OPO wellness content for hotels and real estate developments
wellness tech content for office workplaces, hotels, resorts and real estate developments with Chris Connors of OPO
Welcome to episode 062 of the Green & Healthy Place podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality today.
In this episode I’m in Ibiza talking to Chris Connors, Founder and Creative Director of OPO, a wellness tech studio applying the principles of mindfulness to daily life via psycho-acoustics, neuro-aesthetics and awareness practices.
Belfast-born Chris is a psychotherapist, leadership coach and master in zen meditation. He has previously created projects for the likes of Prada, LVMH, Nike, Aesop, Kering and Net a Porter.
Amongst other things, we discuss everything from their nature-based mindfulness portals scattered around various mixed-used developments in London, their multi-sensory recharge room in a coworking office and the meditative moments they create during the guest journey for luxury resorts and hotels.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Matt Morley
I wanted to start with context around what you saw as the initial opportunity for creating a wellness technology business working with mixed-use real estate, office and hotel brands. There's a lot of movement in the ‘well tech’ space right now but clearly, you felt there was a combination of talent, skill and potentially funding on your side to go fill that gap?
Chris Connors
I've been in this in the world of mindfulness for 23 years now. I started training in Japan with many different monasteries and monks. I spent many months on retreat there, and started to really understand deeply what was going on.
You might hear from my accent, I actually come from Belfast, in Northern Ireland, and grew up in a very adverse place, and found that meditation had a strong impact on my mental health. At that time, of course, I didn't have any science to support anything that was going on, it was a very intuitive experience. So at that point, I realised what a strong benefit it was having for me.
Fast forward into I guess, 2014 - 2015 when I started to see this emerging trend coming, the work that I had been doing, which actually had been very secretive, or discreet - back then people didn't talk about things like mindfulness and sound healing. And these kinds of words, were certainly banished to far away places.
Meditation in daily life
I started to create a little website called on modern consciousness which caught the eye of a lot of experts. And it was really about how you could bring meditation into daily life through design or objects or spaces. And in that early time, I there was a realisation that people were starting to warm more and more to this work. I was teaching it a lot. I noticed a lot of the younger generation doing research on meditation, as were some of the great scientific institutes like in Harvard, and places like that, which were doing a lot of tests and trials.
mindfulness apps for wellbeing
So for me, that was the early spot, that there was going to be a a really big movement in this field. And then I started to see some apps come through very early days, mindfulness apps. And lo and behold, Headspace and apps like Calm started to really push out into the world.
They’ve taken a huge area of the market, I wanted to look at how we could create something with OPO that wasn't just about learning to do this work, but it more about the applied aspects, how can things like meditation come into daily life? And what would that mean from a daily habitual point of view, or spaces that you might interact with, or behaviours that you might have? And we've been building it now for the past five years.
Matt Morley
Did you have a business to business strategy as a way to distinguish from, say, the Headspaces of the world that have gone heavily down the B2C route and the mass market?
Mind training for business communities
Chris Connors
It' a mixed view of that really, I've been a coach and a leadership coach for many businesses primarily in the luxury and design, through that, of course, I started to see the ailments of organisations and organisational behaviour and was very interested in what I could do to help from a coaching perspective, but then of course from a learning and development perspective, and I saw OPO could really help with those functions.
The way we've approached it as a business is that we are working to build blocks through the B2B model. Our end goal is that anyone in the consumer or Public domain can use OPO and we want our business communities to support us as a social enterprise to create more urban wide ‘portals’, which I'm sure we'll talk about, and initiatives that reach to a much wider public. And that's really our game. But we want to work through the channels of b2b business communities.
Mindful locations at mixed-use real estate developments
Matt Morley
Okay, so I've had the OPO app on my phone now for a month and a half, the ‘portals’ seem to be in some way connected to places, geographies, but at the same time I don't need to be in that specific location in order to access the content.
So how do your portals fit into the overall context of the business? And then how is it that you ended up working with mixed use real estate developers like Kings Cross and Greenwich Peninsula in London to develop those portals?
Chris Connors
The portals came from our first projects, which actually were spaces. We have created two spaces in central London, one was in Shoreditch, and the other one was in Kings Cross in Coal Drops Yard, which is the big King's Cross development, we worked with Argent, who are, of course, fantastic developers, very visionary.
We made two very interesting spaces that attracted a lot of attention in terms of what we were offering, they were automated spaces, people could go in and have 15-20 minute experiences.
