As part of my research process, I decided to visit a couple of luxury hotels in Scotland in order to have a chat with their operation managers and better understand the situation of lighting within these buildings.

Twelve Picardy Place boutique hotel was the first place I visited, located in Edinburgh. Mairéad, the hotel manager told me some insights about the complicated system that manages the lights within the rooms. There are definitely too many switches that make the experience over complicated for the guests. There is one just next to the main door and more over the side of the bed and in the room. Sometimes people find difficult to understand what turns what on. She also mentioned that a lady who checked out this morning was complaining there was not enough light in the room, although it created a nice atmosphere. Unfortunately, she couldn’t read her book properly because of the lack of the lighting system.

After the useful chat with Mairéad, we both came to the conclusion that it would be great if some of the lamps in the room were easier to control. For instance, it would be great if you can change the intensity of the light to facilitate some specific activities like reading for example. Also, it would be definitely simpler for the hotel guests if the bedside table lamps could be turned on by simply touching them with your hand or by using an app on the phone to control the light intensity. This meeting really made me realise how important is for luxury hotels nowadays to adopt smart lamps instead of traditional ones.

BE SMART and design a product using the latest technologies in order to improve the customer experience. That’s what I will do.