Architecture that creates value: design as a business driver for hotels

In the global hospitality market, the line between a successful investment and an operational failure is increasingly being drawn even before the hotel opens its doors: it all comes down to the architect’s design. From his vantage point in Switzerland, Gabriele Gascón, founder and creative director of Gascón Group – a firm specialising exclusively in the hospitality sector – draws a clear line between the old way of understanding design and the new entrepreneurial approach. For Gascón, architecture is not merely decoration, but a financial strategy. “The owners no longer ask us just how much it costs,” explains Gascón, “but how much it can yield, how long it will last and whether it is consistent with the brand’s positioning.” In a context such as Switzerland’s, where control of operating costs is a cultural pillar, design must be engineered.”

This means ‘designing spaces based on workflows, maintenance cycles and energy efficiency’. The aim is to achieve a more than satisfactory ROI (return on investment) and ROE (return on equity), achieved through what Gascón calls a ‘review-proof’ design. But it also means ‘anticipating technical and functional problems before they turn into guest complaints or operational inefficiencies’, explains the creative director. With this in mind, the hotel room ceases to be a furnishing cost and becomes a profit-generating unit: if designed correctly, it reduces operating costs, limits negative feedback and ensures rate stability over time.

The Gascón Group’s approach challenges the traditional division of hotel functions. Lobbies designed merely as thoroughfares or meeting rooms used for just a few hours a day are seen as wasted space that generates no value. The future trend is towards fluid, hybrid spaces with a strong sense of purpose. “Fluidity alone is not enough,” warns Gascón. “The space must speak to a specific target audience, making them feel part of a community, almost like a club.” The lobby thus becomes a vibrant hub of social interaction and cross-selling, where guests immediately feel a sense of belonging.

It is the concept of the ‘touchpoint’: every point of contact is an opportunity to create an experience and, for the owners, to generate new revenue streams. According to the manager, a project is truly successful when the guest loves it, the general manager manages it with ease, and the owners can measure its results over time. “Today, guests no longer think in terms of separate functions, but in terms of the overall experience and identity,” continues Gascón. Sleeping, working, relaxing and socialising are part of a single continuous flow, but above all of a system of values with which the guest wishes to identify. This is profoundly changing the way hotels are designed. Many traditional functions, conceived in a rigid and single-purpose manner, are gradually losing their effectiveness. Lobbies designed solely as passageways, meeting rooms used for just a few hours a day, and restaurants that are too formal and ill-suited to different times of the day are now struggling to generate real value,” he reiterates.

However, the most profound shift identified by the Gascón Group concerns health and regeneration. The future no longer belongs to the simple spa hotel, but to the hotel-clinic. In these establishments, a stay becomes a journey through life: treatments, preventative care, nutrition and circadian rhythms are integrated into the very design of the space. “These models not only increase perceived value, but directly impact the concept of the customer’s LTV (Lifetime Value),” observes Gascón. Guests do not return simply to sleep, but to continue a journey of wellbeing that they feel is part of their own identity. “When architecture creates a sense of belonging, regenerates the individual and accompanies a life journey,” he concludes, “the hotel ceases to be a place of passage and becomes a relational destination, capable of generating lasting value for the guest, for management and for the owners.”