Is Luxury Always About Opulance?
Mark Bithrey
December 2024
The question on my mind today –
‘Is luxury always about opulence?’
Last Christmas my mother-in-law made her usual spread for the whole family, only this time she made kiddie versions of everything. Tiny Yorkshire puddings, Brussel sprouts on skewers, and smiley-faced pigs in blankets with a load of ketchup on the side. “What a luxury!” my 11-year old daughter exclaimed.
It got me thinking quite deeply about what it means to have a luxurious experience. Is it about precise tasting menus? Lavish buffets? Rare and expensive ingredients? Exuberant fittings and plush furniture? A very long checklist? It can be all of the above. But at its core, luxury is about how it makes you feel.
How Do We Decide How We Feel?
A guest decides how a hospitality space is going to make them feel, anticipates and expects a certain experience, all based on photographs or videos they see online. So the very first thing that aids their decision is the interior design – everything else follows (service, food, convenience).
Luxury Is No Longer Shiny
For the modern explorer, all that glitters certainly isn’t gold. There is a firm shift away from extravagance and exuberance, to style and substance. The generation with new money is interested in your story, cares about carbon footprint, and has a heavy influence on the older generations.
Luxury is now about conscious, deliberate, and subtle choices we make as hospitality professionals.
4 ELEMENTS OF A LUXURIOUS EXPERIENCE
Mindfulness
Mindfulness in business choices, design elements, food offerings. When something has been really thought about, it will show. For our clients at Woolfox, a members-only luxury wellness and golf club in Stamford, we repurposed farm buildings in the most mindful ways – retaining original structures and designing in a minimalist Nordic style. We designed steam and sauna rooms to look out across the stunning countryside..
Craftsmanship
Heritage spaces do a fantastic job with craftsmanship, weaving in beautifully finished material into design, food, and service. When we designed the Fiskebar at the Ritz-Carlton in Geneva, we worked with a local craftsman to produce a bespoke wall mural inspired by the textures of crustaceans. This wall has continued to feature on people’s Instagram over the years
Comfort
Good design is about making the best decisions within a given space; finding use for corners and niches in the most fruitful ways. At the Prince Akatoki Hotel in London, we added a new workspace/reading room that was a hideaway for guests to get some quiet time.
Personalisation
This TED talk about unreasonable hospitality has stayed on my mind. I recommend watching it when you have 13 minutes to spare. Luxury experiences really do present unexpected personalisation, bordering on the ridiculous.
What exactly is a New York street hot dog doing in a Micheline-star restaurant?
Applying The Principles Of Luxury Everywhere
Most decisions are emotional, not rational. Choosing a luxury experience is no different. My mother-in-law displayed craftsmanship and personalisation for her 11-year old audience, and my daughter can’t stop speculating what her Christmas meal is going to look like this year.
“You’ll just have to wait and see,” her grandma has told her. Perhaps we should add ‘Building Anticipation’ to the list of luxury elements.
Until next time,
Mark
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