Interview: How Starwood Hotels Sells Luxury to a Diverse Consumer Base
Photo Credit: Ex-model Helena Christensen recently traveled with Starwood Luxury Collection to Peru as one of the brand's Global Explorers. Starwood Hotels
Skift Take
W Hotels, St. Regis Hotels and Starwood Luxury Collection anticipated the changing behaviors and demographics of the luxury consumer, and adapted their business models and content marketing strategies around them, before much of the rest of the hospitality industry.
The hotel luxury sector is undergoing seismic shifts in terms of product development, service culture and brand communications, driven by new emerging source markets and a broader diversity of luxury travelers than ever before.
Few people have a better understanding of those shifts than Starwood Hotels’ Paul James, global brand leader for W Hotels, St. Regis Hotels, and the Starwood Luxury Collection. Because he oversees three diverse brands—all catering to upscale clientele but with vastly different deliveries—we reached out to him for an industry update on luxury travel trends in 2014.
In 2008, James says Starwood’s top brass gathered to discuss the future of luxury hospitality and the brand’s role in it. Part of that was inspired by the rapid success of W Hotels, which since its inception had attracted a higher guest economic bracket than originally anticipated.
For everyone in those 2008 meetings, it was clearly evident that the 21st century, high-worth traveler
