A gLobAL snApshot oF new And emerging trends in the Luxury ...

Luxury Futures:
A global
snapshot of new
and emerging
trends in the
luxury travel
market
By The Future Laboratory

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contents.
overview
loyalty 2.0
Travel collaborators
Social engagements
Travel themes
Fantasy fashion
Conclusion
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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OVERVIEW.
Experiences that can’t be bought, high-calibre social media
engagement, and loyalty schemes that deliver both are key to the
hearts – and spending power – of a new breed of technology-savvy,
super-sophisticated luxury traveller. Leading travel brands are finding
exciting and innovative ways to talk to their luxury clientele and to
fulfil their desires.
Experiential loyalty schemes, constant concierge strategies and
techno-travel offers are high on the agenda for globetrotting, high-networth
travellers for whom room upgrades and complimentary bubbly
are simply yesterday’s news.
Cultural collaborations, neighbourhood partnerships and sector
synergies are part of the collaborative approach that is building
cross-brand answers to the questions being posed by increasingly
demanding luxurians.
Geek chic, open-source brands and luxe-locators are all part of the
travel industry’s digital toolkit in a world in which three-quarters (74%)
of consumers are more likely to buy from a travel brand that clearly
defines its values through social media.
Themed travel is entering a new era too. Epic adventures, fantasy
fashion, hyper-local and immersive storytelling all play their parts in
capturing the hearts of a luxury crowd with wanderlust on their minds.
But while the travel industry’s best and brightest are exhibiting
innovation and imagination that bodes well for the health and
expansion of the luxury sector in this decade and beyond, there are
signs that much more needs to be done.
The Future Laboratory’s research shows that nine out of 10 (90%) of
ILTM exhibitors believe the industry needs to update its ideas about
who luxury travellers are and what they want.
And our research indicates that key industry players are being
worryingly slow to get the message about how high-end clients
expect to be engaged in our always-on world.
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Loyalty 2.0.
Unique experiences, digital rewards and technological convenience:
these are the tools that clever travel brands are using to win the
loyalty of increasingly sophisticated luxury globetrotters.
The age of the complimentary bottle of champagne in the room
is long gone. Travellers expect the brands they choose to love to,
literally, open the doors to a whole new world.
As Tom Marchant, co-founder of bespoke luxury travel consultant
Black Tomato, says: ‘Top-quality champagne or a room upgrade
is just something these guys expect. You have to be careful not to
underwhelm by assuming that a mass-loyalty approach will work with
a luxury audience.’
A survey by The Future Laboratory reveals that more than nine out of
10 (94%) of ILTM exhibitors and almost nine out of 10 (85%) of travel
buyers believe that authentic local experiences are what high-end
travellers desire most.
More than nine out of 10 (94%) say consumers are looking for
something new and different from hotels and hospitality – rising to
99% in the US.
As Chris Gabaldon, chief sales and marketing officer at Ritz-
Carlton Hotels, says: ‘Our luxury customers are looking for loyalty
programmes that access gateways to the extraordinary – to
experiences that money can’t buy.’
In a post-crash world, a loyalty scheme that meets these new
consumer expectations has never been more important. Almost threequarters
(73%) of travellers would choose loyalty programme benefits
over their spouse, according to the Starwood Preferred Guest survey.
In a survey by The Future Laboratory, 84% of travel buyers believe loyalty
schemes are at least ‘quite important’ in influencing where luxury clients
book their holidays, and over nine out of 10 (93%) say they are at least
‘somewhat’ important for the future of the hospitality industry.
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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But, astonishingly, only half (53%) of ILTM exhibitors
offer loyalty schemes to their customers – and of that
group, eight out of 10 (82%) are offering upgrades as
rewards rather than the experiences that luxury guests
appear to crave.
Concierge desk
at Hotel Daniel,
Vienna
These attitudes, however, are certain to change soon.
Industry leaders believe that growing demand among
post-recession luxury travellers will make it almost
impossible for brands to resist the lure of the loyalty
scheme.
As Ritz-Carlton’s Gabaldon says: ‘Since the recession
began, our affluent customers have been telling us
that being rewarded for their patronage really matters
to them.
‘Loyalty programmes have been part of the luxury
travel landscape in Asia for many years. But since
2008 demand for them has grown among affluent
clients outside Asia, so we knew the time had come
to launch our own.’
