HIX TALKS

Six big topics over two days

Hotel designers and developers in our post-pandemic age must understand and respond to social change. We've designed a considered conversational as opposed to a jam-packed seminar schedule.

Our six talks address one question: how has the world changed and what do these changes mean for hotel design and development? Each topic flows from one to the next with time in between for networking, meeting our suppliers and experiencing HIX.

The HIX Talks don't scream, they talk, giving our guests the space and time to breathe, think and create.

All talks are free to attend, simply register to visit.

Day One

11:15-12:15

Meaningful Value

As we redesign our lives, many people are redefining their own ‘meaningful value’.

Hospitality providers need to understand, anticipate and reflect this profound societal shift in outlook.

James will share his view on the owner/operator relationship, the staffing challenge and hotel design, along with the opportunity of multi-functional properties…all through the lens of ‘meaningful value’.

This is our ‘big’ macro session, it’s about the business of hotel development and design, a natural scene-setter for our HIX talks.

James Chappell

Global Business Director of Horwath HTL

James is the London-based Global Business Director of Horwath HTL, the world’s largest and most experienced Hospitality Consulting brand.

James and his team are responsible for the growth, marketing, business development and support for the 50 offices in 39 countries that make up the network.

13:45-14:45

WFHotel

From the broader topic of ‘meaningful value’ we shift to the potential value of working in hotels.

The world once travelled to an office from nine to five, sometimes visiting a hotel for a business lunch or to grab a quiet spot to work from. And one day it all stopped, everyone stayed inside. Home became the new office, the new hotel and through creativity, optimism and technology people adapted, they kept on working.

Now, as the world re-opens something’s changed forever and will never go back to what it was. A brave new world can be designed.

Three leading design studios collaborate, converse and present the hotel as our new productive, fluid and well workplace.

Tina Norden

Partner, Conran & Partners

Tina is an architect and interior designer with a diverse portfolio stretching across many contexts and continents, from hotel and restaurant design to high-end residential.

She has recently completed the new Park Hyatt Auckland and is working on two subsequent projects in Asia Pacific.

Other recently completed projects include the new FEAST restaurant within Hong Kong’s EAST Hotel, Hotel Maximilian in Prague and the White Label QO for the IHG hotel brand in Amsterdam.

Balkaran Bassan

Senior Designer, Areen Design

Balkaran has worked on a range of international hospitality projects for the past 12 years, across different cultures, briefs and aesthetics.

His innovative conceptual and storytelling approach is a key driving force in all aspects of the project. With a keen eye for materiality and design, his experience of world cultures has enriched his design aesthetic and his ability to create diverse and engaging interiors.

Vince Stroop

Founding Partner, stroop

Architect Vince Stroop has made a new, refreshing lemonade from the lemons presented by the covid crisis, and he is calling it stroop: a design collective of innovative creators based anywhere with good internet.
Previously, as co-founder of A2 Studios in California, and as Partner at the New York-based firms of Stonehill Taylor and Jeffery Beers International, he led many projects for hospitality brands such as Raffles, Rosewood, Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, Sydell Group, IHG, and One&Only.
Vince lives in Brooklyn and Seattle, where he bakes as often as possible to enjoy a creative endeavour with quick results and immediate satisfaction.

15:45-16:45

All Together Now

From the communal potential of working in hotels, we finish the day with a celebration of the wider role of hotel communion.

When we stayed indoors, we were isolated from family, friends, colleagues and communities. Now as we reconnect with others, your hotel lobbies, bars and guest rooms represent, celebratory, communal, cathedrals of togetherness. What other building can scream or whisper the words, ‘let’s meet, eat, sleep, drink, create, dance, swim, hug and discover’, like a hotel can?

Jason shares his passion for hospitality and design as unique tools for forging togetherness. Harnessing the power of interiors, programming and community, you may feel the unapologetic chorus of ‘All together now’.
Followed by drinks, naturally.

Jason Steere

Managing Director of Brand & Experience, The Student Hotel

Entrepreneurial brand builder and all-round creative thinker, Jason Steere is the mastermind behind The Student Hotel’s unique attitude, award-winning interiors and out-of-the-box customer experience.

