In partnership with Digital Travel APAC, we ask the newly minted hotel’s General Manager to walk us through its unique design and guest experience innovations, and share a few personal insights from his Asia-spanning career.

Jeff Crowe, GM of Artyzen Singapore — All images courtesy of Artyzen Singapore

Artyzen Singapore will be the first foray for Artyzen Hospitality Group outside Greater China. We’ve read that Artyzen hotels tap into the culture and identity of each location, but what unites them all as a coherent brand?

The Artyzen Hotels and Resorts brand is one of the core brands of Artyzen Hospitality Group (AHG), a homegrown lifestyle hospitality specialist wholly owned by Shun Tak Holdings Limited. And you’re right, each Artyzen Hotels and Resorts brand is, in essence, a collection of individually crafted originals that taps into the culture and identity of its location.

The common thread across not just Artyzen Hotels and Resorts brand but all the brands under AHG is a strong emphasis on creating bespoke and intuitive guest experiences, in keeping with the brand’s unique Asian-rooted philosophy of emotional wisdom. By “emotional wisdom” we’re talking about our interpretation of service—that it should be informed, it should be engaged, it should be customized, bespoke to each individual guest. And the nice thing is, with 142 rooms and suites, we can do that. We can focus on each individual arrival and do our best to be prepared for them based on their individual needs. The space and the layout allow us to provide that bespoke experience.

The development site was once home to Villa Marie, a mansion owned by rubber tycoon and avid botanist Tan Hoon Siang. How does the hotel reference this history?

In a couple of ways. We refer to our meeting space as Villa Marie, so that’s a constant reminder of what was on this site originally. But if you speak to P.H. Tong, who was the lead architect with Ong & Ong Pte Ltd, he took his inspiration from the old Villa Marie bungalow. He was trying to imagine if you took a bungalow with a garden to one side, and stacked it vertically—how would that work? What he did was to rotate each iteration of that bungalow and garden by 180 degrees, and that’s how we ended up with these sky terraces interspersed throughout the building. There’s also another piece: the gentleman who built Villa Marie was an avid orchid grower. So, when you visit our wellness and workout space, we’ve got a whole section called the Orchid Library, and that’s paying respect to the original owner of this site and his fascination with orchids.

What can you tell us about the surrounding West Orchard neighborhood and Artyzen Singapore’s role in it?

Shun Tak Holdings Limited, our parent company, also has two condominium projects, which are nearby—one’s definitely within walking distance of our building, and another one is a bit farther but still walkable. For the residents of those condominiums, we’ll have some special arrangements that we do on their behalf. But we’re also convinced we’ve got to engage our neighborhood, and in the last 10 years, there’s been a lot of conversation about placemaking, and so we see Artyzen Singapore playing a big role as a hub for residents of this area. We’ve started calling it West Orchard, because we realize that there’s so much redevelopment going on. It’s really a unique location, because you have a huge concentration of residential, we’re a stone’s throw from the Botanic Garden, many of the embassies are located not too far from here. And then we’re walking distance to the Orchard Road shopping district. And you don’t find that in very many places, where you bundle all those things all in one neighborhood.

Now of course, we’re not the only hotel coming to this West Orchard area. A lot of these buildings from the 60s, 70s, and 80s are now being redeveloped at this end of Orchard Road—we’re seeing lots of new hospitality products come to our neighborhood. And fortunately, all these hotels are quite different, so we think there’s a little slice for us here, and the more people that are talking about how cool and fun it is to be in West Orchard, the better off we’re going to be.

All accommodations at Artyzen Singapore, including Deluxe Balcony rooms, have soaring four-meter ceilings.

Is there a particular demographic or kind of travelers that Artyzen Singapore is targeting?

There is. The sort of customer profiles we’ve identified fall into several groups. One of them would be the traditional luxury hotel guest that wants something a little different. We talk about the global nomads and the cultural explorers as certain categories of guest, those who also appreciate the uniqueness, the little surprises we offer. The other category we imagine being very attracted to Artyzen Singapore are the tech entrepreneurs, the people who run their own businesses, the sort of people that can make their own decision about where they stay.

We know that our guests will skew younger than the traditional luxury hotel, and within Artyzen Hospitality Group, we talk about being focused on the millennials and Gen-Z category, because they will quickly become the bulk of our business. Perhaps not quite as strong here in Singapore yet, but definitely our hotels in China, that’s really the way they’re positioned. As a luxury boutique hotel in the heart of Singapore, corporate will be part of our mix but not a focus.

Tell us a bit about the interior design and the guest accommodations. What sets them apart from those in other Singapore hotels?