Forward-thinking brands are adopting innovative
approaches to delivering Loyalty 2.0.
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ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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Experiential wonders
Experiential luxury accounts for 55% of total luxury
spending worldwide and, year on year, has grown
50% faster than sales of luxury goods, according to
Luxe Redux: Raising the Bar for Selling of Luxuries, a
report by the Boston Consulting Group.
Once-in-a-lifetime experiences are the new stock-intrade
of this concept. Global Hotel Alliance (GHA)
hotels offer loyal customers one-to-one encounters
with pandas, and Trump Card Privileges Program
travellers find themselves the happy recipients of
private dinners prepared by world-class chefs such as
Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
As Pamela Danziger, president of Unity Marketing,
says: ‘People at these elite levels can generally pay
for the things they want and desire. But behind-thescenes
access, the exclusive experiences that money
alone can’t buy, are what hotels can offer to keep
them interested.’
‘It is often not about providing the last
word in luxury, but about continually
looking for new ways to delight that are
personal to each client.’
Experiential benefits demonstrate tangible
rewards for the brand. ‘We measure how
emotionally engaged our guests are with
our brand,’ says Ritz-Carlton’s Gabaldon.
‘Those who we provide with unique
memorable experiences are the most
engaged of all.
‘And we find that these are the people
who spend more – substantially more –
and who stay longer.’
That often translates as discovering what truly
matters to a guest, rather than providing over-the-top
opulence. Black Tomato’s Marchant sums it up: ‘A
guest who hired a villa in the South of France was
worried that his teenage children would be bored.
‘We discovered they were crazy about table tennis
and arranged to have a table tennis table, bats and
balls waiting for them as a surprise. The reaction was
phenomenal, and the loyalty derived outstanding.
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Constant concierge
Road Warrior concierges at Starwood Hotels and
Resorts offer their services to loyal luxury guests round
the clock, even when they are not staying at one of
the brand’s hotels.
It is part of a loyalty package at the group, which
operates Sheraton, Westin, W Hotels, Le Meridien
and St Regis, that includes Your24. This enables
guests to pick their own check-in and check-out times
within a 24-hour timeframe.
‘I call this a Permanent Concierge model, and it is a
service approach that I encourage all of our staff to
adopt,’ says Silvio Ursini, executive vice-president of
Bulgari Hotels & Resorts.
‘In luxury travel, you need to think about your loyal
regular guests even when they are not with you.
In your mind, you need to be constantly taking
notes, storing up suggestions and possibilities for
experiences that you know a specific guest will love
the next time he or she stays.’
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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Techno-travel
Recognising the constantly connected nature of the modern luxury
traveller’s lifestyle, brands are offering high-tech add-ons to win their
mutual respect and loyalty.
Limousines equipped with complimentary wifi and iPads offering
information on dining and spa menus became part of the loyalty-inducing
package at all Four Seasons Hotels worldwide in October 2012.
Guests at the Ocean House in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, are
supplied with iPads and a virtual fitness machine at the OH! Spa.
Customers select fitness classes, such as spinning or Zumba, and a
large screen drops from the ceiling to enable a virtual personal trainer
to put them through their paces.
It is clear that, for those on the luxury travel industry’s front line, the
innovative effort being put into a new generation of loyalty schemes
is paying valuable and measurable dividends for their businesses.
Eight out of 10 (84%) of ILTM exhibitors who have such a scheme told
The Future Laboratory survey that they could see tangible benefits.
This is a statement worth noting, because it is based in many cases
on a hard-headed analysis of bottom-line benefits, with 43% of this
group measuring return on their loyalty scheme investment in terms
of spend or growth rate, 37% in terms of customer spend within the
programme, and 37% in terms of redemption of rewards.
In addition, all of the loyalty scheme operators registered benefits in
terms of building relationships with customers. Eight of out 10 (84%)
said it had enabled them to retain existing customers, two-thirds (64%)
said it had increased Customer Lifetime Value, and a telling 44% said
that it had attracted new customers.
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Oliver Bonke, senior vice-president sales and marketing at Starwood
Hotels, is a firm believer. ‘More than 50% of our occupancy
worldwide is accounted for by members of our Starwood Preferred
Guest programme,’ he says.
‘Frankly, the number sometimes leaves us breathless. We’re really
proud of it, because it means that people not only like our brands,
but they like the programme and believe it has real value to them.’
