"My job is like being a maestro of an orchestra. It’s not just about making the space look beautiful and making it comfortable for the guest, but a lot of that comfort comes from the operational design. There is nothing worse than having something that looks pretty but then the service is dysfunctional because the kitchen is too far away or the flow doesn’t work. So master planning is a crucial part of what I do.
There are many people involved in running a hotel, so I need to make sure that everything is in tune. Then the musical piece comes together."
Karen Hay has always had creativity running through her veins. If she was ever naughty as a child, she couldn’t be sent to her room as punishment because otherwise she’d head there with enthusiasm, devising plans to paint or to make something for her dollhouse. At school, she spent every waking moment in the art department, stealing any chance she could to visit.
In high school, Karen left after 5th year on the advice of her art teacher. Art was her passion, and she wasn't interested in studying other subjects alongside it. Instead, Karen was encouraged to enrol on an art foundation course at college. The course lasted two years and in the second year Karen was introduced to interior design for the first time.
“I had never previously thought about who designs a space. When you visit a restaurant or a hotel or an office space, how many people consider who designed it?”
Having developed a passion for textiles as well as interior design, Karen was torn between what to study next. There were two universities that appealed to her but after making a pros and cons list about each institution, both had an equal number of entries. Therefore, there was only one solution: to flip a coin!
“I went to Edinburgh Napier on the Queen’s head!
“What Edinburgh Napier gave me was the balance between creative and technical. In my industry, you need a basic understanding of how everything works but you also need to have the creative confidence to experiment with materials.
“I finished my degree ready to take on the world.”
Karen graduated in 1991 with a BA Interior Design. The day after her graduation ceremony, she left for an 18-month backpacking trip. She travelled to many countries including USA, Canada, Australia, Indonesia, Maylasia, Singapore, Hong Kong and China.
When Karen returned home to Edinburgh, she returned to Edinburgh Napier to study a one-year postgraduate diploma course in Administrative & Information Management with a view to extending her business acumen to fulfil her dream of one day running her own company.
She then began looking for a job and managed to get a role producing stage sets at the Lyceum Theatre through a friend. Originally hired to work on a single production, one show led to two which led to three and Karen ended up working there for a year.
In 1995 when in her mid-20s, Karen moved to Hong Kong with a friend. She already had the travel bug and jumped at the chance to move somewhere new. A job was hard to come by, but she was eventually put in touch with a Scottish couple who ran a small interior design office that specialised in high-end retail spaces. They were busy preparing to pitch to a potential new client and told Karen that they couldn’t pay her, however, if she helped them finalise their presentation and they won the project, then she would be rewarded with a job. With nothing to lose but everything to gain, she gave them two weeks. They won and Karen was hired as a designer, ultimately working there for three and a half years. Hong Kong was home to Karen for 10 years in total and she quickly moved up the career ladder.
Karen and her family moved to Dubai in 2004 where she remained for a further 8 years. In Dubai she was Managing Director of a large design office which merged with an award-winning international architecture and interior design company, dwp. However, she left this role to set up her own company in 2009.
“The CEO at the time took me out for coffee and said, ‘you’re miserable, aren’t you?’. And I was. I’d hit the top of the ladder and all I was doing was chasing invoices and doing reports for head office. I didn’t go to college to study management, I went to study design. I realised then that I wanted to get back on the floor and so I left and set up my own company”.
The contacts that Karen had made in her career proved useful when setting off on her own. From day one she had a steady stream of 5-star hotel clients, including the Shangri-La and Hilton hotel groups. During her time in Dubai, she won over 10 Best Hotel and Best Interior Design awards and was shortlisted for many others. With a growing list of Asia-Pacific clients, Karen returned to Hong Kong to set up an office to better service this group. In 2016, she founded IN-dulge Design, a Hong Kong-based design studio specialising in luxury international hotel and entertainment environments.
“I’ve kept it as a small boutique office because I like being hands on and being part of a design team. The client can speak to me about any part of the design project, and I can answer. The bigger you grow the more the job changes. Some people love management, but my heart is design."
Karen has worked on many exciting briefs throughout her career, but her favourite was the redesign of the Angelina restaurant at the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi hotel in Vietnam. This luxury hotel is part of the Accor hotel group and as Karen had worked with the company before, they invited her to redesign this restaurant.
“I was sitting in a meeting with the hotel’s General Manager and Head of Food and Beverage and the owner’s representative. We had a workshop about what we could do with the restaurant. I know that Vietnamese people love whisky and so I suggested we create a really cool whisky bar and Scottish themed restaurant. The group said let's do it. I was so surprised but overjoyed.”
The project was large, and Karen and her team oversaw every last detail of the redesign. The restaurant space was stripped to its bare bones with a staircase being removed and the balcony and mezzanine level extended to allow for an extended seating area. A private dining room and whisky lounge were created which allowed high profile guests to store their personal whisky bottles in private lockers engraved with their names. Karen and her team also designed the staff uniforms, cocktails, lighting, the DJ booth and kitchen layout. They worked with a local gallery to choose art for the walls. Every piece of the interior was thought about by Karen, down to the last piece of crockery and glassware.
Karen may have left Scotland almost 30 years ago, however she is passionate about supporting Scottish businesses. GlobalScot is an international business network that aims to support future Scottish business leaders get a foothold overseas. In 2016 Karen was appointed a GlobalScot by the Scottish Government and advises Scottish Textile and Food & Drink companies who wish to expand into the Asian and Middle East markets. Through the GlobalScot initiative, Karen was introduced to Scottish artisans that she was able to partner with for the Angelina redesign project.
The restaurant redesign was a huge success and Karen was asked to return to revamp the hotel’s French restaurant Le Beaulieu which launched in September.
“Le Beaulieu was designed and built during covid which meant that I wasn’t able to visit the site at all. The opening night was held the day quarantine rules were relaxed and this was the first time I’d seen the revamped space in person. Luckily, I knew the space well because I’d visited so many times when I visited for Angelina’s build.
“It was such an old building that we didn’t have any drawings to go on. Builders were ripping things out and I was asking them to take pictures and measurements for me. It worked out beautifully, thank God!”