The flavors, the patterns, and the colors of Singapore were the inspiration for the hotel’s interior design. We have arches in parts of the building, which are reminiscent of the old five-foot way you would have in front of a shophouse. Then we have different splashes of color representing the different people that came together to create modern Singapore, so there’s touches of Chinese, and Indian, and Peranakan, and all the ethnicities that came together here.

For our standard guest room product, each room minimum size is 42 square meters, which is very spacious by Singapore standards. We have four-meter-high ceilings throughout the building; every room has a ceiling fan, every room has a balcony, and then we added the branded touches, which many of our guests will appreciate or be familiar with from home. Things as fundamental as the Bang & Olufsen Bluetooth speakers, the Dyson hairdryers, the Braun digital alarm clock that also serves as a cordless phone-charging dock. And instead of going with a single-use plastic container or canister dispenser for our bathroom amenities, I think we’re the first hotel in Singapore to put them in aluminum bottles—we think they’re a nice, healthy size and much easier to recycle.

The Terrace suites represent about five percent of our room inventory, and we believe that they’re going to be very, very popular. They start with an indoor space of 84 square meters, and then with that comes exclusive use of one of the sky terraces, which each measure another 95 square meters. And it’s a double-height space—you have this soaring ceiling, outdoor seating, a sunbed with umbrella, a small table with four chairs, and then landscaping. So, it really does feel like you’re in your own little garden area.

The private garden of a Terrace suite at Artyzen Singapore.

It’s much harder to retrofit an existing property than to build something new with sustainability in mind. Could you tell us about the eco-conscious features that have been baked into the design?

We’re a Green Mark–certified building, at least we will be once we finish the opening process. But I think more importantly, the architects at Ong & Ong put a lot of thought into fundamental things that we tend to overlook when it comes to sustainability. They looked at the open spaces—many of the corridors in our public areas are not air-conditioned automatically, and that’s by design, to allow some sort of passive cooling. Ceiling heights are tall, which allows for air circulation. The siting of the building, the direction it faces, was taken into consideration. On top of that, we added some features like rainwater harvesting. We have extensive landscaping here, and so the rainwater harvesting will be sufficient to satisfy most of our landscape irrigation needs. Which is great, because here in Singapore water is a precious resource and we won’t be drawing from the public water supply—at least not very much—to satisfy the landscaping requirements. So yes, a lot of thought went into all those things.

Last year, you were teaching marketing as an Associate Faculty member at the Singapore Institute of Technology for nine months. Was it a challenge to translate real-life scenarios into a classroom setting?

Not at all—I think that came quite naturally. The Singapore Institute of Technology is more closely aligned with industry, which is why they have a Hospitality Business program there. Many of the students were interested in technical skills like revenue management, digital marketing, and event planning. So no, it was pretty easy and they were very engaged when it came to real-life examples of how things work.

One of the most popular lectures I delivered was about search engine marketing and we did a little exercise where we assigned the students to groups to do a page load test of the major hotel companies. And of course, there’s a Google link you can go to and it’ll give you the diagnostics on that. If you’re working in the digital marketing space, that’s something you use quite often. But it was all new to them, and then they got to see the impact some of these things have on business.

What do you feel is the biggest difference between the students of today and the late 80s when you did your master’s in hotel administration at Cornell?

I think geography also plays a part in that, because the master’s program I did at Cornell was heavily skewed toward international students. About a third of my class was international. And at that point, the hotel school had a work requirement—you had to actually have worked full-time before enrolling in the master’s program. So, the students tended to be older. I was 30 when I went back to school for my master’s, and we had students that were 24 to 52 in my class. Later on, when I was working in China, the university was one of the last to still require an in-person interview for admissions. And of course, someone living in China couldn’t fly to Ithaca, New York to go for an interview. They had a panel of alumni on the ground that provided these interviews. And the questions were all quite interesting, but there was a huge emphasis upon work experience, and here in Asia, students don’t have the opportunity for a lot of work experience. Summer jobs, part-time jobs, volunteer activities, things like that. So, I think that was one of the big differences and that’s probably more a geographic thing, that students from North America almost will all have some sort of part-time job as high-school students. Whereas in Asia, that’s not as common.

Inside the living room of a 178-square-meter Terrace suite.

The pandemic has speeded up the digitization of the hospitality industry. What innovations are Artyzen Singapore pursuing to help improve the guest experience?

Here in Singapore, we’ve had this great drive for digital transformation that’s been going on for long before the pandemic. But it really kicked into high gear the last several years, so this whole move to digital payment means the restaurants will largely be cash-free. Of course, we’re not going to be a completely cash-free hotel, because we understand we need some resources at the front desk. But we’re moving in that direction.