The Starwood Preferred Guest scheme ranges from basic membership
to Ambassador level, and profitability rises as luxury clientele rise
through the loyalty ranks. ‘The profitability of an Ambassador member
is 42 times that of a basic member,’ says Bonke.
There is a note of caution, however, about a strategy that clearly has
much to commend it to luxury travel brands. Some leading industry
insiders worry that an obsession with the value of loyalty schemes is
in danger of becoming a distraction from the real business at hand.
‘Never lose sight of the first things that is going to drive loyalty to
your brand – the quality of the product and the service you deliver,’
says Black Tomato’s Marchant.
‘You can have the most in-depth and complex loyalty scheme in the
world, but if your core business offer is not up to scratch, then it is
going to be worth nothing.’
And Claus Sendlinger, founder and CEO of Design Hotels, warns
that brands that become too enamoured with buying loyalty through
rewards and discount offers can dilute the essence of luxury.
‘Bargain-hunters should not be described as loyal customers,’ he says.
‘In fact, it is more a sign of failure than success if a growing number
of your customers prioritise price over true value and authenticity.’
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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Travel collaborators.
Satisfying the experiential, high-tech desires of this new generation of
luxury travellers is proving to be a task that goes beyond the abilities
and resources of a single brand.
Consequently, a Co-commerce Revolution is under way. Exciting
collaborations between innovative travel and non-travel brands are
reshaping the way in which the global travel industry makes the
wishes of its demanding high-end clientele come true.
Industry insiders clearly support the trend. Nine out of 10 (91%) of
travel buyers think travel and luxury brand collaborations are a good
idea, according to a survey by The Future Laboratory.
More than half of this group (59%) believe they create enjoyable curated
experiences for luxury travellers, 56% that they generate excitement
around a brand, and 45% that they differentiate between brands.
And seven out of 10 (70%) of ILTM exhibitors have struck up
partnerships with other travel and hospitality brands.
Design Hotels’ Sendlinger best sums up the lure of collaboration
for luxury travel brands. ‘We are interested in mutually beneficial
partnerships that enable us to increase our reach, widen our target
group or achieve greater credibility in a relevant market niche,’ he says.
‘We are very interested in working with brands that have similar
values and that share our passion for design, architecture and culture.’
A first consideration must be that a proposed collaboration makes
sense to a savvy and sophisticated clientele. ‘Marketing partnerships
are only valuable when two like-minded brands can get together and
offer access to each other’s customers,’ says Michael Hobson, chief
marketing officer at The Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.
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Black Tomato’s Marchant agrees. ‘Our consumers are smart. They
are not there to be hit with all kinds of weird tie-ups that don’t make
sense,’ he says. ‘A collaboration must add value to all parties before
it is worth pursuing.’
It has to be a meeting of minds and philosophies too. ‘I always ask
whether we share goals in terms of customer acquisition, growth of
the business, and types of opportunities and experiences that we
offer,’ says Ritz-Carlton’s Gabaldon.
‘Do we have the same philosophy, particularly on things such as
privacy? We have turned down partners in the past that have been
more aggressive than us in this area. That is just not our philosophy.
We are very interested in protecting the privacy of our guests.’
These collaborations are producing exciting and innovative new
possibilities for luxury travellers.
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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Neighbourhood partnerships
Increasing numbers of luxury travellers crave being plugged into
neighbourhood specialists to gain instant local roots, and brands
are working hard to deliver that.
Ace Hotel in New York teamed up with Brooklyn tailor Martin
Greenfield to give loyal guests a pop-up bespoke suit service at
the end of the corridor.
Mexican hotel Viceroy Riviera Maya offers a ‘soap concierge’ to
hand-cut locally made soap. The concierge visits guests’ rooms
with large blocks of artisanal soaps, inviting them to choose a
scent from ranges including lemon, chocolate, rosemary and
peach. Bars are sliced off the chosen block with a sharp knife to
provide enough for their length of stay.
More and more brands will adopt this approach, says Starwood’s
Bonke. ‘Do I expect hotels to open doors for me to experience the
sights and sounds of the neighbourhood? Absolutely,’ he says.
