Hotel A illustrates the complexity of co-creation both with the IT supplier (Apple) and co-creation with the consumer. In the case of the former the hotel co-produced with Apple an in-room entertainment system based around an iMac solution. This required a high degree of product testing and experimentation by the hotel. According to the interviewee the starting point was a great deal of: ‘trial and error, we tried out a few bedrooms and got guests to fill in questionnaires and see the feedback about what they liked’. Closer collaboration was then needed with customers to help perfect the product. This took the form of: ‘rather than trialling it on a customer who could generate a complaint, we would maybe give him (sic) a bit of a prep beforehand and say, look we’re trying this out and here’s the bottom line’. In many instances it was regular customers that were used primarily because they were perceived as having the user skills or, as Lusch et al. (2007) and Etgar (2008) argue, the necessary expertise and consumer capital (Table 2). This stage involved a trial with 60 customers giving detailed feedback on their experiences. As the interviewee explained, the customers were interviewed by the hotel staff ‘on one to one basis the night after using it [the iMac in-room system] and went through it and you know they kind of helped us build a business case’.