A look at the new bodies that are changing the paradigms of hospitality, the role of the designer and the concepts of luxury, quality, technology and creativity, provided by Matteo O. Ingaramo, professor of Design at Politecnico di Milano and president of Poli.Design, the well-established partner of HostMilano in the competition Smart Label – Host Innovation Award.

“We are witnessing seismic changes, such as the arrival of artificial intelligence, and their effects will be seen over the next few years. But we need to learn how to manage them right now,” Ingaramo says. He sees three challenges facing designers and entrepreneurs.

Technology’s three challenges

The first challenge is the risk of using technology as an end unto itself. “Put simply, it’s not enough to add a nice colourful digital display to make it more efficient or facilitate the work of the operator. Indeed if the interface is not intuitive, the use just ends up becoming more complicated. So innovation has to be really functional and motivated by a desire to improve a process.”

A second challenge is that of the balance we need to find between the growing capabilities of machines and human creativity and professionalism. “We run the risk of over-estimating the former and underestimating the latter,” the president of POLI.design goes on, “and of neglecting the growth and training of personnel, which means obtaining results that are not always the best, because the complexity of the machinery is not commensurate with the skills of the person using it. Take, for example, coffee-making machines that ‘do everything by themselves. This leads to the hiring of staff that is ill-prepared technically and does not have much idea about coffee culture.”

A third challenge, and another balance that needs to be established, concerns the costs of innovation. Innovation is costly, and in previous years mistakes were made by gambling on technologies created out of nothing that turned out to be of little if any value. This is counter-productive in an industrial context. What you need here is a paradigm shift. You need to switch to a smart approach where innovations are made to what already exists with a view to achieving a specialised and functional differentiation.

Sustainability as an all-round ESG approach

Key to these challenges is of course the question of sustainability, which has now evolved into an ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) approach, one involving the idea of circularity. “A very clear example is to be found in the luxury hotel segment. In the past, the sense of luxury was expressed mainly by aesthetic choices that needed to give the impression that a lot of money was being spent on exquisite materials, say, or on an even over-assiduous service. Today, instead, of a waiter filling a glass of water the moment he sees it empty, in a luxury hotel you might find a stainless steel water bottle you have to fill yourself.” This apparent “reduction” in service is in fact a statement from the hotel that it is paying more attention to sustainability, and that might also mean the use of raw, natural or recycled materials in the design. The bottle is something guests can keep, and in that way they also have a permanent reminder of their stay there.

The role of the designer in the out-of-home market is that of holding together all these bodies,” Ingaramo says, finally, “to help clients construct a design that is sustainable in terms not just of the environment but also economically: innovative in the truest sense of the word, as part of an investment that can last over the medium to long term.”

Smart Label – Host Innovation Award is the prize promoted by HostMilano and Fiera Milano in partnership and POLI.design, and with the sponsorship of the Italian Industrial Design Association (ADI) for products and solutions that stand out for distinctive features in terms of functionality, technology, environmental sustainability or ethical or social implications. Applications for the fifth edition of the award, open to companies exhibiting at HostMilano, are open until 30 April 2023. Later newsletters will report on some of the companies who have submitted applications.