After acting as the creative powerhouse behind some of the world’s best-known retail brands and concepts – like the flagship Niketown stores in the US, London and Berlin – and running his own design agency for close to two decades, Jason has brought it all to The Student Hotel (TSH) as Managing Director of Brand and Experience. Not only has he reimagined TSH’s look and feel and reinvented its overall customer experience since 2016, but he’s also forged a stellar reputation as a go-to thought leader in his field.

Day Two

11:15-12:15

Quietness With Attitude

We start Day 2 on a more introspective note.

‘Wellness’ has been a staple topic on hotel conference stages for the last 10 years, and we still feel compelled to include it on ours. Covid pressed ‘fast forward’ on the mental health and wellness conversation, removing social taboos, and heightening people’s awareness of wellbeing, their own and of those around them.

And in between the 2020 UK lockdowns we met nestwell, a group of people who have set about (re)defining wellbeing in hospitality whilst creating an agreed standard. Their international collective of design studios for HIX will create immersive installations within the event whilst presenting these concepts on stage.

Think slow design, silent architecture and design for wellbeing. Thankfully, this conversation isn’t going away and remains firmly on the agenda as hotels and guests’ journey towards an enlightened understanding of wellbeing.

Christian Sieger

Owner, sieger design

Christian Sieger’s career milestones include developing the Ritzenhoff brand (1992), reviving the Arzberg brand in the 1990s and cultivating successful, decades-long partnerships with Alape, Dornbracht and Duravit.

Projects for Deutsche Bahn, Sony and airberlin underscore the breadth of agency services that the company offers, as do innovative marketing concepts: for example, for Nanjing Road in Shanghai.

The company has been honoured with over 200 design awards. His personal awards include the “Simon Taylor Award for Lifetime Achievement”, which was awarded to him (aged 47) and his brother in London in 2013.

Robbyn Carter

Founder, Studio Carter

Robbyn started her career as a sculptor casting and welding large art pieces. She soon developed an affinity for the hospitality industry and dreamed of a career in hospitality design where, unlike an object, she could create an immersive experience.

Robbyn decided to explore the world and soon moved to Amsterdam where she fell in love with the European way of life and worked on some compelling projects with strong creative designers. Feeling there was still a large work to explore, she then made the move to Singapore where she had the opportunity to tap into Southeast Asia’s expansive, growing hospitality industry and lay the groundwork for the launch of Studio Carter. After 12 years abroad, she decided to return to her home state of California and open Studio Carter’s headquarters in Los Angeles, which is Studio Carter’s third office.

Cedrick Etienne

Founder, Studio Corkinho

13:45-14:45

Truth, Trust and Loyalty

You want the truth? The truth is that this session isn’t technically about hotel design.

In fact, Dexter is not from the world of hospitality at all. As the former speech writer for Google, Head of Communications at Facebook, SpaceX, and now for The Oversight Board (the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg’s that makes high profile content moderation decisions), Dexter knows a thing or two about building community and brand transparency.

At HIX he’ll be exploring truth, trust and loyalty in a world of misinformation and instantly responsive social platforms. For hotel developers and designers these are generation-defining issues and the key to understanding tomorrow’s customer, Generation Z.
This session is not about marketing offers or loyalty points, it’s about building a meaningful relationship with your first ‘digital-native’ guests.

Dex Hunter-Torricke

Former Communications Executive, Google, Facebook and SpaceX

15:00-16:00

To the Lighthouse

‘Here, where the light is brighter and the wind is wilder, the ocean saltier and the seafood fresher’. The lights go down as we close our talks.

Erik Nissen Johansen tells a story worthy of any Northern European wonder tale. The story of a celebrated hotel designer who buys an island in an outpost of a windblown, barren and exposed Swedish archipelago. Amid winds of 1000 miles per hour, he turns the old Pater Noster Lighthouse into a boutique hotel experience. For more than 100 years, this building gave hope and guided seafarers through treacherous waters, it was home to the lighthouse keepers and their families, a small-scale community.

Now, once again the doors to the old master’s home open, welcoming a new generation of seafarers, nature lovers and pleasure seekers. A safe haven on an island perceived as uninhabitable. An inspiring hospitality metaphor for our times.

Erik Nissen Johansen

Owner, Founder & Creative Director, Stylt Trampoli

HIX TALKS

Day One

11:15-12:15

13:45-14:45

15:45-16:45

Day Two

11:15-12:15

13:45-14:45

15:00-16:00

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