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Standard Room at Ace Hotel,
Seattle co-designed by KAWS’;
Products cabinet at Ace Hotel,
New York. Photography by
Douglas Iyle Thompson’
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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Sector synergies
Partnerships between hospitality and non-hospitality
luxury brands can offer double the draw to discerning
guests. A new suite at the St Regis Hotel in New York
designed by luxury British carmaker Bentley illustrates
the concept perfectly.
The five-star Manhattan property’s aptly named
1,700-square-feet Bentley Suite features a burled
wood sleigh bed and black leather tile floors inspired
by the luxury auto manufacturer. In addition, guests
receive complimentary access to a 2013 Bentley
Mulsanne during their stay.
As Bonke of Starwood Hotels, which owns the property,
says: ‘Bentley is a powerful global luxury brand
that stands for a degree of performance, luxury and
bespoke car manufacturing that ideally suits the position
in Regis as a highly bespoke service experience.
‘When we look at a brand like that we are essentially
trying to decide whether we can work with it across a
spectrum of marketing platforms,’ he says.
In a similar vein, French crystal maker Baccarat is
opening a hotel in New York in 2014 that its creators
claim will set new standards for luxury and exclusivity.
Rival alliances
Competing luxury hotels are putting aside
traditional commercial rivalries to form
alliances to promote the luxury culture of
their home cities.
The 5ive Star London website was
launched in February by an alliance of
the city’s finest hotels – Brown’s, The
Dorchester, 45 Park Lane, The Goring, The
Lanesborough, Mandarin Oriental Hyde
Park, the Milestone, One Aldwych, The
Ritz and The Stafford – along with luxury
brand partners such as Fortnum & Mason,
Dunhill and the Royal Opera House.
It includes themed walking tours of London,
real-time updates of events in the dedicated
London Diary, rich visual depictions of the
history of the city as told through uncovered
hotel archive photography, videos of each
property’s head bartender preparing their
signature cocktails, profiles of London’s
leading tastemakers and details about
travelling around the capital.
Such luxury industry partnerships are an innovative
way in which a brand can distinguish itself from the
pack,’ says Taylor Rains, account coordinator at Rawle
Murdy Associates.
‘Creating the Baccarat Hotel & Residences leverages
the Baccarat name and legacy of excellence while
also re-invigorating the centuries-old luxury brand.’
Italian merchandising brand Tonino Lamborghini is opening
a branded boutique hotel in Suzhou, one of China’s top
destinations located adjacent to Shanghai Municipality.
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Cultural collaborations
Local artists, designers and students are invited
to become part of a hotel’s fabric. Wanderlust in
Singapore gave local designers full creative freedom
to redesign four wildly different floors, ranging from
industrial glam to loft rooms filled with fantasy trees
and typewriters.
The Exchange hotel in Amsterdam asked fashion students
to dress each of their rooms in their own unique visions.
Panama City’s Tántalo Hotel has just 13 rooms, each
featuring artwork from one of 13 local artists.
A multi-million dollar refit of the adults-only Barbados
hotel, the House, features unique sculptures handcrafted
from mahogany in each of the guest suites by
local Bajan artist Reggie Medford.
Leading hoteliers believe such an approach will
become second nature to all luxury brands over the
next decade. ‘The soul and spirit of the local culture
should be embedded in your hotel,’ says Bulgari
Hotels & Resorts’ Ursini. ‘At our Bali property, leading
authorities in the island’s textiles and antiques were
consulted to ensure we captured the true essence of
the location.’
Prompt products
Objects of desire that take a brand beyond the travel
experience and into the everyday life of the luxury
consumer are becoming de rigeur for industry innovators.
Ace Hotel in New York teamed up with Shut
Skateboards to produce the beautiful Excelsior skate
deck that can be purchased by customers.
Fellow New York luxury hotel The Standard worked
with local artist KAWS to produce a range of iconic
XX filament lightbulbs. Saguaro Hotels asked hip
trainer brand PF Flyers to design a special-edition
Sumfun-style sneaker for them.
Talent-incubators
Leading luxury hotels are teaming up with
educational organisations to foster the next
generation of talent, building a new facet
of engagement with their clientele.
W Hotels Worldwide has formed
a partnership with the Council of
Fashion Designers of America (CDFA)
for {FASHION INCUBATOR}, a CDFA
programme that aims to encourage and
support budding designers and help them
to grow and sustain their new businesses.
