Whateveryoudo,donotbelate fortheFUTUREFORUM2011!

How can busy hoteliers stay ahead as their custom-ers becoming increasingly individualistic, hetero-genic and demanding? Now they not only want ex-periences, but also authenticity, ultra-service and even life impacting personal changes from today's hospitality providers.

For several years, hotel lifestyle marketing special-ist and consortium, Design Hotels, has been offering their hotel members and other future and creative-oriented enthusiasts the op-portunity to come together to experience and debate futuristic concepts present-ed by creative, technological and sociological experts that can be integrated into the hospitality industry. This in-tensive and annually growing symposium blends very dif-ferent contemporary fields of expertise in order to provoke thought and enable hoteliers and the other creative participants to de-velop innovative and multi-dimensional concepts that their guests are seeking. Appropriately named, this year's forum in Berlin was called 'Hybrid Think-ing' and attracted more than 400 enthusiastic par-ticipants from all over the world as far away as Aus-tralia and Asia.

For those hoteliers who have guests always look-ing for the next big thing, the best place for these professionals to start is at Berlin's Design Hotels' annual FUTURE FORUM. In 2010, “Hybrid Thinking”, was the largest and most innovative one ever. I per-sonally have attended several times and am always amazed at the incredible creative energy that is pro-duced just by the gathering of the people that are there. This is Europe's most exciting avant-garde

hospitality think tank, confer-ence, and forum. Design Ho-tels' founder and CEO, Claus Sendlinger brings together an international roster of de-signers, artists, architects, electronic wizards, cinema-tographers, futurologists, trend experts, like-minded visionary hoteliers, chefs, oe-nologists, chocolatiers and

even scientists to stir impulses, inspire creativity and provide new perspectives to hoteliers to see what's looming in the future and what they could do to stay ahead.

For those member hotels of Design Hotels, there is an extraordinary and exclusive event called the “Arena” occurring just prior to the Future Forum to which I was invited to attend. In addition to the

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Thisintensiveandannuallygrowingsymposiumblendsverydifferentcontemporaryfieldsofexpertise

inordertoprovokethoughtandenablehoteliersandtheother

creativeparticipantstodevelopinnovativeandmulti-dimensional

conceptsthattheirguestsareseeking.

Whattimedoesthefuturestart?

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sOnjaHOlvERsOn

MBA, HEC University of Laus-anne, faculty member at Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL) teaching hospitality marketing, began her two-decade long ca-reer in hospitality and tourism at the University of Hawaii where she obtained her BA. Her diverse background in Hawaii, California and Switzerland in sales and marketing, included positions with hotels, restau-rants, tour operators, travel agencies, incentive travel com-panies and cruise lines. In co-operation with Lausanne Hos-pitality Research, she has presented research on hotel branding at conferences in Swit-zerland and the US and has taught executive courses on hotel branding in China and at EHL.

obligatory comments on how the company is doing in a challenging world, an entire day of discussions and presentations was dedicated to the members by some of the leaders in the field. Toby March talk-ed about eCommerce, The Future Laboratory futur-ologists presented the latest trends, Dr. Robert Diner of BMW and Michael Schneider of SIXT car rentals shared ideas about organising road trips. Claus Sendlinger, CEO and Bernd Neff, VP Brand, Marketing and Communications discussed the films being developed for the hotel members called “Made by Originals”. Service design and experience design was presented by Inga Nandzik and EHL alumnus, Jeremy Silverman, now Head of Brand Experience at De-sign Hotels discussed buzz marketing and the Social Media world. It was all very well organized, interactive with a great feeling of cama-raderie.

The Future Forum 2010, “Hybrid Thinking” began that evening after the mem-bers' Arena gathering is open to the pre-registered public.

This is far from the typical industry “conference”. Imagine this. Arrival evening: the gathering of the intelligentsia, creative minds and eager hoteliers. Attire: whatever. Reception area: highest tech and innovative products to be found anywhere are aes-thetically displayed for your visual pleasure and cu-riosity. Cocktails and hors d'oeuvre: of course. But they are light years ahead of “typical”. We gathered in a large room set up for the occasion; comfortable, welcoming, unlike many “arrival cocktail parties”. And then the collective challenges of our senses began.

The visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory and olfac-tory exploration included various simple but usually wild plants to nibble on just before some strategic sips of wines that were brought by Irène Tolleret from Languedoc, France and Micahel Trenz from Johan-nisberg am Rhein, Germany. The impact in the taste of the wine according to the plant eaten was pro-found even for the high level connoisseurs in the

party. But when the wine taste changed according to different sounds, we were all impressed. COSMO Hotel Berlin Mitte chef, Ottmar Pohl cooked up some

magic in test tubes that was fascinating. German choco-latier, Hans Decker had us taste two types of basic choc-olate to see which one we thought had to have cocoa butter added and which had to have his special ingredi-ent, olive oil! Then we re-ceived the complete product which I can highly recom-mend. No taste of olives, I can assure you.

To keep us at that high level of sensory alertness, Sissel Tolaas, “scent artist” who has exhibited at the MoMA in New York and the MOMA in San Francisco and who is a chemistry professor at Harvard, connected science and art and tested us all to see if we could recognize the “fra-grances” that she recreated from the banal to the sublime.