I kind of wanted to find out, what could we do that would not just be an indoor thing. What could we do for people during summer, or during the outdoor times, where you could really wander around the city, and stop at these portals and have some kind of experience equivalent to what we were having indoors at these spaces.
promoting mindful moments in urban real estate developments
A blended experience actually creates the portal itself. And it's a very simple experience, in the end,, the app will guide you to a park bench, or a river view, or some space in the city and beyond. But once you're there, the app will unlock a guided mindful practice based on the view that you have.
I guide you with exact view of things that are in front of you. And that presencing experience gives a very optimal neurological, quite phenomenal experience for our system, and floods us with different hormonal inputs.
The portals for me have been an absolutely brilliant guide for us, we want to plant as many as we can around as many cities. And we're finding as people use them, they're getting those true stillness moments in the noise, which is actually the real core aspect of what Meditation.
It's not just about getting calm and being away from everything. It's actually about, how can I be in it, and be completely with it, but also find a deeper stillness and connection at the same time, which is a very urban experience, of course.
Matt Morley
And so if I may ask, is that a commercial relationship, then if there's another developer or a location a place or a hotel that may want to develop or likes the idea of having one of the portals, they would contract you to make one?
blending wellbeing and wayfinding with OPO ‘portals’
Chris Connors
The portals are basically a combination of you might call it wellbeing and wayfinding. The wayfinding aspect is really helpful. Of course, for developers, they want people to dwell and sit and enjoy their spaces. And OPO was a perfect instrument to do that.
We've done that along The Tide, which is the Highline of London at Greenwich Peninsula, we built our portals all the way along the walking area, so people could dwell and enjoy certain views. They really create this much more multi dimensional experience of the space itself. And of course, for a developer, that's always good news. And you're also building in some good wellbeing mandates as well.
wellness tech in a hotel or resort guest experience
Matt Morley
A lot of the times when I'm working with a hotel or resort group, I'm more focused on the physical spaces that we're able to create. But i always need to have a clear idea of how they're going to be used by guests.
Hotel guests are only going to stay a few days most likely, so there’s less opportunity for repeated exposure, repeated moments of connection, typically how does OPO integrate into a luxury hotel or resort brand’s customer journey on that basis?
Chris Connors
Well, we started with the room first, we realised that there's an opportunity to bring more 360 wellness into the hotel or resort bedroom itself. That's typically where people spend a lot of their time. We've built content that people can upload through a QR code on screen from reception, where we're building menus that are really helping people while they're in the room.
So especially things like sleep, stress, anxiety… we’re also working with quite a few really good hotels around sound and relaxation treatments, for example. Also we build portals. We can do things like reception sending their guests off for a sunrise guided meditation in the morning, and the app will take you to the rocks and sit with the sunrise and they guide you with that moment, all the way from your room.
We also do a sonic postcard, which is something that the hotel can send to guests prior to their stay to help them along the way, whether it's a song journey for transport to the destination, or after their stay for example. The whole idea is to help extend a brand’s connection with guests and extending the guest journey with mindful content.
how to use QR codes for mindful moment prompts in resorts and hotels
Matt Morley
The idea of having subtle QR codes dotted around a building strikes me as an interesting intervention. Does that require the guest to have an app installed on their phone? Or is the QR code itself the access to the content?
Chris Connors
Yeah, we make web content. We have different content, private content for them that's not on the app itself. We do have a private area on our app for our partners that their guests can use the app on the private area. But the whole point with QR or any form of technology is that it’s web content, there's no signing in required. A lot of hotels are trying to develop their own app so we want to stay as flexible as possible with them.
opportunities for mindfulness content in residential developments and office workspaces
Matt Morley
When you're working with a residential or an office workplace client, I'm sure you're able to consider a more medium term relationship, where something could be used repeatedly. And as we all know, it is the repetition of these acts that cumulatively starts to have a real impact on mental wellbeing, anxiety, mood and so on.
The workplace wellness space seems to be especially interesting for OPO, what are you up to in that space?
workplace wellness tech for mental wellbeing
Chris Connors
The office is a very different place after the pandemic, businesses are desperate to find ways to help people, retain people and also ensure that they are taking care of their people from a healthy building perspective. From OPO’s point of view, we're really focused on what you've just been saying, if someone is repeatedly using a space, then repetition can create a habit and habit formation is a big part of what we offer for our business partners.
