This is an honours program project issued by Ibis Hotel. Ibis Hotel is well known around the world and receives alot of hotel guests, these guests mostly consists out of business people. Ibis Hotel wants to attract more leisure guests, and especially young people. Another issue is the lobby, the lobby is a public space, currently only used by hotel guests. Ibis Hotel wants their lobby to also be used by non-hotel guests. The lobby can host around 80 people, but this never happens.
The case: “How can the lobby of Ibis Hotel be meaningful and attract non-hotel guests, focused on young people (millennials).”
This was a group project, the group consists out of five students from the same school (Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences), two communication students, one informatics student, one technical informatics student and myself a communication & multimedia design student.
Concept
Being the only designer in this team was a challenge. I had to lead a series of creative sessions to research the target group and form multiple concepts. In the end we decided to connect locals with tourists inside the Lobby. Locals would help the tourists (or other locals) to discover Rotterdam. To do this we researched not only millenials but also Rotterdam itself.
Espy
The final concept is called Espy. It’s a platform that let’s users share experiences. These experiences are shared in the lobby of Ibis Hotel. These experienced are linked to certain places in Rotterdam, which others can visit. Espy helps it’s users discover Rotterdam, this starts in Lobby, making use of a large screen displaying experiences. Users can scan these experiences with their mobile device and ‘relive’ these experiences. From their mobile device users can create posts and share an experience within Espy. Or give feedback about an experience.