Jonny Sin, Founder and Managing Director of Sin&Co., recently contributed to a Design Insider roundtable exploring how travel and hospitality are evolving.
Hosted by Studio Moren at The Westin London City, the discussion brought together perspectives from across architecture, interiors, development, operations, investment, and brand.
The conversation covered a broad range of themes, from wellness and hybrid living to digitalisation and community. A clear theme running through the discussion was how hospitality principles are increasingly influencing offices, residential, and lifestyle environments, redefining how buildings are positioned and experienced.
As discussed during the roundtable, hospitality remains fundamentally about connection, an idea that continues to underpin how spaces are conceived and experienced.
"Hospitality is fundamentally about connection. If presence disappears entirely, the experience risks becoming transactional.” — Jonny Sin
The discussion also touched on the challenge of balancing brand consistency with the desire for more localised, individual experiences, particularly as operators scale across different markets.
Flexibility also emerged as an important consideration, with spaces needing to support a wider range of uses throughout the day, adapting to changing patterns of work, travel, and social interaction.
There was also a growing emphasis on how environments perform, not just visually, but operationally, in supporting wellbeing and creating meaningful, lasting experiences.
From a design perspective, this reinforces the importance of early-stage thinking, where decisions around planning, adjacency, and operational flow shape the foundation of a successful outcome.
