Moderator: Meena Krenek
Regional Creative Director, PrincipalIAMeena Krenek is Regional Creative Director and Principal at IA Interior Architects. With 25 years of experience across hospitality, sports venues, healthcare, and cultural institutions, she has held design leadership roles at some of the industry's largest firms. Meena is the creator of the Return on Emotion (ROE) framework, which connects sensory and emotional design decisions to measurable business outcomes, and she recently took the TEDxAtlanta stage with her talk "What Rooms Know." Her work and perspective have been featured in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Psychology Today, Dezeen, and NPR.
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.
