Qiancheng Group: a 3D walkthrough and live hotel-operations simulation of the Lao Center, Vientiane

The Lao Center is a tower development in Vientiane by Qiancheng Group. Before a building of that kind opens, the people who have to decide about it, investors, operating partners and future tenants, can see drawings and renders but not the building, and can read a business plan but not see the operation. The brief was to show both.

Opsian built a bilingual 3D walkthrough of the tower and a live simulation of the hotel operations that would run inside it.

The walkthrough lets a viewer move through the tower floor by floor, in either language, from the arrival hall to the rooms and the shared facilities. It is built from the project's own plans, so what the viewer sees is what will be built.

The simulation runs the hotel inside it. Arrivals, room status, housekeeping, requests and maintenance move through the building as they would on an operating day, on the same operations platform Opsian runs in its hotel portfolio in Thailand. A viewer sees not only where the front desk is but what happens when a guest checks in, a room turns over or a fault is raised, and how the operation responds.

A hotel is sold as a building and run as an operation. Showing the two together lets a partner judge the business rather than the architecture alone, and it lets the operating platform be specified into the project before the walls go up rather than retrofitted after opening.