If you’re planning a hotel project, you want your design and procurement consultants to know what’s happening within the industry.

Time flies when you’re having fun!

As we celebrate Innvision’s 20 years of providing interior design and FF&E to the hospitality industry, it seems two decades have passed quickly. Yet, we have grown and learned valuable lessons that can only come through sustained effort, experience, and a perspective built by time.

In this post, Innvision co-founders Walter Jones (Chairman) and Chris Parker (President) discuss industry changes, key learnings, and exciting opportunities ahead.

Brand Influence

Back in 2004, we noticed hotel brands beginning to play a more prominent role than they had previously, taking much firmer control over their product and raising the bar. Deservedly, brands wanted more say over what was going into their hotels, which simplified the procurement business and streamlined the distribution of hotel FF&E.

Today, the hospitality industry continues to be guided by a robust system of franchises. Innvision was fortunate to establish itself as a trusted provider to numerous hotel franchisors in the early days and remain in good stead with them over time as preferred suppliers within their systems. This has been a boon to Innvision’s growth and prosperity.

A Different Service Model

The competitive landscape in hospitality procurement and interior design has always demanded that providers differentiate themselves in how they create value for hoteliers. Therefore, from Innvision’s earliest days, we knew we had to create something new that the market needed.

We developed a nationwide team of field-based design and procurement consultants who visit our clients and job sites at key stages to provide the industry’s most hands-on project support. Their internal counterparts in project management and logistics, credit, accounting, and sales tax remittance, with advanced tools and technologies at their fingertips, ensure the rest of a procurement project flows smoothly. No other competitor in the industry is built this way at Innvision’s scale.

As a hotelier, it’s important to pay attention to color trends in the industry. After all, color influences your hotel’s overall atmosphere, theme, and guest experience. It can help create ambiance and mood to evoke emotions such as calmness and relaxation in guestrooms, while arousing vibrance and energy in common areas.

Color helps define the brand and identity of your hotel. Consistent and intentional uses of color throughout a hotel reinforce brand recognition in powerful, non-verbal ways.Ěý Moreover, thoughtful application of color promotes a cohesive visual identity that enhances guests’ overall experience, makes them feel welcome, and encourages social interaction.

Finally, color also influences the size of a space. Lighter colors make a space feel more open and airy, while darker colors create a sense of warmth, coziness, and intimacy.

With today’s globally interconnected supply chain for hotel FF&E, if your products are coming from overseas, you can expect to see an impact when challenges arise in other parts of the world that affect major shipping lanes. Such is the case concerning the current Red Sea crisis and the Panama Canal drought.

In this post, you will learn what’s going on, how these events affect the hotel FF&E supply chain, and steps you can take to minimize the impacts to your hotel project.

The Red Sea Crisis & Panama Canal Drought

The unrest within the Middle East has created the opportunity for increased piracy within the Red Sea. Attacks to ships are making passage through the Suez Canal dangerous, so shipping companies are diverting vessels around Africa instead. This adds time and cost to shipments.

To make matters worse, in addition to Suez Canal issues, containers coming from the Far East are finding it difficult to cut through the Panama Canal, one of the world’s busiest waterways. Daily vessel transit restrictions due to severe drought conditions are allowing fewer ships to pass through the canal. A growing backlog is forcing ships to wait days or even weeks to get through, or else re-route south to go around South America. Either way, transit time and cost are higher.

How the Crisis and Drought Affect the Hotel FF&E Supply Chain

Hoteliers must plan for these new disruptions to the supply chain in their schedules and budgets. The Suez Canal and Panama Canal issues have caused the lead times of affected products to increase by an average of two weeks. Furthermore, current container costs have doubled in price. Thankfully, we have yet to see pandemic-level surges of $10,000 to $25,000 per container, but we are seeing container pricing from $3,000 to $6,000 – and rising. If Panama’s rainfall this year turns out lower than expected, the situation at the canal will get worse.

