“In a world where customer service has evaporated, Mode:Green is still holding on to being proactive in maintaining high levels of customer service; they show up when needed, and you’re confident that they’re going to stand behind their installation” — Fergal Hayes, project director for Capital Expenditures with Starwood Hotels
In all markets, millennials are causing businesses to reinvent themselves. In retail, brands are forced to improve their online shopping experience. Fashion is speeding up. Workplaces are becoming more social and tech savvy. Now, hotels, too, are meeting the high expectations of millennials by using technology to transform their lobbies and take guest experiences to the next level.
As younger generations frequent hostels, dorms, and coffee shops, hotels are trying to attract them by injecting life into their formerly stagnant common areas. For example, as the lobby transforms into a destination where guests and locals can interact, the bar has now become a part of the front desk.
Putting Times Square Indoors
The iconic sights and sounds of Times Square originate from the lights, graffiti, interactive displays, and energy from tourists, street performers, and busy New Yorkers.
“The design of the living room at the W Hotel was leveraged from a design narrative that drew inspiration from its Time Square location,” said Fergal Hayes, project director for Capital Expenditures with Starwood Hotels, who contributed to overseeing the vision and completion of the W Hotel’s new lobby space. With Times Square as the motif for the W Hotel’s new lobby, a group of design teams working in cooperation with integration firm, Mode:Green, were tasked with capturing the New York landmark’s atmosphere and recreating it indoors.
Reinventing an Iconic Scene
All the Times Square advertisements, interactive billboards, and skyscrapers come from many different companies and the individual pieces weren’t designed to work together initially. In the same way, aesthetically, W Hotel’s team of designers were challenged to create a cohesive, yet diverse space as a tribute to the Big Apple’s famous landscape. For Mode:Green, this meant taking the technology from dozens of different manufacturers and making them all communicate with one another as a singular system.
Mode:Green was the technology expert for the project, collaborating with the design team to connect all of the dozens of LED lights and custom speakers throughout the lobby and inside the private booths with one another, as well as with the wall-sized countdown clock.
Mode:Green specialises in this type of complex audio and lighting systems, geared towards a hotel environment that accepts rotating guests. “To bring the highly customised Times Square-themed lighting into the hotel lobby and DJ area, Mode:Green was hands-on from the beginning with the design team,” said Hayes. “The W Hotel is a completely custom space and Mode:Green was instrumental in helping to deliver the brand.”
The Final Countdown
In large, complex construction projects like the W Hotel’s lobby-lounge, a giant timer – much like the one that sits in the finished lobby today – ticks down to the collision between final days of construction and the opening day that welcomes guests.
Design work is completed early on, but the technical team races to get everything working, fine-tuned, and ready for prime time.
New problems often arise while working in the balance between design and technological smarts; Mode:Green had to make last-minute changes to accommodate the space as it came to life. “At the end, last-minute changes of speakers being switched out from the original design to more appropriately fit the space were required, and Mode:Green reacted quickly to make it work in time for the reveal,” said Hayes.
The W Hotel’s Times Square lobby-lounge welcomed guests on the deadline for its opening, without a glitch — despite New-York-fast changes that had to be made in the final construction days. “In a world where customer service has evaporated, Mode:Green is still holding on to being proactive in maintaining high levels of customer service; they show up when needed, and you’re confident that they’re going to stand behind their installation,” stated Hayes.
Hotels face a new challenge to create lobbies that are immersive, social environments. It’s a design and, now, a technological challenge, but the result can differentiate a brand and nurture a crop of new, young guests who will become loyal patrons.