The second area is embracing the way guests want to communicate with us. I grew up in a time when if you wanted something from the hotel you picked up the phone and you called them. Well, that doesn’t work for everybody any more. In fact, there’s a lot of applications where calling is one of the most inefficient ways. For example, if you’re not speaking English as your first or second language, ordering room service at four o’clock in the morning is a really difficult exercise. For that unique application, you should be able to go online or scan a QR code and order room service. The other way is by putting in place tools where we can allow the guest to communicate with us via WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, Viber, because those are the channels they are familiar with. As a guest, I want to be able to pick up my phone, and if I’m a WhatsApp person, send a WhatsApp message to the hotel and they’ll sort it out for me.

Another area we are streamlining is in the guest rooms. Most hotels in the old days had this big binder, the compendium of information. We’ve actually put all that information online. So, that big document will be accessible either through our IPTV system, or by logging in with your own mobile device. We’re huge fans of BYOD—Bring Your Own Device—so we’ve got the technology in place that people can stream from their phone, tablet, or notebook computer to the television and use it as an auxiliary monitor.

And how are you using technology to simplify transportation from the hotel?

We’re going to be one of the few hotels in Singapore that actually has a courtesy car service. We’ll have cars and drivers available to take our guests on a complimentary basis within a 1.5-kilometer radius—if somebody wants to go to the Chinese embassy, or to Shangri-La hotel, or to Gleneagles Hospital, the Botanic Garden, ION or Tanglin Mall, any of those places nearby. That’s going to relieve a lot of that “can you get me a taxi, can you help me order Grab, does GoJek work here…” for really short trips. We think it will siphon off most of it and provide an extra service for our guests. So that’s number one.

Number two is, we’re finalizing the technology now that will allow us to order hire-car services such as Grab, GoJek, and Tada, and we would arrange it and then post it to the guest’s bill. So, that’s another useful service—because many of our guests won’t have an account set up with these ride-hailing services. We’re also working with a company to provide limousine transfers for those who want a dedicated vehicle; we expect that a fair number of our guests will want a car on demand throughout their stay.

An artist’s impression of the entrance drop-off area at Artyzen Singapore.

You’ve spent much of your career in sales and marketing positions around Asia Pacific. How have you integrated that experience into operations?

There’s been a huge shift during my career, away from predominantly a sales function to a marketing and a digital marketing orientation. But there’s still a role for direct sales, there’s still a role for developing relationships and engagement with our customers and our clients. So I think that’s probably the most valuable piece. That every one of our interactions—with our staff, with our guests, with our suppliers—it has to be personal. We’re not the Amazon.com industry, we buy from people, we deal with people. And so, I think that focus is really vital.

Now, one of the things I decided early on was that I was going to interview every person that we hired. There are a couple of reasons for that. One of them was, people are not familiar with us. And it amazes me how some people change jobs based on a single meeting, or a single phone call or Zoom call, Teams call, whatever platform it might be. On average, each of the people we’ve hired has met four different people on our staff—there’s an immediate supervisor, there’s a division head, there’s a human resources representative, and then there’s me. So, what does that do? First of all, it makes sure that we get people that can work well together, because we have four different voices that are weighing in on every candidate. The second thing is, for the candidate, meeting four people in an organization gives them a nice little snapshot of how it’s going to operate.

Another thing we’re doing is making sure that we don’t let the traditional silos of hotels get in the way of providing a good guest experience. Let me give you a great example. We have two floors of parking here. The team did a survey, and they came and they had a recommendation based on what the other hotels charged for parking. And it was basically if you dine in the hotel, you get let’s say three hours of complimentary parking. So, what happens if someone spends a whole evening here and it goes four hours? “Oh, then they’ll get 50 percent off the cost of the next hour.”

Now let’s think about the guest experience. Why would I place my people in the situation of having to explain why there’s a charge to that last hour, even if it’s discounted? And why would we run the risk of wanting to alienate the guest after we’ve worked so hard to make this great evening? In the last 30 minutes, we create an obstacle to them coming back soon and often. So those are the little insights that we’re trying to take in, and I think they’re influenced by my background in marketing.

artyzen.com/en/hotels/artyzen-singapore/

Digital Travel APAC is the premier gathering for digital innovators from Asia’s top airlines, hotels, OTAs, and more.

As an esteemed speaker at Digital Travel APAC 2023, Jeff Crowe provided valuable insights through a keynote panel focused on scaling tech-led brand and business expansion, together with leaders from Gardens by the Bay, Megaworld Hotels & Resorts, and more.

At the 2023 event, which was centered around a research-oriented program, over 200 seasoned senior leaders from the industry shared their real-world tactics, and attendees had the opportunity to learn through panel discussions and workshops, as well as network with like-minded peers.

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Jeff Crowe of Artyzen Singapore