation to build the profiles on and we used Figma to create them.
While working we noticed that none of them represented one of the customer segments we had identified in the design drivers, so we gave a new prompt. One of the suggested profiles was Tech Savvy, but based on our research, it is not as big of a thing anymore, as technology is such a natural part of our lives. We combined the relevant elements from this profile to the others instead of having its own. We edited the names of the profiles, improved the descriptions, and added keywords, age groups, and frustrations. We also created a customer persona card template, for a more specific persona with name, age, location, biography, motivations and frustrations, to be made based on each customer profile we had created.
ChatGPT was a great help making these profiles, as it is a lot faster analysing the given data and recognising patterns than a human is, and as we had done the research ourselves and knew the material well, we were able to critically evaluate the validity of the suggestions it gave us.
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Before moving onto the idea generation phase, we met to clarify the project criteria, motives, problems and others from the Affinity Diagram, Lotus Blossom and Customer Profile materials, using MS Word on our Teams. We had all the knowledge already, we just had to organise it correctly under these categories and formulate them into sentences.
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We also created the preliminary customer profile descriptions into visually appealing, actual profile cards with backstories to enhance comprehension and empathy. We used MS PowerPoint and printed them for us to use later on.
Generating ideas
Finally, it was time for idea generation. We had booked a classroom from Haaga-Helia UAS Pasila campus for a full day - we had requested a room with maximum amount of space to draw on the
whiteboards and walls. We began by writing a preliminary plan on one of the whiteboards of
what to cover during the day.
We started working by brainstorming on one white board anything that came to our mind related to this concept and project. At this point a lot of the things were based on the research and insights from before, some ideas were new. We then continued working on another white board, dividing it into different categories to help ideation, and began building our ideas there in those sections. The phases were Pre-experience, Arrival, Room Design, Services/Products, and Post-Experience.
Then we wiped out the first board and used it for combined Brainwriting and How might we method. We wrote 9 How might we questions on the board and divided them into their own sections. Then we worked on them like on a Brainwriting sheet, everyone began in their own section, writing one idea, and moving then to another one and continued building and adding under someone else’s ideas.
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Using whiteboards allowed us to see both the big pictures and all the details related to them at a glance. We were able to step back, think, and step closer again to add more. All of us were able to work on things simultaneously and we were able to work on multiple big entities at the same time, each supporting the other helping to build on them. Brainstorming was a great way to get started and see what topics come up. We did also go back to our materials to add things that were important but did not come to our minds. Generating ideas can sometimes be difficult, so creating sections to guide as a context helped us to focus our thinking for the second whiteboard. The combination of Brainwriting and How might we did the same – the questions provided the context to build on, and using Brainwriting method of writing only one thought, and moving on to the next, building on the idea of someone else, also supported our thinking and ideation. Using different colour pen each, we could keep track where we could write next.
Then we began working on the Customer Journey Maps. First, we created a wider one from pre-experience to post-experience, then a narrower for the room experience only. We included stages, activities, touchpoints, thoughts and emotions, and pains and gains. We continued on building on all of these together until we felt like we were done for now and could not contribute anything new at this point.
Before ending the day, we planned what materials we needed to get and bring for the prototyping day. As mentioned before, we did not need to do specific filtering phase at any point, because we did filtering throughout the process. During our research, we gathered key data and left out the rest. When gathering key points for analysing the data, we did the same. During the Affinity Diagram and Lotus Blossom, we did the same – the most important categories and topics became really clear, and we left out the less important ones. When building the Customer Personas and Profile Cards, it further crystallized the key points. When doing Brainstorming, Brainwriting, Customer Journey Maps and other tools, the key aspects come there and everything else is left out. Our concept was very strong and very clear from the start, all the different sources brought up the same things over and over again.