We're very focused on the strong development of science around circadian biology. And that's become a big part for us. You know, OPO is very much about our natural self and the natural world around us. We have a 24 hour clock that basically guides everything we do.
We're working now with a global brand called Davines, maybe you're aware of the global beauty brand, we've just run a wonderful first step initiative for them called Unplug about showing how our brain does not operate in a homogeneous state the whole way through the day.
Our focus is how can we help create specific points along the journey of your day, which actually helps balance or restore brain state and brain health for mental wellbeing benefits, in order to really optimise your productivity, but also to help align to your circadian rhythm.
biophilic design and bringing the outside world in to the office workplace
Matt Morley
Do you mostly deal in sound-based interventions or is there a component of sound plus visuals in some cases?
Chris Connors
We’re talking to a few businesses who really want to look at the design of their office and how daily habits and habit change can actually affect design, because it's never really been thought through. That's basically the habit of the office, you know, desk and coffee.
But currently, the way we offer it is it's more audio and helping people with specific habits through the day that involve physical, mental and emotional tasks. But a lot of that is about being outdoors. It's about focus light in the eyes, different aspects that involve nature really as the big player here for supporting the office space.
office meditation room design london
Matt Morley
So I saw the office meditation room that you created with The Office Group in London, UK, it just struck me as interesting concept, tell us about that?
Chris Connors
We worked with the architects Universal Design Studio, really brilliant architectural practice, on design from scratch of that space. So it was very much about bringing down certain stimuli, and then upping others through different kinds of sensory elevations and depravations.
We created a circadian soundtrack. So there was a track that would be playing in there, which basically looked at how sound maps to your circadian biology. So when you went in, there would be a certain kind of stimulation that would be beneficial for your brain at that particular time of day combined with a colour therapy light, which was working on certain activations of the eyes, and very much around what certain colours do at certain times of the day as well, that was all moving and changing.
office recharge rooms and quiet rooms
Matt Morley
I've done a few office recharge rooms or ‘quiet rooms’ for corporate office environments, often full of biophilia. And the question always comes up around how active or passive should it be? Should there be an element of content? Or is it in fact about disconnecting and having no screens at all? Often, we end up removing any screens, I think now the content has got to the point where the availability of such high quality wellness content makes me confident in saying, look, I think we can design a space that includes a feature screen connected to an app such as OPO.
The practical reality is that creating an environment for mindfulness is not enough, most people are going to need guidance to get there.
Chris Connors
And that's the issue The Office Group had before we upgraded their quiet room concept, they were doing little contemplation rooms but people were just using them for eating for or whatever but now if you go into this restorative room in Notting Hill, you take your shoes off, then you follow guidance in order to experience the full journey.
wellness content for different audiences - coliving, coworking, hotels
Matt Morley
How do you adapt your wellness content for different audiences and contexts? I wonder how much is epeat content versus how much is adapted to the specifics of each brand or location?
Chris Connors
In a hotel, we're really looking at ‘elevation’, helping people relax, and go deeper but in a quick and simple way. Whereas, of course, in the office space, we're working with people and their behaviours over repeat visits so there's a different kind of programming required.
What we are advocating is to find some sort of sense of self and being present. In that moment, it doesn't matter if you've got 10 minutes or 10 years. The essence of our work is about that.
social enterprises - giving back to the community as an esg strategy
Matt Morley
You mentioned a little earlier on the idea of a social enterprise and your societal angle. I was interested to understand a bit more about that as obviously a decision you took up front as a business.
Chris Connors
I really wanted to create some kind of circularity in my business, it wasn't just looking at upward trajectories and curves on that level, it's important, of course, the business can grow and flourish. I had always felt that this work is not only about the wellness industry, my work is a service as well. And as part of that service, I wish that it can access as many people as possible.
As part of our social enterprise, we wish to create more and more of these accessible meditation places and spaces for people in and around the city. And actually, our vision for that is ambitious - our dream is to work with mayors of cities, or, you know, the smart city concepts, where we can plug our portals in and actually drive demand in a much bigger way for people to access them. And that fulfils our social mission.
Matt Morley
It's giving back but in a sense without asking anything in return, it's your purely giving, you often don't know who those people are, I guess unless there's sort of some interconnection, or the sort of the geo locator or what have you. But effectively, you've never you never see them.
Chris Connors
We ask all of our real estate and hotel partners to help co-fund those with us. So we have a fund that we always bring into our model to help create more and more portals, it's a bit like tree planting.
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