Social Media Hospitality

5th year (Junior Studio) Project

This project started as a way to improve and ease the process of traveling and tourism to help the hospitality industry. But by researching the topic we realized that today, traveling has become a convoluted process that takes a toll on the amount of fun a traveler can have. Today with the growing demographics of tech-savvy consumers with access to vast amount of information traveling has become more about an “authentic” experience that has been “planned ahead of time” than about anonymous tourism.

Geoffrey Kent, founder, chairman, and CEO of Abercrombie & Kent mentions:

“Our guests are searching for authentic experiences that are true to a place and its traditions, incorporating elements of the past and reflecting the local culture. They don’t want to simply arrive at a destination and look at things; they want to learn from local experts with an intimate, lifelong knowledge of the area and leave with a new understanding of how life is lived in another part of the world. This is travel for people who define luxury not so much by the degree of elegance but by the quality of experience.”

Unfortunately with the fast growth of competitive online travel sales, we lose track of what really matters when it comes to traveling, the experience. When one books a trip through a 3rd party website that only focuses on the cost of an experience rather than the experience itself, they remove the authenticity from that said trip. Because once the traveler arrives, they have no idea where to go and what to do.

So in order to help the hospitality industry we set out to create and authentic experience. Therefore we proposed a service that by utilizing the social media, not only it sparks an idea within a potential traveler, but it provides the means and the information necessary to create this trip an authentic one. This service can be used by hotels directly, where they can provide the traveler with ideas for a destination through themed imagery and reviews, selecting room options, exclusive pricing, booking, services (meet and greet at arrival, checking in, calling bellhop, directions, NFC room key, introduction of facilities and etc..), making local bookings for events and restaurants and also provide information about points of interest and tourist attraction points. And once the traveler/s are done with their trip they can leave a brief review for their experience which in turn could hook the next customer.

Tanya Pohlner

Johann Hoeflich-Nickels

PARADISE BUNGALOW

LOBBY

LOUNGE

RESTAURANT