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Luxury goods are out, but luxury travel is in
Outside Brown's Hotel in London a doorman in a smart coat and top hat escorts guests to their taxis. Inside, the fanciest suite goes for over £6,000 ($8,100) per night. The bar serves delicious cocktails for £26. Judging by the crowded lobby, there is no shortage of visitors happy to pay for that sort of pampering.
There is a divide in the luxury industry today. Economic uncertainty things">has people spending less on fancy things, like high heels and handbags. Bain, a consultancy, reckons sales of personal luxury goods will fall by 2-5% this year.
Yet the well-off continue to splash out on luxury travel: posh hotels, first-class air fares and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Global spending on luxury hospitality will exceed $390bn in 2028, up from less than $240bn in 2023, reckons McKinsey, another consultancy (see chart 1). At the Accor Group, which owns the smart Sofitel chain as well as cut-price Ibis, Sébastien Bazin, the chief executive, aims to expand the share of cashflow that comes from the luxury segment from around 35% today to 50% in 2030. Can the luxury-travel boom last?
Analysts expected 2025 to be a terrible year across the travel industry as tighter immigration rules in America, trade wars and geopolitical flux left consumers jittery. But luxury travellers have propped up the market. Revenues per available luxury hotel room have been higher every month this year than in 2024, according to CoStar, a real-estate data firm; for cheaper rooms they have mostly declined (chart 2). At Chase Travel, part of JPMorgan Chase, America's biggest bank, first-class flight bookings jumped over 20% year on year between June and August. Some 820 private jets will be delivered in 2025, a rise of 7.3%, forecasts IBA, which provides aviation data.
Some luxury-goods firms have caught the trend. Labels including Bulgari and Armani have opened branded hotels. LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton and Fendi, launched a fancy new Belmond sleeper train in Britain a few months ago. Its 230-metre, 54-suite Orient Express yacht, built in partnership with Accor, is due to set sail from France next year. Dolce & Gabbana and Burberry have paired with hotel groups to open pop-up stores and beach clubs.
According to Richard Clarke of Bernstein, a broker, the trend is explained by a broader shift in spending from goods to experience. Designer clothes and bags are now available around the world; they are toted by the well-off middle class as well as the super-rich. But once-in-a-lifetime holidays, which can cost thousands of pounds per person per day, still feel exclusive. Social media can be used to show off enviable trips as easily as new outfits.
The risk is that luxury-travel firms make the same mistakes as luxury-goods firms did in the past. Around the turn of the millennium, fashion houses began wooing “aspirational” shoppers (ie, the rich but not filthy rich). That left them vulnerable when the economy turned.
Now luxury-travel firms are at a similar juncture. The share of luxury-hospitality spending coming from super-rich customers, worth $30m or more, is ticking down, according to McKinsey. In a sign that more and more holidaymakers want to feel fancy, this month easyJet Holidays, a package-holiday provider linked to a budget airline, said it was launching a luxury offering that includes posh hotels, speedy boarding at airports and “elevated extras” such as Michelin-star dining.
In pursuit of growth, fashion brands began mass-producing their wares, which polluted their air of exclusivity. Similarly, analysts are warning of a glut in top-notch hotels. CoStar forecasts the global tally of luxury hotel rooms will climb from 1.8m now to almost 2.2m by 2030, outpacing other segments. In London, Rosewood, Six Senses and Auberge, three of the biggest high-end hospitality firms, are all opening new sites this year. Savills, an estate agent, estimates there are 18,750 luxury hotel rooms in the capital and a further 1,618 in development.
Then there is pricing. After the covid-19 pandemic, luxury fashion houses tried to exploit the rush of “revenge spending” by lifting prices. Fancy hotels are trying something similar. In fact, by CoStar's estimates in some recent months occupancy rates for luxury rooms were a bit lower than in 2024, but higher rates have kept revenues rising. Federico Marchetti, the former boss of Yoox Net-a-Porter, a luxury e-tailer, has a word of advice for anyone selling to the rich: they don't like to feel ripped off.
Luxury-travel firms can learn not just from what luxury-goods firms have done wrong, but what they have done right. One brand has bucked the recent slump in goods sales: Hermès. The Parisian firm, which is still run by its founder's family, maintains a long-term perspective: it produces at relatively small scale, keeps price rises modest and maintains an air of exclusivity.
There are hoteliers that fit that description. Take Rocco Forte Group, which owns Brown's. It too is still family-run and has just 15 hotels. It has raised room rates of late, but roughly in line with costs. Staff are trained to make guests feel special. The doorman at Brown's, for example, greets guests by name. At a time when many are questioning what exactly “luxury” is, the personal touch may be the answer.
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Source: HindustanTimes
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