Design Is Just A Backdrop
When in Egypt recently, I was escaping the heat at a hotel bar, and as sunset approached, two guests who had been sitting nearby disappeared. When I went outside to take a photograph I found them posing against the view with drinks in their hands.
They took their photos, came back inside and left – without touching the drinks. The drinks had simply been props. There is nothing wrong with hotels having moments people want to photograph; they have real marketing value. The problem comes when too much of the property is designed around that single frame.
For us, a hero moment should sit within the guest journey. It might be a pause, a reveal or a highlight, but it should never have to carry the whole stay.
The Stay Between the Photographs
We are much more interested in the guest who is actually staying at the resort.
They arrive, wake up for breakfast, go to the pool, have lunch, spend time at the spa, return to their room and head out again for dinner. They encounter the property over several days, at different times and in different ways.
That means the spaces between the headline moments matter just as much as the moments themselves.
Arrival is important too. I remember my first boss telling me that the lobby matters because it is both the first and last experience of every guest: and I have paid attention to that ever since.
At a resort, the journey can begin well before the lobby. What do you see on the approach? What can you smell? Where does the sunlight hit you? What is concealed, and when is the view finally revealed?
The same thinking continues once they are inside. It is important to build in depth and layers because people experience space differently, and the sequence can amplify one moment through what comes before it.
A guest might move through a smaller, lower space before arriving somewhere much more open. That shift in scale builds anticipation and gives the view more impact than if everything had been visible from the start.
Those decisions set the pace for what follows.
Leave Something for Later
At one property we are renovating, repeat business is so strong that the hotel is now welcoming the next generation of the same families. That changes the challenge.
A first-time guest needs to be drawn into the property, but a returning guest already knows it. The design needs enough depth to reward both.
That might be a detail they missed before, a different view or the way a familiar room changes after sunset. The property itself has not necessarily changed; the guest is simply able to experience it differently.
We also consciously think about that shift from day to night.
At a resort in the Seychelles, there was already a turn-down ritual involving a cocktail kit made with local rum, so we started looking at how the room itself could make more of that moment. A bar trolley now sits quietly in the room during the day, but when the guest returns after dinner it is opened with fresh ice, the ingredients and a note from the general manager.
It turns a simple service ritual into part of the evening, while also giving the hotel an opportunity to make that amenity work a little harder.
Let the Property Change
The same principle can work on a much larger scale.
On another project, we designed a round ballroom that feels almost like a conservatory during the day, with filtered natural light around its perimeter. At night, it becomes a performance space; the room goes dark and the chandeliers become the focus. It is the same architecture doing two very different jobs.
That kind of transformation adds richness to a resort because guests are not encountering the same atmosphere every time they walk into a space.
A resort should not feel fully understood by lunchtime on day one: there should be shifts in scale, light, pace and use. Some things should be obvious immediately, while others should take longer to discover.
Design for the Stay
As a designer, I am naturally attracted to beautiful spaces, but once I am actually in them, I’m thinking much more about who I’m with and what is happening around me. In this way, I have always thought of design as a backdrop and the guests as the actors.
A hero moment can be powerful, but it is only one point in a much longer sequence. The arrival, the transitions, the way a room changes through the day, the details you notice later, and the places you choose to return to, all shape the stay.
For me, the aim is not to create a room that someone simply describes as beautiful. Beauty is subjective. What matters more is whether the design changes the pace, shifts the mood, or gives guests the setting for something memorable to happen.
That is where the value sits for owners and operators too. A resort has to do more than make an impression; it has to hold interest across several days and still reveal something new when guests return.
Ultimately, good design is doing its job when guests are absorbed in the place, rather than standing back to admire it.