As the hospitality sector begins to reemerge after the global pandemic, fresh thinking, new strategies and innovation will be key – and all on show at HD Expo + Conference in Las Vegas, 26 to 28 April.
Few sectors have been so thoroughly side-swiped by the COVID-19 pandemic as hospitality. But with the great re-opening gathering pace – especially in the US and Europe – the industry is again looking forward, re-calibrating and re-imagining services and spaces. From the niche and boutique to global titans, the sector is primed for renewal and ready to soak up and act on fresh stories, ideas and inspiration, aware that business as usual is not an option.
The hospitality industry is built on relationships, contact and instant communities. It relies on, and generates, the very sharpest intelligence on shifts in consumer demand. And it loves coming together to compare notes. The pandemic took those opportunities away but here too there is good news.
The hospitality industry comes together
A circumscribed version of Hospitality Design magazine’s HD Expo + Conference, a key industry coming together, returned last August for the first time in two years. This April though, it returns in all its three-day glory promising insight-sharing, trend-spotting, cross-pollinating and partying-by-the-pool.
Key players and rising stars from across the travel and hospitality sector – including interior designers, architects, hoteliers, owners, operators and developers – will come together at Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay Convention Center from 26 to 28 April to listen, learn and network.
This spring’s HD Expo + Conference will be a welcome, and perhaps crucial, chance for the sector to discover new purpose and a new sense of mission
‘It was great to bring the industry together in 2021, but now, we are looking forward to growing on what we did in August and bringing back some of the original elements of the show,’ says Stacy Shoemaker Rauen, editor in chief of Hospitality Design, and SVP of Design Group, Emerald. ‘From the conference programming and the activations and product launches on the show floor, this year’s show will be a true celebration of the hospitality industry.’
This spring's HD Expo + Conference is all about pivoting out of survival mode, driving through recovery mode and plotting a course to healthy growth. The event’s conference programme, tagged ‘Think Smarter’, pulls together speakers from the industry’s biggest players and brightest stars including Grupo Habita, Hyatt, Host Hotels & Resorts, Marriott, Roar, Rockwell Group, Highgate, Sands, WATG, Gensler, HBA, Holland America Group, Proper Hotel and Bunkhouse, to name but a few, to cover 40 timely topics.
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'Bleisure', hotel as workplace and digital transformation
Together they will address key industry, design and consumer trends from travel guilt, staycationing and sustainable tourism to the reconnection with nature and the outdoors, mindfulness and the ongoing wellness revolution to the search for community and local connections, 'bleisure' and the hotel-as-workplace, and of course, the accelerating digital transformation of travel and hospitality. Virtual pre-tours, augmented reality and the metaverse are certain to come up at some point.
‘From the conference programming and the activations and product launches on the show floor, this year’s show will be a true celebration of the hospitality industry’
The exhibition halls, meanwhile, will be crammed to bursting with showcases for new design, materials, products, services and other new developments from key manufacturers and suppliers. And all reflecting, and answering to, just these behavioural, aspirational and technological shifts.
Special features at the next edition of HD Expo + Conference include HD Park, an immersive indoor experiment inspired by the trend for outdoor tented camps and glamping resorts. HD Park will also add a campfire conviviality to many of the conference programme's best conversations.
Wellness and sustainability
The wellness-focused DesignWell Pavilion – a past favourite – returns and is likely to exert an ever-greater pull. Wellness, according to the Global Wellness Institute, is already a $4.5 trillion market, with some figures suggesting that it could hit $8trn by 2030 with wellness tourism driving much of that growth. The COVID-19 pandemic has supercharged the public interest in health and wider wellbeing, and travel and the hospitality sector can now position itself as the wellness delivery system.
This is the place to hear about how brands, emerging, emerged and fully blossomed, are integrating wellness and sustainability into their projects and what more the industry can and should do.
Fresh thinking and new strategies
Designed by the team behind 21C museum, HD Social Hub is part conversation stage, part lounge and all hangout space, a place to relax, recharge and reconnect. HD Connect, meanwhile, is the event's digital social space and the place to arrange physical connections, with proprietary software seamlessly bringing together interested parties for mutual advantage.
As for many sectors, hospitality’s working assumptions no longer work. Fresh thinking and new strategies are not just aspirations, they are essentials. This spring’s HD Expo + Conference will be a welcome, and perhaps crucial, chance for the sector to discover new purpose and a new sense of mission.