At the same time, the hotel group and
technology brand Intel have launched
Four Stories, an innovative screenplay
competition curated by acclaimed film
director Roman Coppola. New film-makers
are encouraged to upload their work to the
project for a chance to see it come to life
on the big screen.
Leading brands have no doubt that
collaboration is the way of the future for
luxury travel. As Norman Howe, president
of Butterfield & Robinson, says: ‘We have
a significant appetite for it as a way of
answering one of the key challenges at the
super-high end of the industry – connecting
communities of people who share
sensibilities and the same level of affluence.
We are not a massive company with a
big advertising budget, so one of the best
ways for us to reach those audiences
is in partnership or collaboration with
another luxury brand that already has a
relationship of trust with their base.’
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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Social engagements.
Social media is no longer simply a handy additional way to talk to
luxury travellers. It is a dominant voice across the entire brand and
consumer conversation.
‘I don’t think you can separate the digital from the physical world any
more when somebody engages with your products and services,’
says Starwood Hotels’ Bonke.
‘Consumers expect their experience with you in the digital space to
be as on-brand and smooth as their physical arrival in their room.’
Three-quarters (74%) of consumers are more likely to buy from a
travel brand that clearly defines its values through social media,
and travellers who engage with a company through Facebook or
Twitter spend up to 40% more than those who engage through more
traditional channels, according to Social Media Guide: Luxury 2012–
2013 by Abrams Research.
‘Social is the hot side of digital right now, and we see it as a great
opportunity to share a rich and immersive experience with our
customers,’ says Ritz-Carlton’s Gabaldon.
But there are concerns about whether the message is getting through
to key industry players.
A survey of travel buyers by The Future Laboratory reveals that almost
half (46%) of travel buyers who engage with luxury clients through
social media get more positive feedback, and 55% of this group say
that social media has increased their business.
Four out of five (82%) of ILTM exhibitors use social media to
communicate with their customers. But, worryingly, only just over half
(56%) of buyers say they use social media such as Facebook, Twitter
and Pinterest to interact with their high-end clients.
Fear could be one of the demotivators, with eight of out 10 buyers
(81%) concerned about the trend for hoteliers to bypass tour operators
via social media.
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This is now! Rio de Janeiro website. A real-time visualisation tool displaying all instagram photos as they are taken within a city
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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But concerns that social networks are damaging the
business model of the tour operation industry don’t seem
to be supported by trading data: 55% of buyers told The
Future Laboratory that social media has increased their
business – more than four times as many as those who
say it hasn’t.
And industry experts suggest that these fears are largely
without foundation, and that most luxury travel brands
continue to regard buyers as vital pillars of their global
sales strategy.
Social media direct booking may be on the rise, but
travel operators are still seen as having a crucial role
in communicating brand messages to as-yet-unreached
customer bases.
‘The luxury travel agency and tour operator community
is a very important segment to our business and we
value the job that they do in understanding our brand
and recommending us to their own loyal clients,’ says
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group’s Hobson. ‘We treat them
as partners, not as a commissionable expense.’
Ritz-Carlton’s Gabaldon agrees. ‘We believe that the luxury
travel providers play an incredibly important role in our
ecosystem. We work with great agency partners that have
strong relationships with their individual clients,’ he says.
Whatever the potential pitfalls, all industry players buy
into a social media future, and leading travel brands are
finding novel and intriguing ways to plug in to their hyperconnected
clientele.
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Geek chic
Many travel brands are following in the footsteps of
the Garden Court Hotel in California’s Silicon Valley
that offers state-of-the-art connectivity to capture the
custom of a technology-savvy clientele.
As part of the turn-down service, guests receive a
unique card that offers recommendations for the
best iPhone apps to download, top tweets of the
day and the hottest locations in Palo Alto to check
into on Foursquare. Each card also lists QR codes
on the back, which will take guests directly to the
respective websites.
A visit to the Computer History Museum, a
Blackberry thumb massage, and a 45-minute airship
ride over Silicon Valley’s landmark technology
companies are part of the geek chic package.
Open-source brands
A desire for transparency and brand honesty are
key traits in social media fans, and leading luxury
travel innovators are displaying these in full by giving
prominence to off-brand voices, and even critics.
Four Seasons Hotels’ overhauled website
encourages luxury visitors to see what former guests
are saying about its properties on TripAdvisor,
Twitter and Facebook.
