Walk the floor of HD Expo + Conference for a few hours and something becomes abundantly clear: the cookie-cutter hotel room is dead.
Nearly 20,000 designers, architects, purchasing agents and suppliers descended on Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino last week for the annual gathering that functions as the hospitality industry’s most reliable weather vane. If something is going to matter in hospitality design over the next three to five years, you can bet it showed up somewhere at HD Expo.
This year’s show did not disappoint. The energy was strong, the products were genuinely interesting, and the conversations happening on that floor were exactly the kind that move an industry forward.
So why should office designers care about what’s happening in the world of hospitality? Because office spaces are increasingly looking like high-end hotels. While there might not be a direct connection, office design is definitely being informed by hospitality. We were in Las Vegas to see what’s coming next in hospitality, which will drive what comes next in the office.
HD Expo is not NeoCon. Hospitality is messier, more emotional and more personal. Hospitality designers are creating spaces where people spend their anniversary, or recover from a brutal business trip, or see a city for the first time.
Here are five trends that are clearly driving where hospitality design is headed and where the office of the future might end up as well.
The End of the Generic
If there was one message that echoed from the keynote stage to the smallest booth on the show floor, it was this: Guests are done with sameness. Travelers today, particularly younger ones, are making lodging decisions the way they make restaurant decisions — based on vibe, story and social currency. That has pushed designers and their clients toward properties with genuine personality.
The demand for customization and distinctiveness is no longer a luxury-tier phenomenon. It’s filtering down through lifestyle hotels, select-service properties and even extended-stay concepts. Designers who can tell a story through furniture, textiles and lighting are going to be very busy for the foreseeable future.
Outdoor Living Has Grown Up
Outdoor spaces used to be an afterthought in hotel design with a few chairs by the pool and maybe a fire pit if the budget allowed. Not anymore. The outdoor category at HD Expo has become one of the most dynamic areas of the entire show, and this year was no exception. Brands are bringing the same level of material sophistication, comfort engineering, and aesthetic intentionality to outdoor furniture that used to be reserved for the lobby or the guest room.
The reason is simple. Guests want to use outdoor spaces the way they use indoor ones. They want to work out there, eat out there and socialize outside. Rooftop bars and pool decks are now primary revenue generators for many urban properties. Designers are responding accordingly, specifying pieces that can withstand the elements while still looking great. Weather resistance has gotten genuinely impressive. More importantly, so has the design, which was on clear display at Tuuci, the high-end maker of parasols, pergolas and cabanas and outdoor furniture.
Mausi McDaniel, chief marketing officer at Tuuci, said the stand was designed to show the flexibility of the Miami-based company’s products. Using different colors and materials, Tuuci created several vignettes, each with a different vibe.
Wellness Is No Longer a Spa Add-On
Walk into most hotels built a decade ago and wellness meant a fitness center with a few treadmills and a steam room attached to the pool. Today, wellness is part of the entire guest experience, from the air filtration in the room to the lighting system that adjusts throughout the day to support circadian rhythms.
The conference programming around wellness was some of the most substantive at this year’s show, with panelists addressing how the concept has evolved from a marketing buzzword into a genuine design discipline. This category is evolving fast, and the brands that embed wellness at the architectural and materials level are going to have a real competitive advantage. For designers, that means thinking about acoustics, biophilic elements, textiles that are both beautiful and non-toxic and guest room environments that actively support rest and recovery.
Technology Is Getting Invisible, Smarter and More Important
The hospitality technology conversation used to be dominated by in-room tablets and high-speed wifi. The conversation at HD Expo this year was considerably more sophisticated. Artificial intelligence is moving from novelty to infrastructure. Hotels are using it to personalize room temperature, lighting preferences and pillow selection before a returning guest even checks in. Robots are handling luggage delivery at select properties. Digital check-in has gone from a pandemic-era workaround to a genuine guest preference for many demographics.
The interesting design implication is that as technology becomes more capable, the best hospitality designers are working harder to make it disappear. Nobody wants to stay in a room that feels like a Best Buy showroom. The goal is technology that anticipates needs invisibly, leaving the design to do what design is supposed to do: Create atmosphere, tell stories and make people feel something. The brands getting this right are embedding tech into furniture, millwork and architectural elements rather than bolting it on afterward.
Maximalism and Bold Colors
Plain, sterile hotels are making way for properties with bold, rich colors, textures and textiles. The safe, muted palettes that dominated hospitality design for the better part of a decade are getting crowded out by something louder, more confident and considerably more fun. Maximalism has arrived in hospitality. Bold jewel tones, layered patterns, unexpected color combinations that should clash but somehow don’t are showing up in guest rooms, restaurants, rooftop bars and lobbies from boutique independents to major branded properties.
In an era when guests are selecting properties partly based on how the spaces photograph and what story the rooms tell about them as travelers, bold design has become a form of marketing. A maximalist lobby is a piece of content. A guest room with a deep plum ceiling, a graphic wallcovering and furniture that commits fully to a point of view is the kind of space people remember, return to and tell other people about. Suppliers at HD Expo are clearly reading the room.
The textile and wallcovering categories have exploded with pattern and color options that would have felt risky to specify just a few years ago. Case goods manufacturers are offering finishes in saturated tones that go well beyond the standard walnut-and-white. Lighting brands are leaning into fixture designs that function as sculpture. The message from the floor was that restraint had its moment, and its moment is passing.
Taken together, these five trends paint a picture of an industry that has emerged from the disruptions of the past several years sharper, more thoughtful and more attuned to what guests actually want. After a brutal stretch, the global hospitality market has come roaring back. The creativity on display at HD Expo suggests the design community is more than ready to meet the moment. And you can bet that what happens in Vegas when it comes to hospitality design, definitely isn’t going to stay in Vegas. It’s coming to an office near you.