To lead a Hotel towards a successful future, hotels need to position themselves to capture every facet of the guest’s multi-sensory experience, to transfer the full guest experience to their memories.

Emotional engagement and authentic interactions between the hotel, staff and guests need to become the new benchmark. To facilitate these key drivers of change, more hoteliers are looking to design to find solutions to these challenges.

Using design Thinking to reboot their strategies is precisely where they need to start.

We are seeing more and more of the Hospitality industry blending design into their strategies, as Hoteliers recognize that change and adapting to new approaches and methods of thinking are no longer an option and has instead become a necessity.

Design is simply the process of creating the holistic product or service and the parts within, where the parts refer to not only the look and feel of it but also how it works. This process is acknowledged as the Design Thinking process.

The shift towards Design Thinking relies on a human-centered methodology that concentrates on people rather than on products or technology to solve problems. Engaging with employees and customers, listening to them and having an understanding what matters to them, in my opinion needs to be the mantra for successful hotel managers.

IHTTI School of Hotel Managementin Neuchatel, Switzerland and has spearheaded the embedding of Design Thinking into the curriculum. IHTTI is the first hospitality school in the world to be accredited by the Charted Society of Designers.

IHTTI is an intimate, boutique-style hotel school, the perfect place to learn the finer skills of five-star service, hotel and design management. IHTTI prides itself on the personal attention offered to each student, thanks to an individual approach and small class sizes.

The programmes offered at IHTTI are based upon the world-renowned Swiss hotel management training, together with the latest industry innovations in design, technology and luxury brand management. Students are joining a reputed international hotel school and learn from the world’s experts, through professional partnerships with LesConcierges, the world’s premier provider of global concierge services and solutions, and HBA/Hirsch Bedner Associates, a leader in hospitality interior design worldwide.