Check mates
Boutique hotel groups such as Viceroy,
Standard and Thompson are gamifying
their luxury travel offer, rewarding guests
with cocktails, spa treatments and free
rooms for virtual check-ins via Foursquare,
Facebook and Twitter.
Starwood Hotels has also teamed
up with Foursquare to enable regular
guests to earn Starpoints at 200 of the
group’s hotels in Asia-Pacific that can be
exchanged for rewards.
Luxe-locators
Geo-location apps are reaching out
to luxury travellers, laying out a digital
welcome mat long before they reach a
hotel. Starwood Preferred Guests begin
receiving useful directions and amenity
information through an iPhone app 48
hours before their stay.
A smartphone app for Loews Hotels has a
‘location-aware’ feature that pinpoints the
nearest property for any would-be guest,
and then provides detailed directions.
VisitSweden, the country’s tourist board, goes one
step further and enables local people to take control
of its Twitter account for a week at a time to give an
uncensored view of their local town or region.
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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Friendly fliers
Clever airlines are using bespoke social networks to
help passengers find like-minded flight companions. Air
Baltic’s SeatBuddy enables fliers to choose a flight mood
– social or non-social – and to decide whether they
would like their neighbour to be like them or different.
Travellers on Estonian Air can now access Airsavings’
Let Me Think programme on the airline’s website.
Once a flight is selected, a Facebook user’s social
media profile can be added to the flight by clicking
on the Use Facebook button. The passenger’s details
are then automatically pre-populated with their
Facebook data with their permission.
In a similar vein, Hungary-based technology start-up
FaceBelt is offering a smartphone social media app
to airlines that enable passengers to see who will be
flying on their flight via Facebook data.
Facebookers
Hospitality brands are making Facebook their
home turf, creating online games for guests,
enhancing their service or even operating
exclusively from social media sites.
The Ritz-Carlton Resorts of Naples ask
their Facebook fans how they like their
coffee. Fans who answer the question and
then stay at their resort receive a coffee
delivered to their exact specifications –
without ever having to ask.
Fairmont Hotels offers social mediaexclusive
discount room prices, and the
Hotel Seven in Paris goes one step further
by using Facebook as the exclusive
source of both hotel news and the lowest
available room rate.
A visual seat map shows you all the other Facebook
users who have checked in and where they are
sitting. You can then browse everyone’s profile on the
plane if they allow it.
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Scrapbooking
Taking their cue from phenomenally successful Instagram and
Pinterest, forward-thinking travel brands are creating websites and
exhibitions that emphasise visuals over text.
Users of travel recommendation search engine Wanderfly create
Pinterest-style boards of images of the places they have visited and
loved, and share them with other travellers.
Users create boards of cities they have been to or are interested
in exploring. Within each of their city boards, they add
recommendations for specific venues. New content from the people
who they are following is delivered in a Facebook-like feed and can
easily be saved to their own boards.
The flourishing social media ecosystem is giving travel brands an
increasingly nuanced view of how their customers feel about the use
of their online personal data.
‘There is a segment that would say we want you to use that
information, and we want you to use it in the right way so that
you deliver the right services to me and put the right offers and
opportunities in front of me,’ says Ritz-Carlton’s Gabaldon.
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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Travel themes.
Experience-seekers are beginning to dominate the
luxury consumer landscape as high-end branded
goods lose their social cachet in developed markets.
Memories are what matter now to well-heeled
luxury travellers, and brands riding this wave are
creating new types of immersive, themed experience
that focus on escape, learning and communal
connections with others.
Immersive storytelling
In an era of Faction Marketing – the
blending of the fictional and factual to
create compelling brand narratives – travel
brands are creating themed hotels and
leisure experiences that enable luxury
travellers to step into stories.
The Hotel Alcatraz experience in London’s
King’s Cross lets guests stay in a meticulous
recreation of a cell in the notorious US
prison to coincide with the launch of the
Alcatraz tv crime series.
Disney has introduced bespoke
experience packages for luxury guests,
such as private dinners with favourite
cartoon characters, or exclusive Pirates of
the Caribbean family adventures.
Noun 1. Unavailability by Gartnerfuglen, Oslo. A pop-up shelter
designed for ice fishing that allows users to escape distractions’
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Urban escapes
Travel brands are creating luxury Back To The Future
moments, enabling high-end guests to relive their
treasured childhood moments in a five-star city setting.
