BRIEF: ARTOTEL Group is one of Southeast Asia’s largest hotel chains with more than 156 hotels in Southeast Asia: Since its inception, ARTOTEL has always been an advocate of creative hospitality, personalising the hotel experience according to the local arts and culture wherever they operate.

But when the pandemic hit and destroyed many businesses and industries, the tourism sector got hit the hardest with reports showing that tourism arrivals fell by over 65% globally.

Even when borders opened up, the fear of traveling coupled with the strict restrictions outweighed the usual reasons to travel. So, as a business that’s heavily reliant on tourism, our hotels needed to find new sources of revenue to stay afloat.

The brief was clear: We needed to reinvent our service and create a new experience that would give travelers new reasons to stay in our hotels again. - IDEA: In 2021, China imposed a gaming ban that saw 532 million Chinese gamers lose their right to play for more than 3 hours a week.

What was bad news for another country became the best of news for our struggling hotel business. From a trending problem, we created an entirely new travel experience. For the first time ever, we created the Gamer Asylum – where we equipped every room across all 156 of our hotels with state-of-the-art gaming equipment, from computers and headsets to the latest trending games, along with high-speed internet for gamers to play with no restrictions.

A bold idea from a hotel chain that capitalised on an opportunity to expand our target audience from our usual base of travelers to the 532 million gamers in China.