Business of Experience Perspective –Sanat Hooja, Partner, The Machan

Q: How much of an experience is about what happens and how much is about how the guest feels? For me, how the guest feels is ultimately the experience. You can design beautiful spaces and create any number of activities, but what people really remember is how a place made them feel.

At The Machan, that could simply be waking up to the forest, watching a sunrise, sitting quietly with a cup of coffee or spending uninterrupted time with someone you love. We live such connected and increasingly hectic lives that sometimes the luxury is simply having the time and space to slow down. Those are often the moments our guests remember most.

Q: What will guests expect from hospitality experiences five years from now that they don't necessarily expect today? I think people will increasingly look beyond the traditional definitions of luxury. A beautiful room, great food and good service will almost become hygiene factors. What guests will value more is privacy, personalisation and experiences that genuinely give them something they don't get in their everyday lives.

For us, that means nature, space, silence and the ability to disconnect. I think the luxury of the future may actually be having fewer distractions rather than more of them.

Q: Where should technology disappear completely from the guest experience? Technology should disappear wherever it starts getting between the guest and the experience they have travelled for.

The Machan is in the middle of a forest, and connectivity is naturally limited. We don't necessarily see that as a disadvantage. If you are sitting under a sky full of stars, listening to birds in the morning or hearing the wind move through the trees, we would rather you experience that than look at it through a screen.

Technology is extremely useful when it makes hospitality more seamless behind the scenes. But once the guest arrives, I think there should be places where it quietly gets out of the way.

Q: How do you create experiences that feel unique to a destination rather than transferable from one hotel to another? I think you have to start with the destination rather than the hotel. At The Machan, the forest came first. The architecture and the experience were designed around it, rather than trying to impose a conventional resort onto the landscape.

That philosophy is reflected in the different Machans. The Starlight Machan has a retractable roof that lets you sleep under the night sky; the Sunset Machan is designed around its views; while the Canopy, Heritage, Jungle and other Machans each interact with the forest differently.

To me, if you could pick up a hotel and put it somewhere else without fundamentally changing the experience, then it probably isn't connected deeply enough to its destination.

Q: Should guests pay separately for experiences, or should they be built into the overall proposition? I don't think there is one answer for every experience. The things that are fundamental to why a guest has chosen to stay with you should be part of the proposition. At The Machan, nature, tranquillity, privacy and the freedom to disconnect aren't add-ons—they are the reason for being here.

There will always be specialised experiences that require additional people, expertise or resources, and it is perfectly reasonable to charge separately for those.

The important thing is that the guest should never feel that every interaction has been designed as another opportunity to charge them.

Q: What is one mistake hospitality businesses make when trying too hard to 'design' an experience? Over-designing it.

I think hospitality can sometimes become so focused on creating an itinerary of "experiences" that we forget to leave space for the guest to discover something for themselves.

Nature does this particularly well. You cannot schedule a spectacular sunset, the sound of rain through a forest or a sky suddenly full of stars. Our role is to create the environment in which those moments can happen and then, sometimes, simply get out of the way.

Some of the best experiences aren't designed at all.