The Marriott-controlled ultra-luxury superyacht brand The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection would like to raise as much as $400 million to add two superyachts to its current three, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.
25.08.2023 - 14:25 / skift.com / Louis Vuitton
An end to China’s travel curbs this month is expected to revive demand in the global luxury retail market, which has been starved of mainland visitors for three years, but many consumers now see more reasons to do their high-end shopping locally.
Share prices of global luxury brands jumped last week after Beijing announced it would loosen travel restrictions from Jan. 8, effectively allowing Chinese tourists to once again flock to global shopping hubs from Paris to Tokyo.
However, analysts and luxury brands warn they are unlikely see an immediate return to pre-pandemic levels of Chinese travellers with airlines yet to fully resume operations and local prices falling. Just as importantly, big luxury brands are now investing more in the shopping experience in China.
One Shanghai shopper, surnamed Mao, said that she had visited boutiques around the world for years, but now believes she gets the best service in China.
“When I would go to Paris, I couldn’t ask the Paris sales people to keep a bag for me, but now here we can,” she said.
Before the pandemic closed borders early in 2020, Chinese shoppers bought 70 percent of their luxury goods abroad.
Under pandemic travel curbs, China’s domestic luxury sales boomed, doubling to 471 billion yuan ($68.25 billion) from 2019 to 2021, according to Bain & Co. Even so, Chinese consumers’ share of the global market fell to 21 percent in 2021 from 25 percent in 2019.
“It won’t go back to 70 percent,” said Jonathan Yan, a principal at consultancy Roland Berger in Shanghai. “I’m sure there will still be a portion of luxury spending happening in other countries, because it’s natural people like to shop when we travel, but it will be more like 50-50.”
Many luxury companies such as LVMH’s Louis Vuitton and Coach-parent Tapestry doubled down in China over the past three years, opening new flagship stores and hosting large fashion shows to reach consumers unable to go abroad.
This helped local staff cultivate relationships with China’s VIP customers, who previously preferred to shop overseas.
Research conducted by Hong Kong-based consultancy Oliver Wyman showed 70 percent of China’s luxury consumers used sales assistants to facilitate purchases while 40 percent communicate with sales staff at least once per week.
Oliver Wyman’s Kenneth Chow says that half of Chinese consumers who bought luxury in 2021 were doing so for the first time.
“It will be interesting to see how new luxury consumers will perceive the difference between domestic and overseas luxury shopping,” he said.
International travel restrictions and local policies to spur spending also drove many consumers to China’s tax-free island of Hainan as a luxury shopping destination.
In 2021, Hainan accounted for 13
The Marriott-controlled ultra-luxury superyacht brand The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection would like to raise as much as $400 million to add two superyachts to its current three, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.
The lights dim, the curtain lifts and your eyes immediately widen to take in the vision of the stage, ablaze in a riot of colour. The hi-energy musical that is Six may be set in Tudor times, but its six characters – the reimagined wives of Henry VIII – are dressed as if Beyonce had styled them, on a set that could have been transposed from America’s Got Talent!
Airlines used to lean on online travel agencies to find customers. But now in something of a turnabout, airlines have enough loyalists that online travel companies are, in some cases, providing services to airlines to help them sell upsells and packages directly.
While luxury boutique hotels have always appealed to a certain set, Small Luxury Hotels of the World is trying to create more converts. In October, it launched a marketing campaign around a so-called “private collection” to amplify the message that “smaller is better.”
The New Zealand government said on Wednesday it would not require travelers from China to produce a negative Covid-19 test, bucking a trend that has seen a number of nations implement such measures as cases surge in China.
Saudi Arabia’s increasing focus in the tourism sector and the shift to leisure travel has brought Seera Group from the red to report the company’s first post-pandemic operating profit of $8 million in the third quarter.
Macau has seen a resurgence of tourists from mainland China since January 8 after the special Chinese administrative region dropped all Covid-19 testing requirements for inbound travellers from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
There’s still something vital missing from the global tourism economy, and that’s the presence of Chinese tourists.
In Skift Research’s latest report check in on the current state of Expedia Group and Booking Holdings, the big two online travel agencies in the U.S. and Europe, as they recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Some stores in via Montenapoleone, the heart of Milan’s most exclusive shopping area, are displaying clothes and accessories dedicated to the Lunar New Year after two years disrupted by the pandemic even though Chinese tourists are yet to return in big numbers.
An elephant camp in Thailand has purchased six new jumbos to welcome tourists and returning Chinese visitors, offering activities from elephant rides to elephant showers, the owner said.
Skift Research’s latest report looks at how online travel booking habits changed during the pandemic and how these behaviors will continue to evolve. Since February 2020, Skift has been regularly surveying 1,000-plus Americans about their travel behaviors first on a monthly, and then a bi-monthly basis. The topline results of these surveys are published as our U.S. Travel Tracker. However, we ask more granular travel questions that have not been published previously.