Untapped technologies

Technology is still not being properly integrated into hotel design, Kirsten Molle, managing director of Protempit, a UK-based IT project management and consultancy firm, has suggested. 

Unsuccessful examples of in-room technology are still far more common than effective examples, she pointed out.

There is still the tendency to start thinking about technology too late into the design and build process, and IT consultants are often the last to be brought on board.

Part of the problem is that IT still falls under the M&E remit, Molle maintained. “There are so many cases where I’ve come on board a new-build hotel project and by the time I get there, first of all I’m usually sitting next to the plumbers, because IT often sits under the M&E consultants,” said Molle.

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“Then you get into a design meeting, where you are presented with a finished design and a completed selection of finishings, fabrics, furnishings and so forth, and you have to try and refit quite complex technologies into that finished design,” she continued.

“Apart from the cost aspect of having to rework already finished construction sites, I think it’s a real shame because it limits the amount of value that you can drive out of the synergies between design and technology.”

Treating IT as an afterthought means that it is never fully integrated into the overall design, something that is particularly evident when it comes to in-room automation, Molle maintained.

“One thing that is really coming out now is in-room automation, which is increasingly going into hotels. Well, if you want to do that right and make it really user friendly and offer it as part of your product, it has to be very well integrated into your design. You cannot refit those kinds of technologies,” she said.

“One of the things that I would like to see happen is that IT consultants are dislodged from the M&E and integrated into the interior design and architectural package. They should work with those disciplines right from the beginning,” she maintained. “We have to decide, is IT part of the plumbing or part of the design?”

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