Being Sustainable in a Luxury Hotel

CitizenM hotels are designed to offer a luxurious stay at an affordable price to modern travellers. ?Luxury? for some means a long, warm shower without worrying about high water and electricity bills. For others, it means having full autonomy of the room within reach. While luxury is often considered to be mutually exclusive to sustainability, we question ?sustainable luxury?: Is there also a way to maintain a luxurious feeling without over-consuming water, electricity, and waste?

The following three concepts are the results of our exploration of sustainably luxurious experiences mediated by technology. Since CitizenM hotels are known for their integration of technology in the rooms, we tried to find out how AI can help guests be conscious of sustainability in a pleasurable and meaningful manner.

• Prototype

  CitizenM hotel rooms are comfortable in size, however, there is little to no space to put recycling bins. Besides, having your room filled with recycling bins might not convey the luxurious feeling to guests, that the hotel wants. Instead, recycling bins could be placed in a common area, like the corridors to prevent the rooms from feeling overcrowded. There, hotel guests will have the option to recycle their trash, while they can also choose to use the regular bin in their room.

  This is in line with the hotel?s key features of having common spaces where people can come together and contributes to the artworks throughout the hotel that support the luxurious feeling of the hotel.

  

• Video

• Sample Artwork Images

  

  

  AI generated artworks

  

  

  

  

• Prototype photos

  

  Participant testing The Summit of the Objects

  

  Sustainable Discount Fare

• Video

• Try the prototype!

  ???Try the prototype

  Voiceflow Creator

  Voiceflow is the creative suite for designing, prototyping, and building voice apps on Alexa and Google.

  https://creator.voiceflow.com/prototype/6218aaa31eb1625d8a5a20b8

  

  ---

• Video

• Prototype

  

  

  https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/50175631-644b-4fd1-ba0d-11c212d18222/Prototype_-_Room_Feelings.mp4

??Key Insights

• Technologically-Unique
  • The prototype testing has shown that visitors will perceive a technologically-unique experience as a luxury.

• Sustainable Rate Option
  • The sustainable rate option provides a better understanding of this sustainability-awareness experience and justifies it. This sustainable fare entails giving hotel guests the possibility to choose either a discounted sustainable fare where they can consume a limited amount of energy, water, and gas, or choose the regular fare with no restrictions.

• Subtle Sensory Feedbacks
  • Using lights and sounds is a more subtle way to replace a voice interaction input. The use of sound and lights can add to the room?s experience and add to the context instead of feeling intrusive.

• Dual-sidedness of Sound
  • Using sound as an output can be more effective in catching the user?s attention, however, this can also be disturbing or scare the users.

• Multi-sensory
  • Multi-sensory is better than single sense.

??Design Goal

To make the user more conscious about their energy consumption patterns while maintaining a luxurious stay in a citizenM hotel room

?? Design Direction

• Approach AI as an enabler of sensing and reacting, it is possible to animate Things that we often regarded to be inanimate.

• The interaction should nudge people to think about their energy consumption patterns without being too judgmental.

• Rather than making people refrain and renunciate, a ?sustainably luxurious? experience would be enabling people to open up discourses on what sustainability is and reflect upon themselves through novel interactions.