Prototyping and testing
FInally, it was time for creating our prototypes. We had acquired and brought a large variety of supplies for this day – cardboards, wooden floor pieces, bathroom tiles, paint samples, fabric samples and what not. We decided to create 3 different prototypes: a cardboard mock-up of the hotel room, and drawing on paper for the two other solutions. We also included different materials and colours for the customers to choose their favourites of. Cardboard model and the colour and material choices were quite standard way of visualising a concept. We wanted to see what kind of room designs different people preferred to combine them into an ideal one including all the best practices and ideas. The colour and material choices enabled us to validate the insights from the research as well as the image we had built in our mind. The other two were innovative solutions we wanted to know if there was truly a need for.
We made the cardboard mock-up with the room walls, cut cardboard pieces to represent furniture and decorative elements and named them, and cut blank pieces for customers to add the ones they felt were missing. We put up the customer profiles we had printed before and planned that each participant would choose one that fit them best. We created the rough prototypes for the two other solutions simply drawing and writing on paper. We glued the other to a cardboard and connected the other to another one with metallic wires so the pages could be flipped while presenting. We planned most of the testing and how it should be done and in what order.
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We decided to invite people to our team member’s office for testing, with 15-minute slots for each and 15-minute safe time to rearrange for the next tester. On the testing day we travelled to the office and set up a big table in the office with our prototypes so that they were in a good flow for the customers to test.
We planned the testing order: first we would introduce us, the project, and explain the flow to the customer. They would first choose the customer profile that they related with the most, then the two innovative solutions would be presented to them. Next, they would decorate the cardboard room with the elements as their ideal hotel room, and finally choose their favourite colours and materials from the given options. Each participant would have 15 minutes to do all this, so they would not get stuck thinking too much, instead the choices would be intuitive. We did have 15-minute safe time in case it was needed. One would focus on writing the notes on Remarkable 2, some would take pictures and one would guide the process. Remarkable2 was used again for its great combination of paper and digital, easy to transfer the notes later on without needing to digitise them.
In the end our process became flexible, and we adjusted as we needed. We iterated the other innovative solution during the day based on the insights from the customers, and iterated the hotel room design by adding elements that were missing. After every customer had been there, we collected the insights based on the pictures taken. We marked all the chosen colours and materials to go through to see which ones were the most popular and analyse how they matched with our ideas based on our research so far. The city of the testers should be taken into consideration as impacts their answers.
Later on, the same day we went through the results and began to choose our favourites and preferences. It was interesting to see how in the end, many of the colours' customers had chosen, ended up on the materials and palette we chose. We also added many colours we thought would be the best and left out some that would not be. Finally, we put the chosen colour and material palette as a collage and took a picture of it. This would guide our concept finalization, mood boards and other visualisation and details.
Developing the concept
Next week, we agreed how to finalize our concept based on the idea generation and prototyping testing insights as well as all the other insights and make it a cohesive concept. We used Point-of-View to further empathise with our customers, using the customer profile cards we created before. Each Point-of-View statement showcases the customer’s goals, pain points, and values, providing a clear direction for designing solutions customised to their specific requirements. These Point-of-Views are based on the comprehensive research we have done and validated through our prototype testing and the feedback from the customers.
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Then we filled the Business Model Canvas using Figma, due to its great usability and versatility for things like this. Some of the sections were quite easy to fill with all the information and insights we had so far. What required the most thinking were the Key Activities, Key Resources, Key Partners, Cost Structure and Revenue Streams, as we were only now finalizing and detailing our concept on that level. The general hotel aspects were not relevant now, those would have been easy to identify here. This was specifically about our concept and the key features regarding it. This is exactly what the tool is for – it helps to analyse, assess and develop business models, and identify any possible gaps that require more attention. It is a clear and simple way and flexible tool for getting a comprehensive understanding the most important aspects of a business. We will continue to work on these for the finalized concept book.
The Value Propositions for the Business Model Canvas were ideated with the help of ChatGPT. We went back to the earlier conversation about the customer profiles and asked it to create value propositions for each customer profile, based on the previous data. We got two suggestions for each which were really good and utilised them writing our versions. They were placed in the Value Proposition section in the same order than the Customer Segments were in theirs.
