June 4 (Bloomberg) – by Jason H Harper. ``Cool shirt,'' says the receptionist by way of a hello, noting my T-shirt with a print by artist Jean- Michel Basquiat. With a prime Tribeca location on Greenwich Street and a co-owner in Robert De Niro, New York City's Greenwich Hotel.
Harper says the Greenwich is a study in measured cool. So, no geeks in bad suits behind the desk, nor Times-Square-seeking tourists in front of it.
Oh, yes-Prices? $475 to $1400—and some promised amenities still in a state of Coming Soon.
Lots of Buzz about Travelzoo, of course. And their newish President
C.J. Kettler, too. Have a look at this appealing promotion copy on the
Travelzoo site:
Enjoy the beautiful spring weather and treat yourself to an upscale
weekend in Manhattan. The luxurious Jumeirah Essex House hotel has
just released a special rate of $329 per night for Friday-Sunday stays
through June 1. Plus, a FREE daily breakfast for 2 (a $66 value) is
included for your stay. Here's where the deal gets even hotter: Stay
both Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday is 50% OFF, effectively
bringing the rate down to an incredible $274 per night. We rarely see
this upscale hotel running for less than $500 per night, so...
“Instead of booking partitioned hotel meeting rooms known for their blandness, companies are turning to chic boutique hotels like the Setai in South Beach, Florida, where the setting for a two-day gathering may be a lounge, library, rooftop or pool, and the bill is best often seen through dark glasses.”
Designed for groups of 50 or less, according to writer Paul Burnham Finney in the New YorkTimes Itineraries section, April 8, the boutique venues are providing a ‘new cool’ in meeting environments.
We could not resist sharing the World's Most Unusual Restaurants post in AOL News February 15. They are not all luxury, and some have a slightly risque' flavor. So here is the url .
What Makes It Unique:
Ithaa -- which means "pearl" -- sits five meters below sea level in the Indian Ocean. The aquarium-style restaurant allows you to take in 360 degree views of reef and marine life. The restaurant is small (only seats 12) and children are only allowed at lunch, if at all.
In her best-selling 2007 book, Deluxe-How Luxury Lost Its Luster, Dana Thomas, who has been cultural and fashion writer for Newsweek in Paris for 12 years, offers important insights on new directions in luxury goods marketing, and a few nuggets for Luxury travel marketers.
".....Tycoons like to boast that their companies aren't brands, they are lifestyles. And their creative directors/designers are today's ultimate arbiters of taste. If they can dress you and your home, why shouldn't they envelop you on vacation, too?"
From there, Thomas takes us through Versace's first hotel venture in 2000, Palazzao Versace in Australia, and a plan for to roll out 14 more including a Dubai opening in 2009. The parade of luxury hotel brands with luxury goods parentage, including Bulgari, Armani, Ferragamo, continues.
Meanwhile, the $157 billion luxury goods business is undergoing a transformation--"going mass, " Thomas says. The democratization of luxury goods is here to stay, but what about those hotel brands? They are certainly dancing to a different tune, some even eschewing the business traveler.
International travel is no longer the exclusive province of the rich. Over the next several decades, hundreds of millions of new entrants to the middle class will want not only the things—but also the experiences—that money can buy.
But where, o where, in this world can those hundreds of millions go? And with what consequences to the rest of us middle class or upper class folks, or the super rich, who have the best of all worlds right now when it comes to travel?
The authors proclaim ”Indian call-center employees, Russian petrochemical engineers, Chinese middle managers, and Brazilian salespeople are already scouring the web for deals on trips. They want to see Paris from the Eiffel Tower, relax in the Maldives, and play blackjack in Las Vegas.”
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, international tourist visits are expected to double soon, from roughly 800 million in 2008 to 1.6 billion by 2020.
However, only so many people can visit a particular building or beach in a given year. Where will all the other tourists go? This skyrocketing demand for travel will lead to a “scarcity of place” and to several market responses:
First, most tourism-related prices, such as hotel room rates in popular cities, will continue to escalate as demand outstrips supply.—big time!
Pam Danziger’s June 26 webcast lived up to its name, and to its sensible subtitle: “Luxury consumers' priorities are changing -- Luxury just doesn't mean that much to them” Always clear, always lively, and clearly a favored voice with us, Pam proclaims, among other insights and prognostications:
• “Given the trends our firm ( Unity Marketing) is tracking in the luxury market, it is unlikely , once the economy bounces back that the affluent shoppers will go back to their indulgent ways. That means the luxury brands will need to make strategic changes in their businesses to be relevant in the future.
