Imagining the urban hotel of tomorrow for a major French hotel owner-operator.
Thinking outside the box
Founded in 1988 and boasting an 82-hotel portfolio, Boissée Finances is one of France’s leading hotel investors and operators.
With most of its hotels under long-term franchise and management agreements, Boissée Finances is compelled to take the long view to anticipate the future. They approached us to co-pilot an internal project team which would explore the future of hotel concepts. Rather than focus on generic trend spotting, we started by asking some challenging questions, such as:
- What would a hotel look like if it had no rooms?
- What could follow the wave of budget lifestyle hotels like citizenM and Mama Shelter?
- How could technology support the guest experience without becoming obsolete too fast?
- How can hotels without facilities deliver a superior guest experience?
“When the decision was made to work on a new hotel concept, I quickly turned to Creative Supply, which had been advised by fellow hotel managers. We were not disappointed: Youri managed to federate our working group, lead our workshops and get us out of the traditional hotel business, while taking into account the constraints of the operation. We have arrived at a successful, viable concept that has conquered the entire management team.”
, Director of Boissée Finances Programs
Taking a very open-minded view on the topic allowed us to reinvent the role and function of a hotel in the era of Airbnb, online travel agents and fast-changing customer tastes. Our reflection resulted in the development of a concept prototype. We used our hotel concept framework to map the brand experience.
Once the hotel concept was developed, we worked on its potential implementation. The prototype was extremely well received by Boissée Finances and proved itself particularly useful to help make pipeline and product development decisions.