Next it was time for the Value Proposition Canvases, one for each customer segment. We placed a canvas next to each customer segment description we had Figma, added the segment name and value proposition we had and began filling the customer side of it – Gains, Pains, Jobs. After adding the ones that were ready, we added the ones that came up based on prototyping, testing, and other insights and knowledge we had built up so far. Then we filled the company side of it – Gain Creators, Pain Relievers, Products and Services. Some segments were easier to make and became fuller, some revealed us we had more work to be done when finalizing our concept so we would answer to all of our customer segment needs which we knew were based on our comprehensive research, which were valid and valuable, and should be answered. Just like with Business Model Canvas, this is what the tool is for, to gaining insight on how you are doing and what needs more work. Value Proposition is a great tool for understanding your customers and their “why”.
We continued with finalising the Customer Journey Maps we had sketched during the ideation day. We continued using Figma for this and first did the customer journey from pre-experience to post-experience, and then room focused journey. We took the insights and details we found most relevant from the previous versions and combined them here, adding improvements and details that were missing. There are many ways of making customer journeys. Perhaps one of the most difficult parts of making them is to decide the level of detail you will do them with. We decided to go with a bit broader version, having only 4-5 stages but including more actions under same stage. This would be a good place to start and continue building with in the future, when they execute the concept and decide on the final details, learn from the customers booking and using the room and so forth. On the scope of our project, we found that this was the best way for us to do this.
Once the Customer Journey Maps were ready, it was time to make the Service Blueprint. It gives us a visual representation of the entire service delivery, not only from the guest’s perspective but also the operational process behind. After understanding the customer journey, Service Blueprint helped us identify touchpoints where guests interact with the service and potential pain points or areas for improvement. By visualizing the service delivery process, Service Blueprint also reveals us touchpoints that needed staff training and coordination. It clarifies, in preliminary stage, roles and responsibilities of the staff and how they contribute to the whole journey. By using this tool, we can also see areas where additional amenities or personalised services can be incorporated to delight the guests.
Finally, we built our concept book. We introduced the concept, presented customer insights and segments, customer journeys, technological integrations, amenities and services, floor plan and layout, colour and material palettes, interior design elements, sustainability initiatives, accessibility considerations, plant care, brand integration and clues, and cost estimates and budget considerations. All our insights and detailed suggestions were backed up with our extensive research.
We created 13 mood boards showcasing the different aspects of the room - entryway, bathroom, toilet, bedroom, and other living room areas. The preset colour themes based on our research, example fabric choices, and interior design elements, giving the customer a preview of the aesthetic ambiance of the future rooms.
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The value of the new concept is in new customer segments that will bring more customers, increased room price, more bookings, and more profit.
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We provided the customer with the 50 page concept book in both digital version with all the links, as well as a physical copy. They also received our 100 page detailed process description with all the research insights, tools and appendices, so they could see how everything progressed and what we base our concept on.
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When presenting the concept to the customer they were very happy with it and felt like it fit well with their hotel and the direction they wanted to take it to. I will be adding their written feedback here in the end of summer after their holiday.
References
I had the incredible opportunity to work closely with Minka on our service design project where she was the project lead. From the very start, Minka’s passion for service design was evident and absolutely infectious. Her enthusiasm not only drove the project forward but also inspired everyone on the team to give their best.
Minka has a remarkable talent for seeing the big picture while meticulously managing tiny details. Her systematic approach to project management ensured that we stayed on track and met all our deadlines. I was constantly amazed by her ability to anticipate challenges and find creative solutions.
She truly understands the importance of putting the user first and crafted service solutions that were both innovative and highly effective. Her insights often sparked new ideas and directions, making our final deliverables superior.
Minka is a fantastic person to work with. Her positive attitude, willingness to help, and genuine care for her teammates made the project not just successful, but also enjoyable. She has a unique ability to make everyone feel valued and heard, which fostered a collaborative and supportive team environment.
I wholeheartedly recommend Minka for any role in service design. Any organization would be lucky to have her on their team, and I’m confident she will continue to achieve great things.
Anh Hoang, team member
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