27th July 2017
On Tuesday 25 July we attended ‘The Evolving Luxury Hospitality: What’s the key to its growth?’ event at the Soho Hotel, London. The event featured some great speakers and offered useful insights into the trends influencing the luxury hospitality industry.
Strategist Ana Andjelic delivered a brilliant keynote speech. Top takeaways include:
- Be a butler, not a stalker – With a wealth of data at operators’ fingertips, the temptation to follow prospective guests around the internet, jumping on every opportunity to promote your product, can be high. Instead, they should provide pertinent information at useful touchpoints to provide seamlessness, convenience and efficiency. Remove the friction from the process and work to improve the customer journey at every stage.
- Add value to the local community – Selling locally sourced food or products and hosting community events at hotels helps to create the authenticity and community spirit that many guests are looking for.
- There is no silver bullet – A series of small, personalised actions on scale can often be the most impactful.
The panel discussion featured Daisy Bird, Founder of Bird Travel PR; Anna Nash, Head of Global Public Relations at Aman Resorts and Holly Tuppen, Writer and Co-Founder of Bouteco Hotels. Top takeaways from an insightful discussion include:
- Guests are buying experiences – A topic that emerged again and again throughout the discussion was experiential travel. Guests are looking for unique experiences – think surfing lessons from a local or a ‘field to fork’ session from a local farmer – that will give them an authentic story to tell.
- The personal touch – Anna Nash of Aman Resorts emphasised the importance of welcoming your guests like friends, while Holly Tuppen spoke on the value of trips peppered with genuine, personalised moments rather than being hyper-curated. The rise of experiential one-off trips can make guest loyalty challenging, so a memorable guest experience is key.
