Moderator: Meena Krenek
Meena Krenek is a design storyteller, experience strategist, and creative director who has
spent over two decades transforming interiors into emotionally charged environments that
move people—literally and figuratively.
Her work is rooted in a single belief: emotion is the most undervalued asset in design and
the most powerful driver of human behavior. Through her framework, Return on Emotion
(ROE), she bridges behavioral science and spatial craft to create environments that don't
just look beautiful, they feel inevitable.
From premium clubs at NFL stadiums to cultural, workplace and hospitality destinations
spanning four continents, Meena designs spaces that tap into identity, memory, and
belonging. She is proving that emotional design isn't a luxury. It's a business strategy. Her
work asks not "What should this space look like?" but "How should this space make you
feel and why does that matter?"
Meena has been recognized by Interior Design Magazine, Contract Magazine, ASID, and
Metropolis, and her ideas have appeared in the New York Times, Harvard Business Review,
Forbes, Psychology Today, Dezeen, and NPR. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from
the University of Tennessee and is a registered interior designer. As a Certified Design
Futurist, she doesn't design for today's guest, she designs for who that guest becomes.
She speaks, writes, and designs from the conviction that the spaces we occupy shape us
as profoundly as we shape them, and that understanding this changes everything about
how we build the world.
The ROE of the Room: How Emotional Design Becomes a Business Asset in Boutique Hospitality
Return on Emotion (ROE) is a framework for treating the felt experience of space as a measurable business asset, not a soft afterthought, but a strate
…Return on Emotion (ROE) is a framework for treating the felt experience of space as a measurable business asset, not a soft afterthought, but a strategic design decision with real revenue implications. This session introduces BDNY attendees to the fo
…Return on Emotion (ROE) is a framework for treating the felt experience of space as a measurable business asset, not a soft afterthought, but a strategic design decision with real revenue implications. This session introduces BDNY attendees to the four sensory levers that shape guest experience; light, texture, arrangement, and objects/artifacts and demonstrates how intentional deployment of each translates into loyalty, dwell time, social amplif
…Return on Emotion (ROE) is a framework for treating the felt experience of space as a measurable business asset, not a soft afterthought, but a strategic design decision with real revenue implications. This session introduces BDNY attendees to the four sensory levers that shape guest experience; light, texture, arrangement, and objects/artifacts and demonstrates how intentional deployment of each translates into loyalty, dwell time, social amplification, and rate premiums.
The boutique hospitality market is in a post-amenity race. Guests have access to extraordinary physical product everywhere. What they can't replicate at home — and what no app can manufacture, is the feeling a room gives them the moment they walk in. That feeling is designed. It is designable. And according to emerging research in neuroaesthetics and behavioral economics, it is measurable. This session gives BDNY attendees; designers, developers, brand strategists, and operators: a shared framework for making that case internally, winning the budget conversation, and designing spaces that earn their investment back through emotional impact.