When was the last time you were at an arrival cock-tail party like this? Ah, but that's only 5 senses. Since this is about the future, we were not finished. We next had the privilege of experiencing the 6th sense through a visit by German mentalist Jan Becker.

The official symposium was opened the next morning by Claus Sendlinger, founder and CEO of Design Hotels along with moderator, Ralf Grauel, business journalist. One of my favorite parts of the Future Forum is the latest news from The Future Laboratory, a trend and customer insight forecasting company in London, with Chris Sanderson and

ThisisEurope'smostexcitingavant-gardehospitalitythinktank,conference,andforum.

designHotels'founderandCEO,Claussendlingerbringstogether

aninternationalrosterofdesigners,artists,architects,electronicwizards,cinematographers,futurologists,trendexperts,

like-mindedvisionaryhoteliers,chefs,oenologists,chocolatiers

andevenscientists

Martin Raymond reviewing their insight into con-tinual research of social movements and business trends in order to envision the coming years. Em-phasis was put on “craft” this year. Not technology, necessarily, but crafting a guest visit that tells a story and is genuine. Hoteliers could enable guest experiences which may in some way transform them as people. Many other speakers from various areas brought to us their expertise to contribute to the “Hybrid Thinking“ Symposium including Dr. David Bosshart, CEO of the Gottlieb-Duttweiler-Institute in Zurich, Switzerland discussing key drivers to cre-ativity. Robert Thiemann, editor in chief of Frame magazine, Amsterdam presented his thoughts on hybrid thinking. Wolfram Putz of GRAFT architecture and design, told us “only hybrid teams can concep-tualize real innovation.” Our “senses challengers” from the arrival “cocktail party” the night before were also participating in the main forum and gave even more interesting demonstrations and discussions. Designer Werner Aisslinger was present to announce the top ten design talents from this year's DMY, a well-known design competition held in Berlin which is the largest in Europe.

Design Hotels and The Future Laboratory also provided participants with some amazing docu-ments to take and read afterwards. Very thought-provoking material.

As hospitality educators these types of events help us to keep appraised continually on the impact of interrelated world events, the travel industry, the hos-pitality industry, accelerating changes in consumer behaviours, predominant and diverse aesthetic direc-tions, and exponentially transforming technologies in order to keep our curriculum and classes relevant. We are responsible for preparing our students to be future managers and deal with diverse phenomena that have not even been created or evolved yet. Always finding this an inspirational challenge, after the event I interviewed two young hotel managers who were also at the Future Forum and who have both worked in very traditional European hotels and who are both now working in contemporary lifestyle hotels which are members of Design Hotels. My interest was in knowing how they felt about such a futuristic hospi-tality industry compared to their “old world” hotel professional experiences, what they found valuable at the Future Forum and if they believed that their education had prepared them for today's somewhat radical departures in hospitality

Paul Herman works in Sales and Marketing at the Widder Hotel in Zurich. He graduated from a hotel school in Luxembourg, trained at Kempinski in Ber-

lin and Hamburg before working full time at Badru-tt's Palace Hotel in St. Moritz. When asked if he thought his hotel education was now obsolete be-cause of so many changes, he replied, “Not at all. I think that it's very important to know the basics as they will never change. Certainly you have to run with time...but always providing pleasure to your guests will keep them coming back. It is also very important that you know your guests and that you know their behaviour.” Paul told me that when he first started working, he kept thinking about his school and the solutions that were debated. For him, school “is your hardware which you have for life.”

The favourite part of the Future Forum for Paul was the Future Laboratory trends review and the discussion regarding Social Media for the future. He said, “You receive a lot of good ideas and it is very good to know how your colleagues in the industry think about different topics.”

Director of one of Design Hotels' newer members, The Louis Hotel in Munich, André Garcia also a young manager at the Future Forum, agreed that his education helped him to understand hotel proce-dures. André told me that the technologies change but also the characteristics of the hotel guests. This young director is well experienced in the classical hotel products and did his training at the Kempin-ski Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in Munich and has worked for Mandarin Oriental, Rocco Forte and Sofitel. The most beneficial part of the Future Forum for André was The Future Laboratory discussion of “Betapre-neurs”. The Future Laboratory calls this “an entre-preneurial mindset and experimental approach to business formed entirely by knowledge of the web” and is “perfectly suited to these unpredictable and volatile times.”

An amazingly insightful Future Forum Sympo-sium was celebrated with a black tie gala dinner. Sounds too traditional? However, this was not just any gala dinner. It was held in the middle of a private museum called “me Collectors” which is the private collection of Thomas Olbricht. There are two floors of displays and 2 main halls below. We were in the grand hall surrounded by somewhat eclectic artwork including an enormous painting of Michael Jackson on a horse dressed as King Louis XIII of France.

You may think the story ends here but this is Ber-lin. So Claus Sendlinger called one of his friends who was going to open an underground nightclub called the CCCP the following week and asked him to open it that night just for us and he did. It seems the future starts now.

Sonja Holverson

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