This week, we take a look at some of the ways brands are embracing travel and hospitality, showing up in unexpected places like your hotel room closet, room service menus and airport newsstands.
Visitors to the St. Regis hotel in Chicago this summer can expect luxurious rooms, a view of Lake Michigan and, depending on their booking, a new wardrobe.
The hotel is partnering with the British menswear brand Drake’s for a capsule collection of four accessories that’s exclusive to the hotel. But instead of being sold in the lobby, the products come as part of the room. Selecting the Drake’s Suite Package when you book a room means a necktie, pocket square, baseball cap and silk-blend bandana from Drake’s — a value of over $650 — will all be waiting for you in your room, yours to take home.
As traditional retail channels get glutted with competition, fashion brands are increasingly looking for interesting and unique venues to show up in customers’ lives. And as Americans increase their travel habits, both domestically and abroad, showing up in hotels, airports and other travel locations has become an appealing strategy.
St. Regis has been particularly active with this strategy. In the last three months, in addition to Drake’s, it has also partnered with brands like Mira Couture and Merit Beauty. The latter partnership includes making select Merit Beauty makeup and skin-care products available to order through room service.
“This collaboration allows us to introduce exclusive, thoughtfully designed experiences, especially within our Ritz-Carlton Club Lounges, where guests can engage with the brand in a way that feels personal, elevated and distinctly Ritz-Carlton,” said George Fleck, svp and global brand leader of St. Regis parent company The Ritz-Carlton, in a statement. “It’s a natural extension of how we continue to evolve the guest experience.”
For its part, Onia, a swimwear brand founded in 2009, is showing up at the luxury boutique hotel Marram on Long Island. Throughout July and August, Marram is offering up the Onia Suite, a package that includes a stay in the hotel’s Beachfront Balcony Suite along with a selection of linen pieces from Onia’s apparel collection to keep.
Borrowing clothes for the duration of a stay is another common strategy. The Onia Suite package includes a “lending suite” of other Onia looks in the closet for guests to wear for the duration of their stay. Similarly, the advanced contemporary brand Rails currently offers a package with The Tess, a hotel in Atlanta, that lets guests borrow a Rails handbag during their stay.
Even when fashion brands do more traditional sales in the hotel’s boutique shops, they are starting to find more interesting ways to show up. A partnership between the sustainable fashion brand Pangaia and the Spanish hotel chain OKU, running now until the end of the summer, includes a capsule collection sold exclusively in OKU’s in-hotel shop, but also a suite of wellness classes created by Pangaia, including yoga and Pilates, along with a Pangaia-created juice bar.
Typically, these collaborations between a brand and a hotel include an approximate 10-20% commission on each retail sale for the hotel. But partnerships with in-room lending or gifting could be structured more like wholesale, with the hotel paying up front for the inventory.
Cleo Davis-Urman, founder of the wearable wellness brand Barrière, told Glossy that travel is a great venue for showing up in customers’ lives because it’s often a time when they’re in need. Barrière recently started selling in Hudson News, the world’s largest airport newsstand operator.
“The airport is where the most fascinating stuff in retail happens,” Davis-Urman said. “You’re trapped in place. You’re feeling sick or jetlagged. Aspiration and reality are coming together. What are people looking for there that they might not have already?”
She said the brand’s assortment in Hudson News is different than in other retailers, focusing on items like sleep aids and anti-inflammation that would be most useful to a traveler.
“You have to bring the product into places where people are likely to see it and take a chance on it,” Davis-Urman said. “And if they like it, they’ll come back to you.”
Fashion brands are also starting to tap into travel even just for marketing purposes. Rent the Runway this week announced a new campaign in collaboration with Air France, following the content creator Candace Marie as she travels throughout France on Air France flights and in a wardrobe supplied by Rent the Runway.
Nicolas Henin, gm for North America of Air France, noted that international travel from U.S. consumers is increasing. Air France has seen a 200% increase in travelers from the U.S. to destinations in France over the last five years, for example. Americans took a record 24 million trips to Europe last year. The travel retail market is expected to reach over $140 billion globally in the next five years.
“Over the past few years, we’ve seen a continued growing interest among American travelers in visiting France, with many choosing to spend more time in a single destination,” he said.
News to know
- Fabletics is aiming to double its revenue in the next five years, the company said this week. Part of its plan includes opening dozens of new stores in international markets.
- On Running’s stock fell by 20% on Tuesday after it reported less-than-impressive sales. In other news, the company has been trending younger, with customers under 34 now representing over a third of its audience.
- As of Wednesday, Frasers Group is reportedly negotiating a rescue deal to buy the department store Harvey Nichols, which warned earlier this week it could collapse without a new owner.
