Jenny Southan reveals the trends that are shaping your travel experience.
For the average person, travel in itself is a luxury, but for the frequent flyer who traverses the globe on a regular basis – often staying in the best hotels and sitting at the front of the plane – it takes more to be impressed.
But as the economy continues to struggle, people’s relationship to luxury is shifting – some turn to it in a bid to escape, while others have had to curb their excesses or found their desires are no longer satisfied by conspicuous consumption. Of course, there are those who are so wealthy that spending money is as easy as breathing, but whatever the perception, luxury – in all its evolving forms – is here to stay.
So what does luxury mean to you? For Arrigo Cipriani, owner of the eponymous chain of high-end restaurants, bars and hotels across the world, it is many things. “It is a jewel, a car, a watch – any object that is made into a beautiful shape by love and intelligence. But often one can discover luxury in small things – it is to be 80 and still realise you can run up the steps of a bridge in Venice. Luxury is to dance in the bedroom and have a naked lady in the bathtub. It is to believe in what you want. It is freedom when you did not have it for a long time. It is an old bottle of red wine that has been waiting for you for ten years.”
As one top-level executive I spoke to points out: “One person’s luxury will be another person’s ordinary.” But for him, when it comes to travel, it’s all about the location, the accommodation, the level of service and the attention to detail. “I have a ‘highest cabin only policy’ whenever I fly and, if I could afford it, I would love to take private jet holidays. I try to choose properties where there is a smaller number of guests and a higher emphasis placed on personal service and experiences. I also want everything to be as easy and stress-free as possible, from the airport to the destination, so that can include little things like having private car transfers, rather than having to queue for a taxi.”
David Johnstone, founder of Key-2 Luxury – an elite lifestyle accessory that gives beneficiaries access to VIP privileges with brands such as Shangri-La and Krug – feels people’s aspirations are higher today. “There is a big difference between ‘premium’ and ‘luxury’,” he says. “Luxury gives an element of exclusivity and uniqueness and, in today’s mass market, that is something people want and are willing to pay for. It is the effect of having a service or access to something that money cannot buy.”
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To Jason Philips, manager of two of London’s top restaurants, Franco’s and Wilton’s, luxury is about “exceeding expectations”. “This could come in a variety of forms, from the tangible elements – quality of the food, airline seat and toiletries – to the intangible, such as the welcome, and how well your request is received and ultimately managed and delivered,” he says.
But Philips notes that each aspect of the experience needs to be interlinked. “No matter how much has been spent on a hotel’s reception, lobby and fixtures in the rooms, if there is nobody to greet the guest on arrival, the check-in is slow and room service is delivered with mistakes, the experience will no longer be a luxurious one,” he says.
Whatever your stance, Business Traveller has identified five luxury trends that are shaping your travel experience.
DATA-BASED SERVICE
Impeccable service has always been a luxury, but now it’s getting personal. For years, hotels and airlines have been able to build a profile of guests based on the information they provide when signing up to loyalty schemes, and sometimes they put it to good use – making sure your room preferences or dietary requests are taken into account, for instance, or welcoming you on board by name. However, at the top end of the market, as more and more data is collected, travellers can expect this to be taken further (though the cost may be to their privacy).
Following the roll-out of iPads to senior cabin crew, British Airways unveiled its “Know Me” initiative last July, allowing staff to access important passengers’ Executive Club status, onward journey, meal preferences and previous travel experiences. It also enables them to find out what passengers look like on Google Images so they can recognise them.
Chennai’s ITC Grand Chola hotel, meanwhile, has installed RFID scanners in the corridors that read your room key as you walk by, simultaneously sending an alert to the mobile phones of nearby staff with your name, photo and other “useful” personal details.
Greater choice and bespoke experiences are also being enabled by information the customer provides in advance. Premium passengers can often eat when they want, and some carriers give them the option of ordering online from an extended menu up to 24 hours before departure. Top five-star hotels are asking guests to complete detailed questionnaires in advance that highlight their interests, allergies, favourite bathing products, pillow types, snacks, drinks and even preferred level of service (discreet or indulgent, for example).
BRAIN BOOSTING
From brain training games to smart drugs, one of the new trends in luxury travel taps into the idea that “grey matter is the new black”, with amenities and experiences that boost the intellect. Forbes magazine has tipped IQ enhancement as being the next trillion-dollar industry and, according to Intercontinental Hotels Group’s Trend Report 2012, “the market for goods and services responding to new demand for mental stimulation is expected to grow between US$1 billion and US$5 billion by 2015”.
Inspired by our thirst for the likes of online TED Talks (as of November 2012, ted.com’s videos had been viewed more than one billion times), IHG predicts that travellers will soon be checking into “brain spas” – “city-centre sites of learning where you can take a lecture or debate, or follow a structured course in a stylish, relaxed environment”. And there is every likelihood these could be affiliated with high-end hotels.
Consider Morgans Hotel Group, which partnered with London’s the School of Life to provide guests with a “minibar for the mind” to help make travel more fulfilling. The box contained 250 conversation starters, a volume of collected thoughts and “reduce and relax” reading prescriptions. In the Maldives, Banyan Tree Vabbinfaru resort offers marine biology courses, and the Shangri-La Villingli recently launched cultural tours of nearby islands. Provençal wine estate La Verrière invites guests to become a wine expert in six days, while Design Hotels member the Library, on Thailand’s Koh Samui, has a collection of more than 1,300 books to borrow or buy.
