Küster Design

10/12/2026

This week we're looking at small frictions with real, already-within-reach fixes. This one starts at the exact spot a guest first has to make a choice.

A property we visited recently has a clean, well-made sign right at a fork in the path: one arrow to the office, one to event parking. On its own, it's a good sign — legible, well placed, exactly where a guest needs it.

The problem isn't the sign. It's that most guests aren't looking at it — they're looking at a phone, following GPS directions that don't know this fork exists, and routing them with total confidence in whichever direction the algorithm picked.

A newer kind of wayfinding problem, and not one a nicer sign solves by itself.

10/09/2026

Not every unusual detail needs a disclaimer. Some just need to be left alone.

This one's a bathroom door built to disappear — same dark wood, same iron hardware, same trim color as the wall around it. From a few feet back it doesn't read as a door at all. Guests find it by exploring the room, not by being told where to look.

The instinct in this work is often to make things obvious. And usually that's right. But a door that reveals itself only when a guest goes looking for it isn't a wayfinding failure — it's a small, deliberate moment of discovery.

The job isn't always to point things out. Sometimes it's to notice what's already working, and say so.

10/08/2026

10/07/2026

One of the first questions on a critique visit isn't about any one detail. It's bigger: what are you actually aiming for here?

Every property sits somewhere on a spectrum, and it isn't good to bad. A clean, efficient, no-surprises Holiday Inn Express is doing its job right if that's the promise it's making. A hushed, polished Ritz-Carlton is doing its job right too. The failure mode is not knowing which end you're aiming for.

That's what a lot of the smaller findings in a critique report are actually testing — a small detail that contradicts the level of polish promised everywhere else.

Settle the aesthetic question first, and the smaller decisions get a lot easier to make.

10/06/2026

10/05/2026

This week we're looking at what a critique should defend, not correct.

This one is a table — a long one, seating well over a dozen people, set for a shared breakfast every morning. Strangers sit next to strangers. Conversation happens because there's no way to avoid it.

A more conventional read would flag this as a problem: smaller tables would let guests choose their own privacy.
But that misses what the table is for. It's not an oversight — it's the whole point of staying somewhere like this instead of somewhere anonymous.

Part of this work is fixing what's broken. The other part is recognizing what's doing exactly what it was built to do, and saying so clearly.

10/02/2026

Most check-in gifts are forgotten by the time a guest unpacks. This one goes in a pocket and comes out for weeks afterward.

At a property we visited recently, every guest is handed a small SPF lip balm at check-in, branded with the property's name. Not expensive, not trying to be a keepsake — just useful, the kind of thing you actually reach for on a hike or at the beach.

That's what makes it work. A tote bag gets folded into a drawer. A branded lip balm gets used, which means the property's name gets seen again and again, long after the stay is over.

A small line item with an outsized return.

10/01/2026

Sometimes... design is inspired by the simplest things.

10/01/2026

09/30/2026

Not every idea in a critique report is a fix for something broken. Some are just ideas worth trying.

This one came out of a conversation about an honor bar: a well-stocked setup where guests pour their own drink and leave a few dollars in the jar. What if, right next to it, there were a register inviting travelers to write down their favorite cocktail recipe?

Not a comment card, not a review request — just an open invitation to share something a guest already has, an opinion about a good drink. Future guests would read it before they pour their own.

Nothing here is broken. It's just an empty space next to a bar cart that could be doing more work than it currently is.