A hotel is made up of functional spaces: Lobby. Rooms. Restaurant. Corridors. Meeting areas. From an operational perspective, each has a purpose. From an experience-design perspective, they can also become a stage.
Guest experience is not created by service quality alone. It is shaped by what guests see, discover, do and later have a story to tell about. This is where games can become relevant for hospitality.
Not as generic entertainment placed inside a hotel, but as an experience that actively uses the location. There is an important difference between a game in a hotel and a game designed with the hotel.
A corridor can become part of a trail. An architectural detail can become a clue. The history of the property can become the starting point of a mission. The hotel stops being the background.
It becomes part of the game.
ROOM67 an analogue project developed around Novotel’s 50th anniversary, illustrates this principle. From a Game Solutions perspective the interesting part is not simply that it was an escape experience.
It is that a specific hospitality context became the basis of an individual experience rather than being filled with a generic product. That is the difference between adding entertainment and designing an experience. Hotels are more than places to sleep.