The Hyatt 48 Lex has refitted its penthouse suites
with top-of-the-range airbeds, blankets and picnic
backpacks to create a luxury camping experience in
mid-town Manhattan.
Convivial spaces
A generation of freelance, officeless
workers are longing for shared communal
experiences – and finding them at hotels
that set out to create convivial, networked
spaces. New York’s Ace Hotel’s lobby
doubles as a collective workspace for all.
Child-centric travel
The Ritz-Carlton Berlin’s Very Important Kids
programme, in which youngsters become princes
and princesses whizzing around in miniature
Mercedes-Benz cars, epitomises the way in which
travel brands are creating fictional worlds-within-aworld
for child guests to enter and inhabit.
The Future Laboratory survey shows that almost twothirds
(63%) of travel buyers believe that trips that
cater for children are a growing influence on luxury
travellers’ choice of destination.
Noun 1. Unavailability by
Gartnerfuglen, Oslo
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
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Hyper-local
The days when luxury hotels were bubbles designed
to insulate their clients from the surrounding
environment are long gone. Now travellers are
demanding to be immersed in the tastes, sights and
sounds of their location.
It is an approach that is instinctive for many luxury
travel brands, for practical as well as philosophical
reasons. ‘Engaging with the local community is
critical to the success of the hotel, wherever we
operate,’ says Mandarin Oriental’s Hobson.
‘This is not only from a directly commercial perspective
with local patronage of our restaurants, bars, spas
and social events, it is also because when the local
community travels to other destinations where we are
present, we hope they will stay with us.’
Design Hotels’ Sendlinger believes the ability to offer
a hyper-local experience is fast becoming a make-orbreak
requirement for luxury brands. ‘This is not only
a core aspect of our communication strategy. We
believe it is a deciding factor for an experiential stay
nowadays,’ he says.
insights and advice of the host city, and
even introducing them to knowledgeable
and trusted locals.
Plus One, a one-room loft hotel in Berlin’s
artistic Kreuzkölln district, comes complete
with a network of 25 locals who are ready
to meet guests when they visit, give them
insider travel tips, and even take them to
neighbourhood parties and gallery openings.
The Urbanauts project, another street
loft in Vienna created by local architects
Christian Knapp, Jonathan Lutter and
Theresia Kohlmayr, is the next logical step
in luxury integration.
Facilities consist of a king size bed, a
minibar, an iMac and two bikes. Breakfast
is served at Café Goldegg and a local
hamman becomes a spa, giving guests
natural, unforced opportunities to mingle
with the locals.
‘This is why the local integration is one of the deciding
factors for Design Hotels membership evaluation.’
The Conservatorium hotel in Amsterdam demonstrates
the ideal in action. Each guest is assigned a
personal host, a combination butler, a concierge
and a guest relations officer, who handles every
aspect of a guest’s stay, including providing personal
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Epic adventures
Bespoke travel company Black Tomato stages Victorian-style
expeditions into the world’s most remote jungles and mountains to
cater for the growing luxury urge for adrenalin-charged extreme
adventure experiences.
All trips are led by expedition leaders who draw on their vast
experience of living in the wilds and their military backgrounds to
ensure that well-heeled clients have a trip that delivers an authentic
pioneer experience, complete with access to sights and culture only a
few others have ever seen at first hand.
Luxury tour operator Luxury Travel is running 10-day trips into the remote
Central Highlands of Vietnam. ‘It focuses on new destinations, new
hotels, and the local life and food,’ says founder and CEO Pham Ha.
Celebrity-curated adventures are finding their way on to the luxury
travel agenda. Superstar tv survival expert and explorer Bear Grylls is
offering six-day courses in the Scottish Highlands, including building
shelters, foraging for grubs, hunting and trapping, and survival knife
skills. Participants put their new skills to the test on a challenging 36-
hour expedition.
Industry insiders believe this is the most influential travel trend among
luxury travellers. The Future Laboratory survey shows that threequarters
(74%) of travel buyers see luxury adventure possibilities as a
deciding factor on bookings from high-end clients.
Butterfield & Robinson’s Howe explains the lure of the wild for luxury
travellers. ‘It is just a catalyst to put people in the middle of situations,
where a kind of spontaneous magic happens,’ he says.