• The conspicuous consumption lifestyle as typified by 'he who dies with the most toys wins' thinking is giving way to a new appreciation for a simpler, less materialistic approach.
• All around us we see signs in the culture that affluent people want to make the world a better place and that means giving back through charities and foundations and going green in order to have a smaller 'carbon footprint.' www.unitymarketingonline.com
The poshest room in the hotel -- the so-called presidential suite -- is getting its own upgrade. Many hotels have long promoted their largest, most glamorous suite as the place to house moguls, celebrities and even actual presidents in the utmost comfort. Now, with competition in the U.S. hotel industry escalating as room supply continues to grow and demand slows, hotels are putting more glitz into their top suites. They hope to use the suites to woo not only those rich enough to afford their eye-popping prices -- $30,000 a night in some cases -- but also to generate buzz around their entire properties. The promise is that presidential-suite glamour may just rub off on those booking regular rooms. By Sarah Nassauer, Wall Street Journal May 27, 2008
(We always enjoy Pam Danziger´s snappy story leads in her Unity Marketing luxury trend reports. Here´s another from her June 6 newsletter—and behind it, solid research, once again.)
– The typical 'green' consumer is no longer certain to be a fashion-challenged, granola-crunching wearer of Birkenstocks. Today, the consumer looking to go green is increasingly likely to be an affluent professional woman dressed in an eco-friendly and animal-free Stella McCartney power suit with satin pumps. And if you want the affluent green-conscious customer's dollars and loyalty, you need to pay attention to the priorities she finds important when making her selection of luxury goods and services.
Good news for 24th Century Tourists, after engineers said efforts to stabilize the leaning tower of Pisa would keep the monument at its current angle for at least 300 years.
This past Spring, at the Amex Luxury Summit, I had a chance to visit with Jim Taylor, President of Harrison Group, and get beyond the Summit Agenda. “How much interest among your research clients in Word of Mouth ?,” I asked,
“There's an enormous supplier desire to understand the storytelling issue in travel, and how people craft the stories they tell, “ Jim said. “And there's a lot of mythology about when people come home from a vacation, what they do with their story. Everybody wants to talk ‘word of mouth’ without really understanding how a person comes to be responsible for a recommendation that important.
“ Luxury marketers want to understand how it is a person comes to engage a property, not as a room and a bed, but as a story. And then they want to understand the circumstances under which the person will pass the story on to another. And I think that it's difficult for marketers to understand how risky it is to make a travel recommendation to a friend.
“It's one of those things where if you're wrong it can really hurt a relationship, so you do it with a lot of care. You really have to know what you're doing. And then it's not quite as cut and dried as it might seem ...buzz networks and all that…as though the consumers are willing subordinates in their travel marketing job. And consumers are not. They are is doing it as a real favor to a friend, and they're really careful about it.”
• Conrad´s message to the consumer lies in its advertising slogan: "The luxury of being yourself." The rationale behind that, says Blamey, is that, "We provide an individualized guest experience based on two platforms: 1) the hotels are different from one another; and 2) We are intent on tailoring a stay to the guest's needs."
• "We don't position ourselves as a lifestyle brand," says Blamey, "but as a contemporary brand. We talk about contemporary attitude as much as contemporary design and contemporary architecture.
• The days of building brand through glossy ads are numbered. The online communication medium is up to 30 to 40 percent of our budget. We invested a lot of resources last year photographing our entire Conrad portfolio, but that´s still less expensive than a full page ad.
(A new feature in which we grab assorted ‘smart nuggets’ on luxury from good friends-pass them on to you with appropriate links, invite you email commentary, as well as editorial contributions)
Singles and Luxury Travel-
Jane Baxter Lynn, Executive Vice President of Tourism ROI, shared this piece of market intelligence from a conversation with solo travel specialist Ellen Marcus of New Act Travel in Encino, CA. on the large number of single women who want to travel. (Widowed women with lots of money (+60s) and single career women in their 30s-40s) Her clients range from net worths in the hundreds of thousands up to $3-4 million.
Healthy singles are not going to singles resorts because most of the resorts (if not all) are not upscale, so they are tending to travel with friends (e.g. on golf trips) or families (celebrations) or joining upscale tours of smaller groups with similar ages and interests.
