Guest Experience Design

Design the stay guests
can't stop talking about.

We map your entire guest journey, remove the friction, and design the moments guests remember, so every stay feels intentional and worth returning for.

Book a discovery callSee what's included
Guest journey
  • Discover
  • Book
  • ArriveFriction
  • The stayMagic
  • Depart
  • Return

Every touchpoint mapped, from first search to return visit.

What most properties leave to chance.

Every stay feels different

The experience depends on who's on shift. Without a clear standard, no two guests get the same property, and they can tell.

Friction hides in plain sight

Small snags between booking and check-out add up: a confusing arrival, a slow check-in, a missed detail. Individually minor, together they flatten the stay.

No signature moments

The places guests rave about have moments designed on purpose. Hotel guest experience design is exactly that work. Left to luck, most stays are simply fine, and fine is forgettable.

The brand promise breaks on arrival

Your website and brand set an expectation. If the real experience doesn't match it, guests feel let down before they've even unpacked.

Left to chance, this leads to

Forgettable stays, OTA dependence, and guests who never come back.

A great experience isn't luck. It's designed: mapped, refined, and made repeatable.

The experience gap.

When it's designed

  • Every guest gets your best, not your average
  • Friction is removed before guests feel it
  • Signature moments guests actually remember
  • Your team knows the standard and hits it
  • Reviews mention the feeling, not just the room
  • Guests return, and bring others

When it's left to chance

  • The stay depends on who's working
  • Friction quietly costs you reviews and repeat stays
  • Nothing memorable, so nothing gets shared
  • Standards live in your head, not your team's
  • Guests expect one thing and get another
  • One-time stays, no loyalty

That's where Guest Experience Design comes in.

Map the journey. Design the experience.

Part guest experience consultant, part designer: we walk your property as a guest, map every touchpoint from first search to return visit, then design the experience. Friction removed, and the moments that make guests stay, spend, and come back built in. The mapping usually starts with a Hospitality Audit.

Four moves.
One designed experience.

We work the whole journey, not a checklist. Four moves take you from what happens by accident to what happens on purpose.

01
Journey mapping

We map every stage a guest moves through, from dreaming and booking to arrival, the stay, and the return, so we can see the whole experience the way a guest actually lives it.

02
Friction removal

We find the snags that quietly flatten the stay, the confusing, the slow, the missed, and design them out before guests ever feel them.

03
Signature moments

We design the moments guests remember and talk about, the ones that turn a fine stay into one worth returning for and telling people about.

04
Service standards

We turn the intended experience into clear standards your team can deliver every time, so your best stay becomes your normal one.

How it works.
On-site, then designed.

We experience your property first, then design from what we found. No generic playbooks.

On-site
Immerse

We stay and move through your property exactly as a guest would, then go deep with your team.

  • Full guest journey walkthrough and sensory audit
  • Friction and magic-moment mapping across the stay
  • Team interviews on how service really runs
Off-site
Design

We design the improved experience, touchpoint by touchpoint.

  • Reworked journey with friction designed out
  • Signature moments built into the stay
  • Service standards for each phase of the journey
Handover
Make it repeatable

We hand you the designed experience and the standards to run it.

  • Full guest experience blueprint
  • Service standards playbook for your team
  • Debrief and a clear rollout plan
How it works
1
Discovery call

30 minutes on your property, your guests, and where the experience feels off.

2
On-site immersion

We stay and walk the full journey as a guest, then go deep with your team.

3
Journey mapping

We map every touchpoint and pinpoint the friction and the missed moments.

4
Experience design

We design the improved journey: friction removed, signature moments built in, standards set.

5
Handover and rollout

You get the blueprint and standards, plus a plan to roll it out with your team.

What you get.
An experience, on purpose.

Everything you need to deliver a designed experience, not an accidental one.

Guest Journey Map

A visual map of every touchpoint from discovery to return, with friction points and magic moments marked.

Friction Audit

Every snag in the current experience, ranked by how much it's costing you in reviews and repeat stays.

Signature Moment Playbook

The moments we design for your property, with exactly how to deliver each one, every time.

Service Standards

Clear standards for each phase of the stay, so your team delivers the same experience every time.

Prioritised Action Plan

What to change first, ranked by effort and impact, with quick wins and the longer plays mapped out.

Rollout Debrief

A working session to hand over the design and plan exactly how you roll it out with your team.

What good looks like.

Consistent stays

Every guest gets your best version, not whoever's on shift. Consistency is what turns a good property into a trusted one.

Reviews about the feeling

Guests stop reviewing the room and start reviewing the experience. That's the word of mouth that fills rooms.

Guests who return

A designed experience is a reason to come back. Repeat guests spend more and cost nothing to win again.

Room to charge more

When the experience is clearly better, price stops being the conversation. You can charge what the stay is actually worth.

Designed by someone
who's lived it.

Kahn grew up around Australia’s hospitality scene. He trained staff at Apple on culture, onboarding, and service standards, then spent three years running his own specialty coffee shop and bar.

He knows what it feels like to be the one doing everything at once. He also knows what separates the places guests remember from the ones they forget.

Summer Days exists to bridge that gap, with someone who loves this industry as much as you do and the skills to help you get the right guests, better reviews, and more revenue.

Book a discovery call
Kahn Osborne, Founder of Summer Days
Kahn Osborne · Founder

Questions, answered.

What is guest experience design?

Guest experience design is the practice of mapping every touchpoint a guest moves through, from first search to return visit, then deliberately designing what happens at each one. It removes friction guests would otherwise feel and builds in the moments they remember.

What is the difference between guest experience design and interior design?

Interior design shapes the physical space. Guest experience design shapes what happens in it: how arrival feels, how staff greet, what the booking confirmation says, what guests find in the room. The two work together, but a beautiful room with a confusing check-in still produces a poor stay.

How is this different from the Hospitality Audit?

The audit is the diagnosis and covers four areas including guest experience. Guest experience design is the deeper build on that one area: mapping the full journey, designing the moments, and turning them into standards your team can repeat.

What is guest journey mapping?

Guest journey mapping lays out every stage of a stay in sequence, from dreaming and booking through arrival, the stay, departure and return, and marks where friction appears and where the memorable moments sit. It makes an invisible experience visible so it can be improved.

How long does the process take?

Typically two days on-site followed by two to three weeks of design work. We experience the property as a guest first, then map, then design. Rolling the standards out with your team takes longer and depends on team size.

What do I actually get at the end?

A full journey map of the current and intended experience, a list of friction points with fixes ranked by effort and impact, a set of designed signature moments, and written service standards your team can deliver consistently.

Do you train my team to deliver it?

Yes. A designed experience that lives only in a document changes nothing. We write the standards, then work with your team so they understand not just what to do but why it matters.

How do you measure whether it worked?

Review sentiment is the clearest signal, specifically whether guests start describing the feeling of the stay rather than just the room. Alongside that: repeat bookings, direct booking share, and how consistent scores are across different shifts.

Ready to design an experience
guests come back for?

It starts with understanding your property inside out, then designing the experience from what we find. Book a call and let's talk about your guests. If the gap is in the story rather than the stay, that is branding. If it sits with your team, that is coaching.

Book a discovery call

We take on a small number of properties at a time to keep the quality high.