How to Minimize Their Impact on Your Projects

Due to the greater risk for delivery time and freight pricing increases, Innvision encourages you to check in with your FF&E provider on this topic. You’ll want to ensure they are staying on top of the current issues and sourcing products with minimal service impact whenever possible.

Domestic producers continue to be more reliable with their timelines. For any overseas products you’ll be purchasing, we recommend using manufacturers who take more aggressive inventory stocking positions to help offset some of these global issues.

As a hotelier, you want to make the most of your hotel investment, and as your design and procurement partner, Innvision wants the same! This is why we attended the Americas Lodging Investment (ALIS) Conference and Trade Show: to create relationships and gain valuable insights to maximize your investment—and boost your bottom line.

You want guests to love your hotel’s interior since it’s the first thing they see when they walk through your doors. To make an excellent first impression, it is important to select the right hospitality designer for your specific property, vision, and location.

However, there’s more to hiring a hospitality designer who fits your needs from an aesthetic and budgetary standpoint than just what meets the eye.

To start, if you are developing a luxury hotel, you don’t want a designer specializing in low- to mid-scale properties, and vice versa. This is why it’s essential to do your due diligence and review any potential designer’s portfolio to ensure they have experience with your property type. Only then will you be sure they can understand your needs and provide the level of design you seek.

Whatever your price point, good designers will research your target market and provide a design based on the property’s region. In contrast, inexperienced designers may overlook design elements such as proper finishes for exterior furnishings at beachfront properties or heavier furniture for windy areas or rooftops.

Read on to learn the five questions to ask before hiring a hospitality designer. That way, your project will run smoothly, and your design will meet brand requirements, stay within budget, and exceed your expectations.

The Risks of Not Asking the Right Questions Before Hiring a Hospitality Designer

If you don’t ask the right questions and, as a result, hire a designer who isn’t well suited for your project, your budget, timeline, and project outcome are all at risk.

Every hotel renovation is different. If you are not strictly following a prototypical renovation plan for your brand, certain circumstances, such as a custom renovation plan or a brand conversion, can make the timeline vary from one project to the next. Furthermore, the last three years of ever-changing supply chain dynamics challenged FF&E delivery planning. But fortunately, here in 2024, we can make an educated estimate of how long your hotel renovation will take.

Before we begin, it’s important to note the importance of hotel renovations. You elevate the guest experience by transforming and updating your space. In an industry as competitive as hospitality, hotels must maintain and refresh their properties regularly to stay current and appealing to guests.

So, how long do these renovations take, especially now that the supply chain disruption of the pandemic is largely behind us? Read on to find out and to discover ways to avoid renovation delays.

We’re happy to report that many good things happened in 2023. To close out the year, we’d like to highlight a few of our favorites—at Innvision and in the hospitality industry:

Innvision Bright Spots

• At Innvision, we are coming up on our 20^th anniversary as a company! We started in early 2004.
• Hilton announced their 2022 Development Awards earlier this year, and two of our projects (interior design by ID Studio and FF&E procurement by Innvision) were on their list. Hilton Garden Inn Haymarket (VA) and Homewood Suites Destin (FL) both won New Build of the Year for their brands.
• Innvision and Guest Supply completed the first full year within our announced 10-year partnership that extends Innvision’s interior design and procurement capabilities to help serve Guest Supply’s customers with FF&E project needs.
• We completed renovations to our ID Studio space in Alpharetta, GA and to our Griffin, GA Innvision headquarters.

Hospitality Industry Bright Spots

• Hotels are taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint. They are leaning towards more sustainable practices by utilizing solar power and other renewable energy sources, LED lighting, and energy-efficient appliances.
• Work-from-home culture evolved more into “work-while-traveling.” Hoteliers have started offering unique office setups to tap into this expanding section of travelers.
• Business travel showed further signs of recovery this year with a continued rise and normalization of travel rates.
• Taylor Swift and Beyonce’s concert tours across the U.S. created a huge wave of hotel demand.