Try to remember the last time you visited a hotel in Israel or abroad. A bit exhausted from traveling, you just wanted a place to put your things down and relax. Try remembering your expectations before you arrived in the lobby and wondered what it would look like, how it would smell, how it would feel. When we enter a hotel, all at once our senses pick up on the complex comprehensive image of all the things the hotel intended or didn’t intend for us to have as part of our customer experience. We examine at every little thing, whether consciously or unconsciously. Our first impression is quickly made, and there are so many things that enter our test index in a hotel. Whether it’s the staff uniforms, the smell, the air conditioning, the design of the reception area, the chairs we sit on when waiting to check-in, the lobby, the lighting. All of these help determine whether we say to ourselves, “Wow, it’s really nice here,” or, “The truth is, it’s nothing special.”

A hotel isn’t just a place to sleep. A hotel is an entire experience. When we think about the design of our hotel, it’s important to remember that guests will look at every single detail. Guests want to be enthused and excited. I’m not talking about dirt or cleanliness, because those are a given.  As humans, when we’re outside our familiar home environment, we seek comfort and find an anchor in that which is around us. When hotel guests enter their rooms, they immediately check to see if the bed is comfortable, and if there is a problem they may experience a certain degree of anxiety. We turn on the television, perhaps hoping to see something we like. We look at the marble in the shower, the closets and the little table by the window. All of these furnishings comprise an integral part of the guest’s experience.

Hotel furniture is an important part of how hotels brand themselves. A hotel that maintains a pleasant, modern and inviting design for their guests will have guests coming back again and again and telling their friends they had a pleasant stay. They won’t always even know how to explain what it was about the hotel that made their stay pleasant, but their feelings towards the place will be that it provided them with a fun experience. Ensuring the quality of the furnishings, their beauty and design features is one of the main factors that turns guests into satisfied guests.