Luxury / news
Luxury Hotels Said to Trail Fashion in Innovation and Branding
Luxury hospitality has long been viewed as lagging other luxury categories — notably fashion, watches and jewellery — in innovation, branding and consumer research, as fashion houses push deeper into immersive customer experiences.
Alessandro Sartori, artistic director at Zegna, said in a recent interview that he pays less attention to rival labels than to why a luxury customer settles on a particular hotel brand, naming Rosewood and Aman as examples, along with the airlines, car marques and watchmakers those clients also choose. His point was that luxury brands are competing for the same discretionary spending across categories rather than only within their own sector.
The comparison places luxury hospitality behind fashion, watches and jewellery, which have long leaned on consumer research and brand-building to cultivate loyalty, according to the discussion of sector gaps.
Fashion houses have been extending that relationship beyond the runway. Earlier this year, for a show staged in Malibu, Zegna built "Villa Zegna" at Chateau Marmont — a detailed recreation of the Zegna family's own 1970s holiday home — as an environment intended to surprise and inspire guests.
Hermès has run an annual, tightly guarded trip reserved for a small circle of "house friends." On one occasion the maison took guests to Norway to see the Midnight Sun, the summer phenomenon in which the sun does not set north of the Arctic Circle. Those guests boarded a private plane departing Paris with the destination listed simply as "unknown" until the aircraft was airborne.
Giorgio Armani, Moncler and Hermès were cited among the houses that now invite customers not just to fashion shows but to larger immersive experiences designed to reflect a desirable lifestyle.