HIX, Europe’s all-new hotel design event, has announced its 2020 highlights and exhibitor line-up ahead of its debut edition at London’s Business Design Centre on 19-20 November (the day after AHEAD Europe).
Each edition will be designed to capture the spirit of the times, providing visitors with strategic and tactical inspiration and direction. The organisers will focus on ‘HIX space and HIX time’; a curated edit of leading suppliers and installations, alongside an activity schedule that navigates guests through their HIX experience.
A new event in a new world
Though HIX’s founding principles haven’t changed, the Covid-19 crisis has driven the team to evolve their original concepts for 2020. This year’s show will therefore operate under the theme ‘All Together Now’, reflecting and directing a new normal in hotel design and development, whether permanent or temporary.
“When we decided to create the event, it was always about the power of community and shared, joyful experience,” says co-founder Joel Butler. “Now we’re in the midst of a global pandemic and we couldn’t be surer about our decision. This November, HIX is for the community to rethink, rebuild, recover and prosper.”
Boutique experience
The inaugural exhibitor line-up already boasts over 100 suppliers, with more names set to be announced soon. According to Butler, the event celebrates exhibitors as being core to its content, encouraging them to create a narrative around their installations. “We love the idea of having 120 stories instead of simply 120 exhibition stands,” he explains. “We will champion collaboration. Now, more than ever.”
Much like a hotel, location is also essential to the HIX experience, in the eyes of Butler: “The BDC is crucial to our identity both as a venue and location. It’s a boutique space surrounded by independent bars, restaurants and cafes, and most importantly it’s right in the heart of the design community.”
The Unlearning
Titled ‘The Unlearning’, the HIX 2020 seminars will acknowledge the effects of Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdown by way of using social scientists as speakers. Group behavioural patterns, distance versus intimacy, the economics of travel and the shifting perception of beauty will all be explored. Experts and visionaries from hospitality development and design will then discuss these topics within the context of hotels.
HIX Works
In the Gallery Hall area, HIX will explore a different design discipline each year and ask the question: ‘what could this mean for hotels?’ The topic for 2020 will focus on the workplace and its relationship with hotel design. Visitors will discover suppliers, symposiums, case studies and all the great things that happen when two creative communities come together and share ideas.
“HIX Works is a one-off micro event,” says Butler. “The way we all work has changed forever, so it will explore new potentials for workplace and hotel design.”
Join the movement
In the same way that leading suppliers have joined the HIX movement, the event’s organisers are encouraging designers, procurement companies, project managers, operators and developers to register too.
Recruitment has also begun for the HIX Influencer Programme, a schedule for a limited selection of the community’s most influential individuals. Participants will be a combination of the ‘great and the good’ alongside those people who are simply doing cool and exciting things.
