Hospitality Design for Social Distancing
With the government poised to set out new guidelines on how the lockdown will be eased, all businesses are looking at how they will operate in the months to come. But whilst we make plans for zoom calls and cloud-based collaboration, the hospitality industry is facing a truly imponderable problem. How do you bring people together and still keep them apart?
In recent days we have been working with some of our hospitality clients to rapidly reinvent operational models. In collaboration with our most innovative colleagues, we have been asking three strategic questions looking at different time scales to take us forwards.
1. What do we do today to start operating?
We have seen three challenges in the short term: speed, change and cost. Time to prepare, refine and execute has evaporated as brands race to respond. Supply chains are fragmented with design firms, manufacturers and installers all working imperfectly. With government guidance tracking shifting medical and political strategy, the “rules” are still being written and may change without notice. There is also a fine balance between operating a business with a much reduced revenue and bearing the cost of staying closed. And what if the temporary fixes are prohibitively expensive, and potentially out of date as soon as they are installed?
Solutions to these short-term challenges need to innovate and look at the problem on the ground. Ideas must be developed not through the lens of plans or drawings, but in the gritty reality of human behaviour in tandem with operators and with a real world understanding of the physical spaces we need to impact. Owners need to stay true to who they are despite the changes imposed and ask themselves, how would my brand fix this, how would my customers want me to respond?
2. In the mid-term, how do we adapt existing spaces for change?
In many ways the uncertainty of the mid-term is much harder to deal with. We need to act now, but we can only guess what we might be responding to in the coming months? Is it OK to go out in small groups? How do we share bathroom space? Will there be mandatory testing at the door of public spaces? We simply don’t know. But at least in the mid-term, we expect the new normal to be far from normal. With companies battling for customers in these early stages, the priority will be keeping customers and staff safe. Staying closed will no longer be an option. Expanding delivery is of course a huge opportunity, but ultimately, we are social creatures. The hospitality sector has never been about food and drink, it has always been experiences. With our spaces 50% empty, one in one out queuing and compulsory face masks, how can we create an experience worth venturing out for?
If honesty is the best policy, it is even more important here. We don’t know, so we need to be open with customers and accept that we won’t get it right all the time. Flexibility will be paramount, with lightweight, adaptable solutions enabling changes to be made quickly both in thinking and on the ground during operation. This is an opportunity to build trust with customers and nurture a lasting relationship. Creating beautiful, considered solutions that keep our people safe will strengthen brands in the months ahead.
3. How will we design spaces differently in the future?
There are many conversations happening right now about what the future will look like for hospitality. While we recover from the terrible human cost of this global pandemic, many will be asking themselves what we might do differently in the future, or perhaps what we could have done differently in the past. There is no escaping the current public hunger for a return to normal, but is there room to return to a better normal than the one we left behind?
I ask myself if designers and operators will truly embrace this opportunity to reinvent normal and create spaces that are better able to respond to uncertain times. For us, the question will be how we create experiences that are honest and true to brand but built on operational models that can handle change.
Just like us humans who have built our success through our ability to adapt, so too our spaces should reflect this spirit. If we can help our colleagues in the industry to build great experiences for customers in the worst of times, the result will be a better industry for better times ahead.
I ask myself if designers and operators will truly embrace this opportunity to reinvent normal and create spaces that are better able to respond to uncertain times. For us, the question will be how we create experiences that are honest and true to brand but built on operational models that can handle change.
The time for a bold reimagining of our hospitality spaces is upon us. Some will fail to respond fast enough and find themselves diluting their brand to survive. Others, including some of our closest colleagues, have already begun to ask big questions of themselves. I welcome the discussion with an open mind, adversity is the mother of invention.