How to satiate a guest’s subconscious

The factors contributing to guest experience are limitless, and include everything from ease of booking through to the firmness of a mattress – but how much are guests subconsciously impacted by factors in the hotel environment around them?

Colour psychology dates back to the late 1800s, when Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung started to consider the impact that colour could have on one’s mood and recovery from stress. He’s famously quoted as saying: “Colours are the mother tongue of the subconscious”; a theory that several researchers and psychologists have expanded on throughout the past century.

Today, it is widely accepted that colour has the ability to subconsciously alter one’s mood, and can be expertly used to evoke feelings of relaxation and contentedness when used correctly. Colours have the capacity to calm or stimulate guests, giving accommodation providers the opportunity to assign a ‘mood’ to various areas of the hotel.

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Painting feature walls is one way to introduce colour, but a room doesn’t need a full makeover to have an impact on guests. Many colour psychologists suggest introducing ‘pops’ of colour through throw cushions, linen, curtains, or even artwork and decorative objects throughout the hotel.

While there are many theories surrounding the moods that match varying colours, Art Lovers Australia advises that red is stimulating, blue is relaxing and calming, green is balancing and rejuvenating, yellow is warm, playful and happy, orange, is stimulating, creative and joyful, purple is meditative and sleepy, pink is gentle and tranquil, and brown is grounded and stable.

Pantone, one of the world’s biggest authorities on all things colour, brings out an annual ‘colour of the year’, and has this year chosen a colour called ‘Greenery’ as 2017’s most sought-after shade.

Pantone describes it as “a fresh and zesty yellow-green shade that evokes the first days of spring when nature’s greens revive, restore and renew. Illustrative of flourishing foliage and the lushness of the great outdoors, the fortifying attributes of Greenery signals individuals to take a deep breath, oxygenate and reinvigorate.”

Pantone Colour Institute’s executive director, Leatrice Eiseman, said: “While Serenity and Rose Quartz, the PANTONE Colour of the Year 2016, expressed the need for harmony in a chaotic world, Greenery bursts forth in 2017 to provide us with the hope we collectively yearn for amid a complex social and political landscape. Satisfying our growing desire to rejuvenate, revitalise and unite, Greenery symbolises the reconnection we seek with nature, one another and a larger purpose.”

With rejuvenation and revitalisation being two key priorities on any holidaymaker’s agenda, it’s important for accommodation providers to consider the impact not only of one this year’s most favoured colours, but of any colour that is both on-trend and on-brand for a hotel.

Furthermore, consider how colour psychology could impact a guest’s first impressions of your hotel, whether in person or online. Can colour be used in marketing material? On hotel websites? Loyalty and gift cards? In staff uniforms?

The opportunities (and no doubt the colour choices) are endless.