Is it just us, or is ‘consuming’ not quite what it used to be? Our collective appetite for personalising everything we own and customising every experience we have has just exploded, and with it, our expectation that services and spaces should operate in an agile, intuitive manner – no less than precisely how we want them to.

Disruptive hotel and travel platforms like Airbnb, TripAdvisor and Expedia, as well as the more culinary side of hospitality 2.0 (think foodora and Deliveroo), are challenging the old systems and building in new structures of expectation among consumers. It’s a paradigm shift that’s precipitated a complete rethink in how we design space, products, service and experience. And it’s given our industry plenty of food for thought.

In this edition of Indesign: the design appetite issue, we tackle this industry’s most biting issues around hospitality: What impact are millennials and frequent travellers having on contemporary hotel design? With boutique hotels on the rise and game-changers like Airbnb redefining hotelstays, what does the modern, five-star experience look like? And to that end, do star ratings even matter anymore? How are hospitality modalities re-shaping agile working environments? Who are the forces and faces actively disrupting the traditional design models, and how are they doing this?

In these pages, you’ll discover designers who use food as a medium for mass production, and chefs who use interior design and architecture as tools for cooking. You’ll find the blueprints to new and exciting movements in hospitality culture and design including, ‘anti-hotels’, ‘tasteology’ and ‘café commercial’.

Ultimately, these disruptive and opposing forces are good for our industry, and are pushing us to problem-solve in new and different ways; to really listen to the customer and the user (channel our empathy), and rethink our design approach. Enjoy the issue!

Sophia Watson & Alice Blackwood | Indesign Co-Editors