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

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overview.
Experiences that cant 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 yesterdays 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 industrys 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 industrys 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 Laboratorys 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 RitzCarlton Hotels, says: Our luxury customers are looking for loyalty programmes that access gateways to the extraordinary to experiences that money cant 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.

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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. 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-Carltons 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.

Concierge desk at Hotel Daniel, Vienna

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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 cant buy, are what hotels can offer to keep them interested. That often translates as discovering what truly matters to a guest, rather than providing over-the-top opulence. Black Tomatos 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. 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-Carltons 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.

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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 brands 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.

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Techno-travel
Recognising the constantly connected nature of the modern luxury travellers 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 industrys 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. Were 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 Tomatos 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.

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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 others customers, says Michael Hobson, chief marketing officer at The Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.

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Black Tomatos Marchant agrees. Our consumers are smart. They are not there to be hit with all kinds of weird tie-ups that dont 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-Carltons 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.

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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 Starwoods 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

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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 propertys 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. 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 Chinas top destinations located adjacent to Shanghai Municipality.

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 citys finest hotels Browns, 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 propertys head bartender preparing their signature cocktails, profiles of Londons leading tastemakers and details about travelling around the capital.

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Cultural collaborations
Local artists, designers and students are invited to become part of a hotels 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 Citys Tntalo 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 islands textiles and antiques were consulted to ensure we captured the true essence of the location.

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.

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.

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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 dont 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-Carltons 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

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But concerns that social networks are damaging the business model of the tour operation industry dont 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 hasnt. 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 Groups Hobson. We treat them as partners, not as a commissionable expense. Ritz-Carltons 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 Californias 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 Valleys landmark technology companies are part of the geek chic package.

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 groups 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.

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. VisitSweden, the countrys 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.

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Friendly fliers
Clever airlines are using bespoke social networks to help passengers find like-minded flight companions. Air Baltics 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 airlines website. Once a flight is selected, a Facebook users social media profile can be added to the flight by clicking on the Use Facebook button. The passengers 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. A visual seat map shows you all the other Facebook users who have checked in and where they are sitting. You can then browse everyones profile on the plane if they allow it.

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.

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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-Carltons Gabaldon.

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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 Londons Kings 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 Yorks Ace Hotels lobby doubles as a collective workspace for all.

Child-centric travel
The Ritz-Carlton Berlins 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

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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 Orientals 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. 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 guests stay, including providing personal insights and advice of the host city, and even introducing them to knowledgeable and trusted locals. Plus One, a one-room loft hotel in Berlins artistic Kreuzklln 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 Caf Goldegg and a local hamman becomes a spa, giving guests natural, unforced opportunities to mingle with the locals.

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epic adventures
Bespoke travel company Black Tomato stages Victorian-style expeditions into the worlds 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 36hour 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 & Robinsons 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 peoples lives is one of the reasons that we just got a great, loyal base. We give them something that is totally different.

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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 Londons prestigious Knightsbridge translates the design elements of the brands glamorous watches and jewellery into an ultra-upmarket hospitality experience. 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 brands 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. 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.

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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 Steins 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 hotels 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 cant buy, are cleverly leveraging the industrys 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