Hotel stay scenarios based on emotional design research

This paper elaborates on an emotion-oriented qualitative research project that aims at discovering design opportunities for enhancing hotel stay experiences of female business travelers. Photo elicitation and in-depth interviews are used as the key methods in studying emotions during hotel stays. To generate insights relevant to emotional design and experience design for hotels, data analysis methods based on appraisal theory in psychology and systematic coding are used. Research findings are presented by three main categories: emotions, triggers, and guest concerns. Two scenarios of optimal hotel stay experiences are also presented. These scenarios are character-rich storylines developed based on the research findings and depict hotel features that evoke pleasant emotions during four stages of hotel stay experiences: (1) Arrival, (2) room entry, (3) settling down and (4) return in the evening.