At a time when the accommodation offer has become considerably more diverse, establishments are increasingly seeking to differentiate themselves through the experience they offer travellers.
Attention to detail, atmosphere and interactions is becoming a key lever for creating memories and strengthening the bond between a place and those who visit it.
In partnership with ENSCI-Les Ateliers, EquipHotel Paris asked 12 students — future designers aged 18 to 29 — to develop a project on the theme of “hospitality as a creator of memories”. From October 2025 to January 2026, they were given carte blanche, as part of a project workshop, to imagine and develop a deliverable ready to be taken further.
Among their sources of inspiration were the invitation to slow down, the thoughtful touches a hotelier might offer travellers, and the object one brings back at the end of a stay.
Hospitality is made up of memories — in the plural. This is something the ENSCI students understood well when imagining creative projects designed to stimulate all the senses.
Indeed, research in cognitive science has shown that there is not one memory, but many: memories of touch, sound, smell, taste and sight. What becomes unforgettable is not built by the mind alone, but by every cell in our body, by our whole identity.
The hospitality of tomorrow will draw on all the senses to create unforgettable memories, and this resonates with a broader societal trend: the need for personalisation, the rejection of the standardised, the uniform, the anonymous and the sanitised.
The École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle is placed under the dual authority of the Ministries of Culture and Industry. The first school entirely devoted to design in France, it has been cultivating, defending and transmitting the idea of design as industrial creation for 40 years.
The ENSCI-Les Ateliers trains versatile and singular industrial designers, capable of intervening in and rethinking the forms, uses and means of multiple societal fields. It favours a global, pragmatic and partnership-based approach that links and brings into action all the players in these fields. It involves both learning by doing and putting thought into action. Two initial training diplomas are awarded: Textile Designer and Industrial Designer, each of which has been awarded a Master's degree. It is ranked 40th out of the 800 best schools and universities in the world. www.ensci.com
