Design to Perform: Aligning Creativity with Commercial Goals

What makes a luxury destination successful? Is it a numbers game, measured by RevPAR and developer ROI, or is it the moments of awe, the memorable experiences that great design facilitates? Although not mutually exclusive, how can a meaningful balance of creativity and commercial success be achieved through effective hospitality design?  

At the recent FIND Global Summit as part of Singapore Design Week, Guy Cooke, Studio Director of Advisory Services, unpacked these questions in his keynote presentation titled “Design to Perform: Aligning Creativity with Commercial Goals”. 

With a foundation in real estate economics, Guy’s career began with a leading Asian developer, underwriting and conceptualizing urban mixed-use projects. This experience provided deep insights into what drives developer decision-making and how to ensure market-driven, commercially optimized projects. His first hotel project, The Temple House in Chengdu, sparked a lifelong love and focus within the hospitality development space. 

Subsequent experience in hotel operations added another layer of understanding, offering a window into the operational nuances of luxury hospitality and the expectations of discerning travelers. Later, while working within a hotel valuations and brokerage team in London, the opportunity arose to join WATG, with a job description to develop strategy and financial feasibility for “a diverse array of luxury hospitality projects around the world, including a luxury resort in the Caribbean, a ski resort in Japan, and a golf estate in the Mediterranean”. Travel was mandatory, and an undeniably compelling proposition.

In an era of market uncertainty and rising social and environmental expectations, successful design must go beyond aesthetics to deliver enduring value, from generating economic return, uplifting local communities, to enriching the guest experience. Great design may captivate the eye, but without a sound commercial foundation it risks becoming unsustainable. Equally, a project that is a pure financial pursuit rarely inspires loyalty or legacy.  

The most successful projects strike a balance between imagination and intelligence, uniting creative vision with market realities. At WATG, we operate at the intersection of these two forces. By integrating real estate advisory into our design process, we ensure that visionary concepts are underpinned by evidence, feasibility, and financial resilience. 

Every successful project begins with a clear and robust design brief. When the brief is absent, weak, or misaligned, the outcome suffers. At WATG, the Advisory team fills this critical gap: creating detailed, market-led, financially tested design briefs that can be taken forward and implemented by our design teams. Where none is provided by the client, the Advisory team steps in to help create. When one is provided by the client, Advisory is there to comment and find ways to enhance and optimize it further. This is the value that Advisory adds – we shape briefs that are not only ambitious and market-leading but also financially optimal. 

Each design studio—architecture, interiors, landscape, and master planning—operates independently, but also work together on integrated multidisciplinary mandates, and this approach increasingly features Advisory. Here, Advisory plays a pivotal role. By bringing research-backed development strategies to life through design, we help secure early buy-in from stakeholders. Concepts are tested in real time, if a plan doesn’t work in the financial model, it can be refined before design development progresses. This integration avoids costly missteps and gives clients the confidence to invest and move forward. 

The effectiveness of this approach lies in specialization. WATG’s focus, for more than eight decades, is hospitality. Every day we are collectively considering and solving problems related to guest experience, brand standards, back-of-house operations, room and amenity strategies, and making the connection to RevPAR, EBITDA, and ultimately ROI. 

The historic and ongoing work by our designers, backed by decades of insights into how to uplift destinations through design and placemaking, informs and enhances our advisory knowledge and approach. Our advisory work and research- deep knowledge of market trends, guest behavior, and investor expectations, feed back into the institutional knowledge of the firm while bringing a new angle to this overall understanding of hospitality development. Our resource of knowledge and boundary pushing extend to our fellow consultants and operating partners with whom we work closely with to ensure operations, real estate economics and guest satisfaction are maximized. 

Together, these perspectives create projects that resonate emotionally while performing commercially, an alchemy that defines enduring success. 

Hospitality today extends far beyond hotels. It now encompasses branded residences, resorts, marinas, gaming, retail, golf, private members’ clubs, clubhouses, and visitor attractions. We apply our hospitality expertise across these hotel-adjacent asset classes, as clients increasingly seek to integrate multiple components into cohesive destinations that are both financially viable and experientially compelling. Our advisory-led design process adapts across this spectrum, from a 25-key eco–resort designed to integrate comfortably and confidently into its surroundings, to a repositioning strategy for one of the world’s most iconic visitor destinations, The Pyramids of Giza. Scale and context change, but the principle remains the same: creativity guided by commercial clarity sets the stage for future success. 

Operating across continents, our teams combine global perspective with local insight. International trends inform our approach, but they are never applied wholesale. Instead, they are carefully translated, contextualized to the cultural, market, and social fabric of each destination. 

This approach ensures that projects stand out in competitive markets, delivering both distinctiveness and long-term value. Working on diverse projects around the world allows us to continuously learn, from clients, local markets, and the projects themselves, and apply these insights to new contexts. By translating evolving trends and guest preferences rather than copying them, each project maintains its own unique identity and relevance to stand out in an increasingly competitive environment. 

Creativity and commercial goals are often deemed as opposing forces but aligning them is key to the development of successful destinations. Projects thrive when imagination and economics are considered in tandem, not in isolation. 

Three principles stand out: 

+ Specialism adds depth: Deep domain expertise avoids generic outcomes.
+ Integration fuels innovation: When advisory and design converge, new solutions emerge.
+ Balance drives success: Commercial grounding ensures feasibility; creative vision ensures impact. 

The numbers keep us accountable, but creativity keeps us inspired. At their intersection lies the future of hospitality: destinations that are not only profitable but also unforgettable.