Hospitality Interiors: The Design-Led Magazine for the Hotel Design World
Hospitality Interiors is an international print and digital magazine for the hospitality design sector, launched in 2009 and published from Uckfield, East Sussex. It speaks to the people who create hotel experiences: hoteliers, interior designers, architects and the suppliers and manufacturers whose products furnish the world's hotels.
The magazine describes itself as a design-led brand for a design-led industry. Its pages showcase hotel projects in depth, interview the designers and operators behind them, and connect the supply chain, from furniture and lighting to surfaces and textiles, with the specifiers who choose what goes into a hotel.
Overview
Hospitality Interiors operates across an international print and digital magazine, a website at hospitality-interiors.net, social media platforms and a weekly online newsletter. Its publisher presents it as a leader in the hospitality design sector and an intelligent, relevant media resource that shares insight while reporting on the topics that matter to its readership.
The brand extends beyond publishing into events through HLDC, the Hospitality Leadership & Design Conference, which began in London in 2020 and has grown into a series of international conferences. Magazine, website, newsletter and conferences together form a single commercial ecosystem aimed at the hospitality design community worldwide.
History and Founding
Hospitality Interiors was launched in 2009, a period when hotel design was emerging as a specialism in its own right, distinct from both architecture and residential interiors, and when boutique and lifestyle hotels were reshaping what travellers expected from a stay. A magazine devoted to that niche found a ready audience among the studios and operators driving the change.
Over the following decade the title became an established and respected brand in its sector, published for much of that time by Gearing Media Group. In 2020 the team launched the first Hospitality Leadership & Design Conference in London; the event's success saw it grow to five international conferences held worldwide, giving the print-born brand a substantial live events arm.
Publisher and Ownership
On Friday 17 February 2023, Lewis Business Media completed its takeover of Hospitality Interiors and HLDC, acquiring both brands from Gearing Media Group and adding them to its portfolio of business-to-business publications and events. Simon Lewis, managing director of Lewis Business Media, said he was delighted to welcome the brands and looked forward to building on their established success.
The transition preserved the existing team: editor Sophie Harper remained in post to spearhead the magazine's future content development, while sales manager Louise Opitz moved into a consultancy role to smooth the handover for clients, and Lewis Business Media's sales director Emma Sharp took a leading role in the title's commercial operation. Lewis Business Media, formed in February 2012 by the Lewis family and based in Uckfield, employs more than twenty people with a large network of contracted freelancers, and in a later deal it also acquired Furniture News from Gearing Media Group, reuniting Hospitality Interiors with its former sister publication.
Editorial Content and Sections
Project coverage is the heart of the magazine: detailed stories of hotels and hospitality spaces, exploring how designers and hoteliers brought them to life. The title speaks directly to the brands and individuals responsible for luxury hotel experiences, and its features mix project information and design detail with the business thinking behind a scheme.
Alongside projects, the magazine carries industry news, interviews and insight on the themes shaping hospitality design, from sustainability and ESG to technology and new design talent. Supplier and product coverage gives manufacturers a route to specifiers, and the editorial is produced by a team of experienced, industry-known editors supported by contributors across the design world. Industry figures quoted in its pages include senior voices from studios such as David Collins Studio and international design and management firms such as Campbell House, reflecting the seniority of its network.
Audience and Circulation
The audience is deliberately exclusive: hoteliers, designers, architects and industry suppliers in the hospitality design sector internationally. According to its publisher, approximately 3,000 copies of the magazine are circulated to that sector, with a further 7,000 readers receiving the weekly online newsletter.
That combination of a modest, tightly targeted print circulation and a much larger digital list is characteristic of high-value business media: the readers are the decision-makers who specify products and award design work, which is why a subscription is priced at a professional level, listed at £285 with a discount for UK subscribers paying by direct debit. For suppliers, the commercial proposition is direct access to those specifiers in print, online and at conferences.
Print and Digital Editions
The print magazine is produced as a beautifully presented, image-led publication, appropriate for a readership of designers, and is mirrored by a digital edition. The website publishes news and project stories continuously, while the weekly newsletter keeps the brand in readers' inboxes between issues and the social channels extend its reach.
Digital and live formats reinforce each other: conference delegates encounter the magazine at HLDC events, website coverage previews and reports on the conferences, and the print edition gives the brand a physical presence in design studios and hotel offices. Lewis Business Media describes the model as multi-platform, providing readers and commercial partners with opportunities across print, online, social and live events.
Notable Editors and Contributors
Sophie Harper edited Hospitality Interiors through its change of ownership, remaining in the role after the Lewis Business Media acquisition to lead content development. An established journalist who had specialised in design, travel and food for over a decade and worked on major UK publications and award-winning media campaigns, she also spoke regularly at industry events about hotel design. Harper later moved to edit the hospitality design title Hotel Designs in 2024.
The publisher's portfolio page lists Vicky Lewis as the magazine's editor, assisted by a team of contributors. Behind the editorial team, Simon Lewis as managing director of the owning group and Emma Sharp on the commercial side complete a small, senior team characteristic of specialist business publishing, where personal relationships with key decision-makers are part of the product.
Awards and Recognition
Hospitality Interiors' recognition is expressed less through formal awards than through its standing in the sector and the testimony of its readers. Senior industry figures have described the breadth of news and insight across its magazine, digital platforms and events as exceptional, and the title as a must-read source of well-researched project information for leadership teams.
Its associated conference brand, HLDC, is itself a mark of that standing: launched in London in 2020, it expanded to five international conferences, a growth the publisher attributes to the brand's reputation and relationships. The magazine's pages, in turn, report on the hospitality and design industries' own awards and honours, keeping it at the centre of the community whose work it celebrates.
Recent Developments
The February 2023 acquisition by Lewis Business Media is the defining recent development, bringing new ownership, investment and a larger publishing infrastructure while retaining the editorial team and brand identity. Under its new owner the title has continued to publish in print and digital, issue media packs for advertisers and promote its conferences internationally.
The brand's commercial model has also kept developing, with annual media packs setting out advertising and sponsorship opportunities across the print magazine, website, newsletter and conferences, and subscription sales handled through the publisher's own subscriptions platform. Testimonials gathered from senior figures at design studios and hospitality groups, praising the breadth of its news and insight and the quality of its project research, are used to underline the title's value to the decision-makers it serves.
The subsequent reunion with Furniture News under the same ownership, and Harper's move on to another hospitality design editorship, mark the normal evolution of a maturing brand. Fifteen years and more after its 2009 launch, Hospitality Interiors occupies a clear niche: the magazine through which the international hotel design industry shows its work, follows its peers and meets, in person, at its own conferences.
