Hospitality, Software & Technology

Forging lifelong partnerships in hotel development through XR experiences.

Project Overview

Duration / Feb 2023 - Nov 2023

Client

The largest government-funded urban development project in the Middle East, incorporating cutting-edge technology and futuristic infrastructure.

Challenge

Transform the hotel development process by leveraging Extended Reality (XR) to create unique experiences that attract and convince major luxury hotel brands to come to a developing region.

End Deliverable

Explored megatrends within the Extended Reality space and facilitated product design from concept to MVP, focusing on integrating new, unique experiences into different phases of the hotel development process.

The Team

(1) Global Venture Building Lead

(1) Global CX Lead

(1) Venture Executive

(1) Senior CX Researcher

(1) CX Researcher

(1) CX Designer

(2) SME - Hotel Developer

My Role / Customer Experience (CX) Designer

Core Responsibility

A B2B, web-based MVP as the first destination in a series of mixed reality experiences, serving as the news hub that provided live project progress, environmental updates, interactive engagement, and fostered relationships.

Contribution

Customer Research

Product Design

Usability Testing

Design Tools

Figma

Adobe Photoshop

Midjourney AI

Introduction

In February 2023, I joined a diverse team of hotel developers, venture executives, and researchers with the mission to rethink how major hotels could attract other high-end luxury hotels and transform the due diligence process for forming partnerships. We spoke with Metaverse experts to identify megatrends, interviewed global hotel developers to understand their processes, and approached top luxury hotel brand developers to uncover pain points. Our research guided us in building a series of unique experiences that would take executives from initial introductions to the launch of their first establishment in the Middle East.

Learning their Process

Hotel development was an unfamiliar space for us all, especially when considering expansion into another region. Over the next three months, we engaged with Heads of Development from top luxury hotel brands to understand their current processes and challenges in expansion and partnership formation.

We mapped out their entire journey, capturing their frustrations, excitement, due diligence processes, tools, deadlines, interactions, and aspirations.

Key Takeaway

  • Even after thorough due diligence, developers were still scared to take the “Leap of Faith” to expand to the Middle East because of demand, environmental, and governmental uncertainties.

Building Courage to Leap

At this point, we had a solid understanding of what needed to be added to the development process to foster successful partnerships in the Middle East. We needed an experience that would shift developers' perceptions from what they believe the Middle East is like to the reality of the region. With enough data, we moved on to formulating our hypotheses for solutions and began concept testing.

Testing our Concepts

Having understood that we needed to change the perceptions developers had, our concept ideas were limitless. I created 20 different concept cards and storyboards that individually correlated to each phase of the development process.

We dove deep into the Extended Reality space, exploring augmented reality solutions that could transform your room into a luxurious, furnished version of the new hotel, to using metaverse headsets to experience the physical site as buildings were being constructed in the digital world, and even receiving live updates from a hologram at tradeshows.

After designing the concepts cards, we ran some tests.

Key Learnings

  • SkyDrop, TimeMaps, and Avatar Updates performed extremely well because they all provided some sort of live feedback or information.

  • Developers didn’t want to leave their offices to use fancy equipment; they just wanted to use their laptops.

  • They needed a better view of the surrounding area—they were using Google Maps to make billion-dollar decisions.

Building the Experiences

With SkyDrop, TimeMaps, and Avatar Updates testing well, we realistically could only build TimeMaps and showcase Avatar Updates using Proto at that time. SkyDrop would have required physical drones to be active on the dig site, which wasn't feasible in our current phase.

Avatar Updates

That being said, Avatar Updates leveraged Proto, a portable device that displays a hologram of the speaker inside a box. We purchased the box with the intent of bringing it to trade shows, allowing Developers to interact directly with our Clients via a hologram, while our Clients remained in their offices at home.

Fun Fact: Our Venture Executive delivered the final pitch using the Proto as a proof of concept.

TimeMaps

I helped transform TimeMaps into Tellum, our MVP that served as an interactive news hub hosted by our Client, offering live project progression, environmental updates, chatrooms, maps, and more.

Tellum / Learn

Tellum / Interactive Map

End Results

  • Tellum was approved and received private funding for development over the next six months, with plans to launch publicly within a year (2026).

  • During our interviews, we attracted potential hotel brands interested in the region and the experiences we were creating. We passed them along the funnel to our Client.

Learnings

  • During our interviews, I learned that there's always a deeper meaning behind the pains users feel. While some issues might be surface-level, to be truly successful, you need to take the time to identify the problem at its core.

  • Building trust between large companies takes more than numbers and a fancy platform—it requires interactions, understanding, and a shared vision. Bias may be present, but it's your job as the seller to correct it.