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Boutique Hotel News held its latest Feed Your Mind event in partnership with Sky Business, exploring the topic of premiumisation driving innovation, hosted at Haymarket Hotel in London.
Feed Your Mind events are co-hosted, content-driven roundtable discussions over breakfast, lunch or dinner. They are designed to provide hotel service providers with the opportunity to inform and shape the market.
In partnership with Sky Business, the latest Feed Your Mind discussion focussed on the exciting – and challenging – theme of premiumisation and whether it drives innovation in hotels.
Laura Sharpe, COO, Firmdale Hotels, and Piers Schmidt, founder, Luxury Branding, kindly prepared opening statements arguing for and against the motion: Does the pursuit of premium offerings genuinely drive innovation in hotels?
BHN editor Eloise Hanson then kicked off the roundtable conversation, asking hoteliers: What’s the biggest challenge you face with premiumisation?
From tech investments, attracting and retaining talent, to scaling an independent brand, the room buzzed with insights. Key themes emerged:
• Staff members are key to creating emotional connections, but the technology must advance to support personalisation.
• Differentiation is moving towards micro-moments rather than signature experiences.
Additional takeaways included:
• Innovation starts with understanding your guests. Travellers’ expectations have moved on, and to be secure in your brand you need to crunch the data and turn this into information.
• But where to invest? Defining what resonates most with guests remains a challenge. Independent properties can be more nimble than chains to innovate with offerings, but as a risk-averse industry innovation tends to happen in tiny increments.
• Balancing modernisation with tradition. In a tech-driven age, it’s essential to retain the human touch that defines hospitality. We need to supersede guest expectations to combat commoditisation.
Companies represented include Aman, Champneys – Eastwell Manor, Clermont Hotel Group, COMO Hotels, Elegant Hotel Collection, EQ Group, Hart Shoreditch Hotel London, Inhabit Hotels, Kimpton Fitzroy, Kinsfolk & Co, Lifestyle Hospitality Capital, Mandarin Oriental, South Place Hotel, The Mandeville Hotel, Doyle Collection, The Wellesley, Westmont Hospitality Group and more.
To learn more about how Sky Business can support your hotel, contact Sukh McLatchie at sukhminder.mclatchie@sky.uk.
For further information about our Feed Your Mind events, click here or contact Katie Houghton at katie@internationalhospitality.media / +34 711 02 42 31.
