Luxury Beat – Strategic Vision

28Mar 2023 by Peter Bates

The New Way to Think About What Luxury Travelers Want

I recently worked with Walpole, the association for British luxury brands, and VisitBritain to create a luxury hospitality summit in New York City. Walpole, whose members include everyone from Bentley and Harrods to Claridge’s, The Macallan, and Gleneagles, whose new Townhouse is featured above, presented a new qualitative research study that explores the major themes affecting affluent consumers and their travel behaviors. While it focused on the UK, I found the report to be an excellent summation of what all of us are dealing with right now, so I’m sharing the key takeaways with you here. (The full report, produced by the London branding agency Notable, is available for download here.) Wherever you are reading this in the world, I think you’ll find the report’s conclusions important and worthwhile. It identifies…

08Mar 2023 by Peter Bates

The Destinations We’ll All Be Talking About in 2023

Luxury Beat

This isn't your typical "hot places" list From The New York Times and Travel + Leisure, to Architectural Digest and Eater, many publications like to make predictions of the “hot” places to travel. Here’s my list — with a twist. It’s based not on new hotel openings and blockbuster museum shows, but on destinations that exemplify various issues the industry is contending with. They’re all wonderful places to visit in their own right, but they’re “hot spots” in a different sense of the word. 1. Turkey: To go or not to go? The cataclysmic earthquake in southeastern Turkey last month is bringing up a familiar set of questions: Should people avoid the country while it recovers? Is visiting now going to help or hinder? And do most people know…

28Nov 2022 by Peter Bates

Unpacking the Strength of the Luxury Travel Market

Luxury Beat

Our latest survey results reveal how the wealthy feel about the economy, service, and their next vacation. In early August, I reported on the results of a survey of wealthy U.S. consumers I conducted in partnership with Chandler Mount and his Affluent Consumer Research Company. Among our key findings: Demand for luxury travel was taking off, consumers were splashing out for bigger and further-flung trips, and younger folks use a different set of yardsticks to gauge their satisfaction with a travel brand. Since then, ACRC has been fielding the survey on a continuous basis, asking the respondents — U.S. adults earning $200,000 or more in household income and residing in affluent-dense neighborhoods — for their thoughts about spending, travel, service, and more. That lets us track how their outlooks are changing…

03Aug 2022 by Peter Bates

Taking the Pulse of the Luxury Travel Consumer

Luxury Beat

Despite economic headwinds and geopolitical instability, luxury consumers will continue to travel Remember what the travel industry looked like one year ago? Travelers were hitting the road in droves, spending their ballooning savings, and satisfying their long-suppressed desire to travel. A new variant of COVID was spreading rapidly. And labor shortages among travel suppliers were causing disruption and dissatisfaction with how service was being delivered. Sounds a lot like Summer 2022, doesn’t it? Of course, there are many differences between what’s happening right now and a year ago. Many of those differences are clear from the results of a survey I just completed in partnership with Affluent Consumer Research Company, headed by Chandler Mount. As we did one year ago, Chandler and I surveyed affluent U.S. consumers on their sentiments and plans for…

19Jul 2022 by Peter Bates

The Resurgence of Luxury Cruising

Luxury Beat, Uncategorized

What We Can Learn From How Cruise Lines Staged A Comeback Two years ago, at the peak of the pandemic, it seemed nearly impossible that cruise lines would escape the cloud created by COVID, darkening their reputation in health and safety. Today, however, pent-up demand and skyrocketing hotel rates have primed the market for cruise lines to gain market share exponentially. Through better bundled values, high-end service, and adaptive health and safety protocols, the trajectory of cruise lines is incredibly well on the rise. Within the last 30 days, Strategic Vision and The Affluent Consumer Research Company surveyed over 900 U.S. adults aged 25+, with a household income of $250,000+. From this research, the overall intention to cruise is up 12% from 2021, with a respectable 33% increase among those who say…

05Apr 2022 by Peter Bates

That Was a Heck of a Quarter

Luxury Beat

How the Ukraine war, inflation, and market volatility impacted us — and what’s next? Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: Greetings from Saudi Arabia! I am visiting this unexpected destination to look at tourism development opportunities in Riyadh, Al-’Ula, Jeddah, and elsewhere. Saudi is fascinating, stunning, hospitable, and, from my Western perspective, very surprising. There are obviously very serious human rights concerns to take into consideration. But the country’s efforts to slowly open itself up to tourism has me thinking quite a bit about the future of our industry. More on that in a future column. For now, I am dwelling on the present, which is also surprising and stunning… for very different reasons. I am referring, of course, to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the humanitarian and…

25Jan 2022 by Peter Bates

What’s in Store For 2022 (It’s Not All Bad)

Luxury Beat

Normally at this time of year I send you the results of our annual Pulse of the Industry Survey. This year, well, let’s just say that the pulse is a little bit hard to read at the moment. Once the patient stabilizes a bit (sorry to torture the metaphor) and there’s more clarity in the marketplace, we’ll survey our industry peers to understand their feelings about business and where it’s going. In the meantime, I have been speaking to a number of travel advisors about the current state of affairs and thought it worth sharing a few of the common threads I’m hearing. Not surprisingly, everyone wants to talk about the omicron variant and how travelers (and we) are reacting to it. The general consensus: Travelers are feeling anxious and…

02Dec 2021 by Peter Bates

How We Are Dealing With Hiring Challenges Right Now

Luxury Beat

Struggling to find people to fill your open positions – or that have the skills the job requires? You’re not alone. “How is the recovery going for your business?” For every 10 people in the travel industry that I ask that question, I get 10 different responses — and 10 different predictions as to what might happen next. But just about everyone agrees on one thing: Hiring has become very, very challenging. The so-called “Great Resignation” is happening across industries (and across the globe, if unevenly), and even if it’s somewhat exaggerated, it seems to be hitting travel, restaurants, and leisure especially badly. And the problem is global, as far as I can tell. In the U.S. the accommodation sector added 23,000 jobs in October — a huge jump from only…

08Oct 2021 by Peter Bates

How Luxury Travelers Are Feeling (and Spending) Right Now

Luxury Beat

Our new survey takes the consumer's temperature at a crucial time for the industry... We are entering a pivotal moment in our industry’s recovery from the pandemic, with both good and bad news across the board. Vaccines have unleashed a huge amount of pent-up demand. Airplanes and hotels are packed, prices have risen, and employers are struggling to fill vacant positions. On the other hand, corporate and MICE still lag far behind the leisure recovery. And the delta variant (and others) are threatening to put a halt to all our progress. As travel advisors and industry executives plan and implement their Q4 initiatives and refine their 2022 forecasts, I wanted to take the temperature of the luxury traveler consumer at this critical juncture. What trips are they planning now? Where…

25May 2021 by Peter Bates

The Lessons We’ve Learned (And Are Still Learning)

Luxury Beat

The great news from Europe last Wednesday, that the European Union will allow vaccinated vacationers back this summer, could not have come at a better time as there is no doubt we are seeing and hearing of booking momentum. Everyone I talk to is focused on forward bookings, staffing challenges, and other immediate-term issues. It’s an exciting time, if still chaotic and frustrating. It’s important to keep one eye on the future, as we build for coming success. What are the broader lessons we’ve learned in the past year-and-change that are worth holding onto? What wisdom can we use for our businesses in the future, but also guide our everyday thinking? I was fortunate enough to hear from many of our industry’s top minds at a recent virtual travel leadership…