A group of students has come up with a range of ideas for the ‘hotel of the future’, after Accor held a competition to help define the future of its Novotel brand.
Personalisation, technology and sustainability were the elements students decided were most important for new hotels, including such ideas as moveable walls, personalised menus and mood lighting, new smartphone apps and social media content, and rooftop gardens, piezoelectric floors and renewable energy.
Accor invited more than 300 students in the Asia Pacific region to take part in the ‘2013 Accor Take Off! Student Challenge’. Their mission was to completely reinvent the Novotel brand for the year 2020.
And following 17,000 votes, the winning student teams were Auckland University of Technology, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Silpakorn University International College in Thailand, Ecole Hoteliere Lavasa in India and Republic Polytechnic in Singapore.
“Our rapid growth means that we hire over 10,000 people each year in Asia Pacific alone, and the Take Off! competition is a great way to provide students with exposure to Accor, while also helping us identify great talents with a real passion for hospitality,” said Patrick Ollivier, Accor’s senior vice president of HR for Asia Pacific.
“This online competition – a first for the hotel industry in this region – is indicative of Accor’s passion for innovation and complements our existing channels for reaching out to future employees, including our Accorjobs online portal, LinkedIn group and Facebook page.”
The overall winning entry was the Ecole Hoteliere Lavasa team, which introduced its ‘NOVA’ concept, which stands for Novotel’s Own Virtual Assistant. This is a smartphone app that integrates voice recognition technology into all aspects of hotel operations.
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