A Jean Georges Private Cooking Lesson With a Stay at Trump New York
For Just $8,999
Jean Georges Vongerichten, one of the world’s most renowned chefs, has
a restaurant in the Trump International Hotel in New York – called Jean
Georges --which the hotel claims is the only hotel restaurant in town
boasting a chef of such acclaim. In addition, the restaurant handles
room service and catering. To make the most of that connection the
hotel put together an $8,999 Jean-Georges Culinary Master Course that
includes:
* A two-hour private cooking lesson with Jean Georges
* Three nights in an Executive Park View Suite
(there is a three-night minimum)
* A three-course dinner with a bottle of champagne
* Breakfast for two daily at Nougatine
* A signed copy of Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges, a cookbook
The package is available for a maximum of four people; if there are two couples, they would each be required to book a room.
It’s nothing new for a luxury hotel to create a lavish package as a
positioning tool and to generate publicity, but this one seems to have
touched a media nerve.
According to Suzie Mills, the hotel’s general manager, the package has
caught the attention of many top media outlets – particularly those in
the food area. Both Gourmet and Town & Country have posted videos
of Jean-George cooking in his kitchen. Many other media have visited
the kitchen and media coverage will continue, says Mills.
“The media response has been much greater than we expected,” says
Mills – “and we’re getting exposure for both the restaurant and the
hotel. “
And unlike some high-priced positioning packages, Mills does expect
to book more than a few – and in fact booked a couple shortly after the
package was announced. It was a wife buying a birthday present for her
food-loving husband. Not only did they get all the goodies listed
above, but Jean Georges spent extra time with them – allowing them to
stay in the kitchen while the staff prepared a lunch.
“So many people are interested in food and wine these days,” says
Mills, “and we think this is a great conversational point. Imagine
going out to dinner or a dinner party and being able to say you took a
cooking course with Jean-Georges.” Mills says the hotel expects to
sell a number of the packages as Christmas presents.
And Mills says the price tag is not out of line – when a nightly
room rate of about $1500, a Jean Georges dinner and those breakfasts
would add up pretty quickly. Of course the package costs little for the
hotel to put together – considering all the free publicity. According
to Mills, Vongerichten is “very enthusiastic about working with the
hotel, so he was very keen to do this.” While the program will not be a
huge moneymaker, says Mills, the payoff in publicity creates a huge ROI
in terms of marketing dollars.
We began our recent report on ‘Family Travel Rising’ with the following:
“All the evidence -- whether you are looking at the Amex-Harrison Group study we reviewed in our last issue, or the Ipsos Mendelsohn Affluence Report completed in September, -- shows Family First when it comes to disposable dollars.
We believe family focus is going to be front of mind for a long time to come, long after the punishing economic climate has subsided. Provider brands will be hard pressed to provide much more than kiddie or junior, or young adult activities. Smart travel agents will have to rise to higher levels of creativity and performance on the family front to sustain customer loyalty and earn the benefits of word of mouth in the neighborhood.”
And last week we caught our favorite global traveler-editor-writer-commentator during a quiet moment at home in England, the home of The Gostelow Report. She shared these thoughts:
• The hotel industry has been very slow to realize that this big expansion in family travel was going to happen. We’ve had “connecting rooms and you can put the kids next door”. They moved on to two swimming pools rather than one. One was kid friendly and one was not. But we really haven’t had anything more than that.
• We are seeing more and more bigger family groups. Operators are having a real challenge coping with such groups because it’s not a group per se, but they form their own groups. They want to be private. They want their own thing. .They tend to do their own excursions. They suddenly want a bus to take them all out. So it’s a real, real challenge. And so far the hotel industry has not realized this is happening. Now, it’s not only families. We’re also seeing more and more groups of friends traveling. And the hotel industry is not incentivizing enough – say a pair of DINKs come- Double-Income-No-Kids. There’s no incentive to them at the moment to bring along two other friends or even four other friends. And there’s big potential on the marketing side there.
Everybody knows her, but her bio is worth repeating.
Mary Gostelow, president of Gostelow Travel: Hottest Hospitality News Worldwide, is an inveterate traveler on the road more than 300 days a year. She owns and publishes the definitive Gostelow Reports, monthly market intelligence briefings to the top levels of the hospitality industry. She is the editor of KIWI's online Wow! Magazine, and also sends out a monthly update to top travel professionals worldwide.
At the same time, she is contributing editor to such publications as Elite Traveler, enRoute, Hotels and Le Magazine.
Nat Ives, in Ad Age Online Sept 6, cites new data from Ipsos MMR which assures that well-off readers read print publications just as much now as they did 5 years ago.
Also, survey respondents making more than $100,000 annually said their average hours online had grown to 22.1 each week from 10.7, while the time they said they spent watching TV sunk to 18.6 hours from 23.7 in the 2003 survey. Read the full Ives story at http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=130685. Lux 360 attended the client briefing this week and will provide additional perspective in our Sept. 30 issue, interviewing Ipsos MMR President Bob Shullman.
Who 
“The media response has been much greater than we expected,” says
Mills – “and we’re getting exposure for both the restaurant and the
hotel. “