‘It delivers them into the wild, unexplored regions, into the midst
of local people, and that is perfect for something special and
memorable to take place.
‘Creating that space in people’s lives is one of the reasons that we just
got a great, loyal base. We give them something that is totally different.’
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures
26

Fantasy fashion.
For fashion and beauty lovers, a growing
number of high-end labels are branching into
hospitality and inviting consumers to experience
their lifestyle ethos in a different setting.
The new Bulgari Hotel in London’s prestigious
Knightsbridge translates the design elements of
the brand’s glamorous watches and jewellery
into an ultra-upmarket hospitality experience.
In Berlin, fellow designer Karl Lagerfeld
has turned his hand to hotel rooms
at the Schlosshotel in the Grunewald
district. With the feel of an English
country house, it features high ceilings
with chandeliers, vast rooms with wood
panelling and a sultry cigar lounge.
The 85 rooms and suites in stained oak, Sapele
mahogany, leather, mirrored surfaces and silver,
and the in-house British-influenced Italian restaurant Il
Ristorante have attracted critical customer acclaim.
But Bulgari Hotels and Resorts’ Ursini admits that the
stakes were high and that a perfect delivery is key
to realising the brand’s concept of fashion house
as hotelier. ‘Extensive one-to-one research among
our watch and jewellery clientele showed that we
had discovered a gap in the market,’ he says.
‘But, more surprisingly, it showed that they
were willing to trust us to venture into an area
we knew nothing about and create a thing
of beauty for them because they loved the
things of beauty we already created.
‘This level of trust was inspiring and wonderful,
but at the same time, incredibly daunting
because we knew the sound of their future
disappointment would be as loud – or perhaps
louder – than their cries of past appreciation.’
Designer Christian Lacroix took the same leap
of faith with the Hotel Notre Dame in Paris,
overlooking the eponymous cathedral, and
decorated it with his trademark opulence in
rich satins, fabrics and graphic prints.
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The : Future : Laboratory

Gastro getaways
Well-heeled foodies are demanding that themed travel is
built around their gastronomic passions. A survey by The
Future Laboratory found that more than half (54%) of travel
buyers see gastro travel as a top desire for luxury travellers.
That feeling is reflected in the growing number of brands
making it part of their luxury offer. In the UK, guests at
celebrity chef Rick Stein’s Trevone Farm cottages get the
chance to eat at his restaurants in Padstow, Cornwall, and
to learn to cook at his school.
High-end cruise line Crystal Cruises is highlighting the
culinary culture of its ports of call by hosting top local
chefs to give cooking master classes to passengers during
visits to Australia, New Zealand and Bali in 2013.
Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows in Santa Monica,
California, is targeting affluent couples by pairing up
with local vineyard Malibu Wines to offer a culinary
experience for its guests who favour local experiences.
Guests will take a tour of the vineyard and eat a picnic
lunch provided by the hotel’s Fig restaurant. The meal will
be prepared with seasonal ingredients by executive chef
Ray Garcia.
ILTM : Luxury Travel Futures

Conclusion.
Exciting progress by travel brands is creating new sectors of
experiential, high-tech engagement with luxury customers, building
strong bonds of loyalty and brand identification.
Experiential travel, encompassing everything from epic adventures to
gastro-getaways and magical once-in-a-lifetime moments that money
can’t buy, are cleverly leveraging the industry’s ability to delight to
create lasting and lucrative relationships with even the most jaded
and wealthy globetrotters.
Non-travel luxury brands such as Bulgari, Karl Lagerfeld and Bentley
are injecting fresh creativity into the sector, creating new concepts
and perspectives on luxury.
Collaboration is becoming a luxury travel touchstone, building
exciting cross-brand alliances and partnerships, and enabling hotels
and resorts to lay down roots in the communities that produce the
authentic local experiences that their clients crave.
But this report can also be seen as a call to action for large sectors
of the industry, which need to pay greater attention to the digital
writing on the wall and upgrade their social media and loyalty
programme strategies – or risk missing the highly lucrative boat.
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The : Future : Laboratory

For further information please contact:
Simon Mayle
Marketing Manager
ILTM, ILTM Asia and ILTM Americas
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8910 7868
Email: simon.mayle@reedexpo.co.uk
For media enquires please contact:
Lucy Clifton
Cut Communications
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8334 4008
Email: lucy.clifton@cut-coms.co.uk