Personalising a Hotel Room: How About a Movable Wall?

Main Photo: The ability to personalise your room at Stay Kooook

Date: April 2020

Location: Bern, Switzerland and then Nurnberg, Germany

Name: Stay Kooook by SV Hotel

Who: An established Swiss hospitality operator is about to take a sizeable step into personalised hotel experiences.

This summer, SV Hotel will open the first location of its new extended-stay brand, Stay KooooK, in Bern. The second will be opening in 2021 in Nürnberg, Germany, with reportedly “many more to come.”

Stay Kooook’s most prominent innovation is a “modular sliding element.” Roll it in one direction and a kitchen and closet-style storage appear, while turning the bed into a sofa. Roll it back and the full bed is usable again.

Stay Kooook’s transformable wall is designed to create a bespoke lodging experience.
SV Hotel says the design is aimed at “contemporary travelers looking for a convenient place for longer stays at a fair price.”

Expect to see more ideas like this. “Personalisation is really the biggest change that is coming along. You can go online and order a pair of sneakers at Nike.com that are unique and personal to you. Yet the hotel is still sending the same old room lists to everybody” said Ahmed Youssef, executive vice president of Corporate Development & Marketing, Hospitality, at Amadeus Hospitality, and co-author of “Drivers of Change in Hospitality,” a recent report from InterContinental Hotels Group, Amadeus Hospitality and the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration.

“At the margin, having a flexible room is kind of interesting,” said professor Chris Anderson of Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, of Stay Kooook’s concept. He noted, however, that its appeal depends on how long a customer is actually in the room, which tends to disqualify the typical business traveller. That said, Anderson commented, “This is the kind of innovation that will be helpful for the industry.”

THPT Comment: There have been examples of this before, like Zoku, but we shall see more as time goes on.

First Seen: Commercial Property Executive

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