Cruise and Hospitality
Overview
What do you remember from your last hotel room or cruise ship cabin? We aim to add real value for you and your guests by making every element of the design work harder, with the addition of memorable features included to delight and amaze. This approach builds experiences that stay top of mind for longer and establish brand loyalty.
Our design solutions are based on the insights gained from in-depth, onsite research that engages with all the relevant project stakeholders. They are developed by our multidisciplinary teams to address core practical issues like cleaning, servicing and maintenance, flexibility and rapid turnaround times, and ease of manufacture, in addition to the key deliverable - creating an exceptional guest experience.
We understand the importance of speed and efficiency when bringing a new design to market, and because we provide a comprehensive service from concept to launch you can be confident that DCA will deliver for you and your guests.
Research-led design
Thoroughly understanding and responding to the needs of your guests and your staff is crucial to the success of any cabin or hotel room design project. The only way we can really achieve this is by spending time in the environment, sharing the experience as well as interviewing and observing guests and staff. Our task is to make your guests’ living spaces as quick and easy to service as possible while delivering class leading functionality, comfort and visual impact.
In one example from our cabin design project for Carnival Cruise Line, our onboard research identified the need for an easier way to reconfigure the bedside tables when changing between twin and double bed cabin configurations. Our recommendation was to remove the existing bulky side tables and incorporate sturdy deployable side shelves cantilevered from the headboard wall. Once implemented, these dramatically reduced reconfiguration time.
The list of research-led wins goes on throughout the cabin: providing hanging features to dry wet items; subtle lighting at night so guests can access the toilet without disturbing the other occupants of the room; fitting an in-swinging shower door to replace the traditional shower curtain; moving the telephone off the countertop and onto the wall to free up surface space; the introduction of smooth fluid surfaces with radiused corners that were quick and easy to clean, avoiding sharp corners where dirt traps might form.
We spend time in the environment, sharing the experience and interviewing and observing guests and staff
VR as a development tool
We use Virtual Reality (VR) as a vital working tool and an integral part of our design process from the very earliest stages of a project. By testing and exploring early concepts in this immersive way we can gain insights which allow us to optimise and refine the developing interior design proposals.
The ability to demonstrate potential solutions through virtual prototyping is also essential for achieving buy-in from key stakeholders, so we use realistic 3-dimensional virtual reality environments throughout the development process to engage with the widest range of stakeholders, encouraging them to test our concepts and provide feedback to the creative team.
The role of CMF
Our CMF solutions are designed to create living spaces for your guests that are exciting, comfortable and hard-wearing.
Taking your brand as our starting point and incorporating the right mix of ambient, task and mood lighting, we consider the subtle details that will communicate quality and care to your guests as they make themselves at home in an environment designed to make them feel comfortable and valued.
As well as providing great visual solutions, we also ensure durability of all our interior CMF choices by working closely with suppliers to specify materials that are easy to clean, service and maintain. In the cruise and hospitality industries, any design features or material choices that add complications and time for the housekeeping staff, particularly during turnarounds or changeovers, are simply unacceptable.
Keeping it realistic
Our engineers work closely with our design team to ensure that our ideas remain practical and production focused, even on the most technically challenging projects.
Our design for Dandi Living’s compact studio bed, in which a cantilevered double bed is raised and lowered to and from its ceiling storage position, is a great example of how a design vision can be made reality when backed up by the necessary engineering creativity and rigour.
Such an integrated engineering approach allows our design work to be faithfully translated into the production implementation. This was certainly the case with our cabin designs for Carnival Cruise Line, where we were delighted to receive such positive feedback from the shipyard staff in Finland, with one of their engineers saying, “It was hard not to implement your ideas, because they are just better. Why wouldn’t we do it?“
Making it real
Through the use of purpose-built spatial mock-ups, ergonomic rigs and working prototypes, we are able to demonstrate how our new ideas will work in practice, establishing and maintaining the confidence of key stakeholders. This includes the use of hybrid prototypes that combine basic, low-fidelity physical mock-ups with virtual reality models to deliver a realistic user experience as early as possible in the development programme.
Undeniably seeing and feeling is believing, and by using our internal workshop facilities to support the design process, we regularly identify exciting new design opportunities, based on the findings from trials on physical rigs and prototypes. This iterative process not only improves our design outcomes, it also allows use to manage and reduce the development risk that is inherent in any new design programme.
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