Dose of Design & Tech #01

Hi friends 👋,

Hotel Network Community was started 10 years ago by a very small group of friends working in London sharing a lot about design and tech in the hospitality industry. Today, we are ranking number 1 on google for some reason and are well over 10,000.

This year, we’ve decided to launch our first newsletter because we want to feed your design and tech obsession with what’s cool and what’s next in design, and technology in the hospitality industry.

📰 This first newsletter is brought to you by our friends from Blent.  A modern hospitality BI Platform for hospitality businesses.

☼ If you haven’t heard of Wander, the best way to think of it is as a vertically-integrated Airbnb. If you haven’t seen Wander, the properties are RIDICULOUS. They also just launched Atlas, the “world’s first vacation rental REIT,” to scale its portfolio without dilutive venture funding.

☼ Peerspace operates a successful marketplace for rentable venues and event spaces in unique locations worldwide, from photo studios to meeting rooms and bars. Think Airbnb for hourly rentals – except don’t, because while being compared to Airbnb is not a bad thing, it does immediately take away the uniqueness of what Peerspace is.

☼ Dublin-based &Open launched in 2017 and was founded by Ciara Flood, formerly a buyer at Net-a-Porter. According to one study the company cites, customers who feel emotionally connected to a brand have been shown to create a 306% higher lifetime value. We a great way for hospitality to spend more on quality giftings for their loyal customers.

☼ Natoora starts life as the first online Farmers Market, connecting customers to some of the country’s best butchers, fishmongers, cheesemongers and growers.

☼ Cultivated meat at scale–maintaining the familiar taste, texture and flavour whilst reducing carbon emissions and land use–is seen as a realistic option, yet it lives in a category that, at present, is described as being ‘notional’. While the ambition is big, compared to other technologies, the cultural shift taking place is moving at a glacial pace. Fork & Good takes an incremental approach towards that much bigger goal, with an initial product of ground pork—the most widely consumed animal protein—sold through partnership food trucks and fast-casual restaurants.

☼ Goki Smart Lock Technology: Say Bye-Bye to plastic keycards. It works on any door with a DoorCode as backup (not receptionists 👌).

☼ The Quoin is a minimalist boutique hotel located in Wilmington, Delaware, designed by Method Co, in collaboration with Philadelphia-based Stokes Architecture + Design.

☼ Serif's platform promises to be “a space connecting LGBTQIA+ communities through curated experiences and real-time conversations”, allowing users to share thoughts and ideas and find people to collaborate with.

☼ Oikon Hospitality is responsible for the financial management and development of hotel units. What Loonatiks Design Crew found in their research, was that the competitors’ websites looked like hotel websites, with large beautiful images of well-designed lobby pools and rooms, something that confused us as observers about what was their work objects. "Our clients wanted to showcase their expertise in fund management, number specialization, statistics and financial analysis". 

☼ Why compostable materials are the future. The rapidly changing world of packaging is intimidating for both businesses and consumers. No one wants to do the wrong thing and cause more harm than good. Great Wrap is closing the loop on our systems so that fossil fuels and intensive agriculture are no longer a part of the international production landscape. The by-product of the food waste conversion they are working on will be soil and marine-degradable natural plastic solution for heavy consumers like hotels and restaurants.

☼ The POSThome project in Milan was conceived during the first lockdown as a smart apartment in which safety, comfort, and technology come together to respond to the needs for the ‘new normality’. Located in a 1930s building right in the heart of the Italian metropolis, the 2022 iteration of this residential concept reflects the evolution of hospitality and travel. The colourful interior was designed by the Milanese studio ThirtyOne to become a creative refuge full of vibrant colours, varying textures, and natural materials.

That’s all for this week.

Thanks for reading, Romain Baron