The Light House Hostel
Role
Co-Founder
Community Manager
Responsibilities
Concept Prototyping
Space Design
Community Development
Client Partnerships
Guest Engagement
Methods
Contextual Inquiry
Observations
Persona Development
Journey Mapping
Participatory Design
Duration
4 months
Overview
The Project
After traveling for a few months, my siblings and I met some developers looking for bilingual liaisons to connect expats to leases. After looking at the newly-developed building however, we saw the opportunity to build something more than another apartment complex. With careful consideration and a lot of negotiation, we entered a contract to build a new hostel.
The Challenge
My siblings and I shared dorms with countless other travelers while traveling, and several of them shared with us their experiences living in hostels all over the world. We would use these collected stories as the basis for building our hostel.
We wanted to build a space that met the desires of fellow backpackers as well as an opportunity to provide new interactions within a globalizing community.
The Users
We defined our “users” as backpackers and expats, oftentimes young and hungry for something new, which led us to focus on digital nomads and solo travelers as our personas. In building out our concept, however, we discovered secondary users - the locals. The hostel was opportunity to bridge visitors with the wider community and we wanted to be a catalyst for that.
The Design Process
Contextual Inquiry
While preparing to remodel the empty building, I stayed in a nearby hostel and took the opportunity to ask fellow lodgers for interviews about their travel experience. Gathering 6 interviews, I was able to see emerging themes and I defined them in an Affinity Diagram. I also pulled in some of the experiences I’ve heard from previous interactions.
Affinity Diagram highlighting the emerging themes
Observations
To observe the process of how travelers find lodging (I didn’t want to generalize my own experience), I also asked a few volunteers to search for their next lodging while I observed. Most of the participants used Hostelworld or Agoda and had a defined process they would follow. I created a Sequence Map highlighting this pattern.
Sequence Map for finding lodging
Persona Development
From the interviews and observations, I determined three distinct spectrums for defining our personas. Most of the participants I talked to mentioned their level of experience in traveling, such as the number of years they traveled or the number of countries they visited. A lot of them also liked to highlight their engagement with the community and the culture, so I highlighted that as a spectrum. Work was an additional spectrum as I also talked to a lot of expats. From these spectrums, I developed the following personas.
Journey Mapping
Together with the team, we built journey maps for our personas to visualize the ideal experience for our users and we maintained these journey maps as part of our vision while designing the space.
Co-Designing the Space
When we started to physically work on the building, we enlisted the help of several stakeholders. The idea was to co-design the space with local developers, contractors, stakeholders, and friends in the community. We determined our core value as a modern space for global citizens in the context of Vietnamese culture.
In discussing the concept with those in the community, we were able to view the hostel as part of an ecosystem, serving beyond the traditional model of tourism. Viewing these tourists as possible teachers and likely learners, we started to see the locals as teachers and learners as well. A few community development ideas include providing volunteering opportunities for travelers looking to give back, partnering with family-led tours for a true Vietnamese experience, and conducting language lessons so travelers can learn Vietnamese while giving our local teachers the opportunity to learn other languages.
The team imagining the rooftop space
Conceptualizing the hostel with local stakeholders
Local students help to build the amenities
The Final Concept
We finalized these ideas in this interaction model, representing our mission to the community. Here are a few of the ideas generated:
Beach Clean-Up
Language Cafes
Open-Mic Talent Nights
Student-Led Tours
Night Market
Craft Lessons
Volunteer Opportunities
Diagram of interaction opportunities for people, community, and environment
Style Guide
We then focused on developing our brand. The Light House was named for its conception as a hostel led by Vietnamese Canadians, Vietnamese Americans, and Vietnamese locals. As Vietnam modernizes and globalizes, it calls back to its shores the diaspora of descendants that bring with them new ideas and opportunities. For this reason, we infused the brand with modern touches.
The Real Experience
From the beds to the lockers and the curtains to the pillows, everything in Vietnam is made from scratch so we had the opportunity to customize everything. Based on the feedback gathered from the interviews and observations, we made the bed larger than standard, the lockers big enough to hold larger luggages, and equipped the bathroom with rain showers. We included bed lights, a staircase in lieu of ladders, and made sure to provide breakfast and welcome drinks.
The designed hostel beds
The kitchen space outside the dorms
The lockers in a separated space
The bathrooms
The living space
The breakfast
The Result
From our interaction model, we developed a community engagement plan to engage our guests with local friends and partners. We led small community tours, collaborated with grassroots organizations to host beach clean-ups, and provided a space for traveling yoga teachers to teach the community. For those who missed home, we served an international breakfast but complemented it with Vietnamese coffee and smoothies made from local fruits.
Taking our guests on motorbike tours
Our morning yoga classes
The bar and kitchen built in our alley
Our coconut coffee, a Vietnamese specialty drink
Our local tour board
Our guests and local friends
The Reviews
The hostel has proudly served for over five years now.
Final Thoughts
It really all begins with an idea. As a Viet Kieu (Vietnamese person born overseas), it was important for me to connect with the Vietnamese community, but I found that this sentiment was shared by almost everyone passing through, regardless of background. This project was truly inspired by the stories of everyone I met along the way. Although it was grueling process, carrying furniture up to five different floors and communicating with contractors in a language I’m still relearning, it was worth establishing this shared experience. Embarking on this challenge was fairly scary, as I felt like I had no idea what I was doing the whole time, but with an amazing team and a scrappy spirit, we built a home.