The trend for offering bespoke book collections has been quietly catching on, with Philip Blackwell’s Ultimate Library at the forefront. His company has been supplying brands such as Six Senses, the Dorchester Collection and Fairmont with life-enhancing literature for five years. “Research shows that for busy people, reading for pleasure is a luxury saved for going on holiday, so a well-chosen library can surprise and delight,” he says. If you are travelling on business, you may not have time to read that copy of Plato’s Republic placed by your bed, but people like to be surrounded by books. “Whether stacked on a coffee table or in a library, they add warmth, texture and soul to a room,” says Blackwell.
WABI SABI
Forget “green”, “eco” and “sustainable”, the buzzword of the future is going to be “wabi sabi”. This Japanese philosophy of aesthetics is already beginning to take off in the West, and taps into people’s desire for things that have authenticity and provenance, that are vintage, organic, artisan, handcrafted or natural. The sentiment has been dubbed “luxury shame”, as people react against ostentatious displays of wealth.
According to wabi sabi, beauty is found in imperfection, transience, incompleteness, unpretentiousness, simplicity, modesty and integrity. With regard to objects or environments, it could refer to something that has been weathered and aged, or designed to have a certain understated elegance.
Boutique properties lend themselves well to this zeitgeist, opting to sensitively restore or convert buildings to maintain their original features and flaws – think historic mountain lodges, industrial warehouses and Mediterranean villas. New-build wabi sabi properties could incorporate unpolished, natural, raw or recycled materials. Interiors may be furnished with pared-down Scandinavian furniture, indigenous folk art or hand-woven carpets, while restaurants would serve homegrown vegetables from kitchen gardens on plates made by local ceramicists. They would also have good eco-accreditations.
Properties that have a wabi sabi flavour include the Alila Villas Uluwatu in Bali (lava rock roofs, bamboo ceilings and pools of water), the Beresheet hotel in Israels’s Ramon Crater (nomadic wall hangings, repurposed timber railway sleepers and carefully excavated natural rocks) and the Waterhouse at South Bund in Shanghai (a converted warehouse with exposed brickwork, raw cement and distressed paintwork).
It can also, believe it or not, be found in Las Vegas, in the five-star Nobu hotel, open since February. It was designed by David Rockwell under the authorship of Japanese chef Nobu Matsuhisa, who was inspired by wabi sabi principles. Upon arrival, guests are presented with a cup of fresh green tea, served at the perfect temperature, and a rice cracker. The tranquil interiors are a blend of metal, bamboo, rice paper, grass cloth, stone, fir, ebony and oak, and rooms are neutral with Umi tiles from Japan, traditional teak bathing stools and coffee tables made from slices of tree trunks.
EXTREME WELL-BEING
Health has been a concern of the luxury travel sphere for some time, but Swedish massages, swimming pools and low-calorie minibar snacks just don’t cut it anymore. These days, well-being is a serious matter – an increasing number of people are travelling abroad for medical treatment (about 60,000 a year from the UK alone), and taking on extreme sports and fitness challenges such as mountain climbing, marathons and triathlons – in the UK, the London triathlon has grown from 1,000 competitors to 13,000 in just over a decade.
High-end hotels are starting to capitalise on this – from Champneys Tring, the only UK resort to feature a full-body cryotherapy chamber that freezes you to minus 135°C (click here for a report on how this writer survived it), to St Lucia’s Le Sport, which offers bespoke workout holidays co-ordinated by Olympic champion Daley Thompson.
London’s Bulgari has embraced “holistic lifestyle approach” Bodyism (a favourite among celebrities), with personal training and Bodyism-approved dishes on its restaurant menu, while over in Spain you can do a macrobiotic weight-loss detox at Sha Wellness Clinic, or, in Germany, check in to Dusseldorf’s Breidenbacher Hof hotel for some plastic surgery, laser treatment or aesthetic dentistry in its underground clinic.
It is also becoming common to combine overseas business trips with a fitness bootcamp or medical procedure, allowing time to recover afterwards. Switzerland’s Grand Resort Bad Ragaz has a health centre offering everything from metabolic optimising and in-depth examinations to monastic remedies and physiotherapy, while Buccament Bay in the Caribbean runs multi-activity training weeks to whip you into shape.
QUIET
Do you find it hard to switch off? Are you addicted to checking your emails and social media platforms? If so, you’re not alone. Smartphones and tablets are becoming such a problem for us that we are willing to spend money on ways to get peace, tranquillity and a good night’s rest.
A lack of online distractions helps us to be more focused, creative and grounded, and the luxury travel market has picked up on this. Nowadays, you can book yourself into a “black hole resort” or go on a “digital detox”, where you check your devices in at reception and there is no wifi in the rooms. In California, tech junkies can go cold turkey at Camp Grounded (thedigitaldetox.org), building campfires and sleeping in bunk beds.
According to the Institute of Circadian Psychology in Boston, sleep problems cost US businesses $70 billion a year in lost productivity, accidents and medical bills. London’s Milestone hotel offers a £1,170-per-night “Sound Sleep” package including a private consultation with cognitive behavioural specialist Tej Semani, a spa treatment and aromatherapy oils. IHG predicts: “A hotel group entering the debate and developing its own sleep research centre could allow it to become a market leader in what is evidently a growing trend.”
Raymond Kollau, founder of airlinetrends.com, notes that, along with space, sleep and silence are two of the most significant luxuries you can enjoy when flying. Lufthansa claims its A380s and B747-800s have the quietest first class cabins ever, with sound-absorbing curtains and carpet. That said, planes are no longer the last bastions of digital silence, as more are installing in-flight wifi – all the more reason for that detox when you land.
