Editorial

No Abstarc

What is luxury hospitality? A need to move towards a scientific understanding

The world of luxury and that of luxury hospitality has been growing for numerous years. From hotels such as the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, The Torch in Doha and The Savoy in London, luxury hospitality and the variety which is now on offer are growing exponentially. Despite the growth of the industry, little research and literature is available to practitioners, scholars and researchers alike to help them better understand the current situation. While there is a little literature on offer, there is a need for more detailed research and analysis to be conducted. This article is a call for research which it is hoped will help to add to the current body of knowledge as well as help to attract future researchers to collaborate on developing new insights. A brief analysis of the current situation and literature is provided along with future tracks and themes which could potentially be a means for research development. Keywords: comparison, hotels, London, United Arab Emirate

Price, exclusivity and luxury: Exploring London’s luxury hotels

Luxury is commonly said to be in the eye of the beholder. It typically relies upon the comparison with the given norms, and reflects the consumption patterns of society’s economic elite. Research into the luxury retail industries have grown in popularity over the past two to three decades, with little research being conducted into luxury hotels and variations between them. It is traditionally suggested that three features work with one another; as price increases, levels of exclusivity and luxury also increase. Luxury hotels are said to be built on the same premises. The quality of the tangible and intangible offer is greater than the norm. The aim of this investigation was to critically explore the relationships between the constructs of luxury, price and exclusivity within hotels. Three hotels in the city of London were selected to take part in this small-scale, multi-method investigation, with specific attention being dedicated to each of the three hotels’ top suites. All hotels and rooms were defined as luxurious, and service levels were similar, yet each of the three hotels charged £5 000, £15 000 and £22 000 per night for their top suite. The three hotel suites used in this investigation suggested a negative correlation between the relationship of price and luxury, and a positive relationship between price and exclusivity. These findings suggest that a hotel room that is more expensive does not necessarily mean it is correspondingly more luxurious. Further research is recommended to examine the proposition of the concept called conspicuous pricing (similar to that of prestige pricing) used as a method chosen by hotels within the pricing strategies, as well the possibility of conducting similar research within different geographical locations to compare and contrast the three constructs (luxury, price and exclusivity) under different cultural environments.Keywords: luxury hotels, price, exclusivity, conspicuous consumptio

Luxury consumption in tourism: The case of Dubai

Over the past 30 years, Dubai has quickly developed into what can no doubt be described as one of the pinnacle tourist and business destinations of the world. Fuelled by the vision and generosity of H.H. Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai’s renowned reputation for its vast supply and thus consumption of luxury products and services has continued to grow parallel to the city’s expansion. Within the luxury hotel segment, Dubai can now be considered to be saturated with the supply of luxury hotels, which consequently is beginning to show negative financial effects (STR, 2016). It is possible to suggest that Dubai’s over-exposure and the so called “mega-dream” are in fact denting Dubai’s luxury reputation. This small discussion paper casts a critical narrative over Dubai’s developments, its negative effects on the city’s luxury hotel segment and questions the long-term sustainability of the city’s advancements. Finally, a call for research is made, looking at a number of possible research opportunities recommended to explore and evaluate the line of discussion in more detail.Keywords: destination brand, hotel pipeline, reputation, sustainabilit

How millennials perceive leisure luxury hotels in a sharing economy?

The introduction of both the experience and sharing economies can potentially be seen to be the start of a new type of luxury accommodation, but is that really true? The generation best adapted to such changes, who are also the generation to shape the future is the millennials. However, the research literature does not seem to understand millennials’ expectations of what tangible and intangible variables are to be found in luxury accommodation. This conceptual paper will attempt to fill this gap, taking a critical look at the future of the leisure luxury accommodation industry.Keywords: experience economy, leisure travel, luxury hotels, millennials, sharing econom

Luxury consumption in tourism: The case of Dubai – Part 2

2016 was a year of critical discussion and reflection for Nadkarni and Heyes as they considered the luxury image of Dubai in this journal. Discussions outlined the theoretical nature of luxury while also addressing the current hotel industry statistics coming out of the Emirate. Now four years on, Nadkarni and Heyes look to deliver this critical reflective research note to readers and researchers on what is and has happened in Dubai, looking to examine whether the luxury image of the destination is being progressed, maintained or diluted. Keywords: destination, hotel pipeline, luxury hotels, management, marketing, reputatio

Can a luxury hotel compete without a spa facility? : opinions from senior managers of London’s luxury hotels

The development of the wellness facility within the luxury hotel sector around the world has been evident, with many professionals believing that spas are an expected element within luxury hotels. This paper has been written to provide further consideration for hoteliers who are looking to open a luxury hotel within the city of London, to add to the body of knowledge on spas and to stimulate further research in the field. The literature revealed a lack of realistic insight by hotel professionals. Statistics are quite broad and look more at other markets than directly at hotels in the city of London. By interviewing five senior managers of London’s best known luxury hotels, the importance the spa plays to the hotel, its overall purpose of being in operation, personal managerial opinions on the facility and the overall economic benefit for the hotel are explored. The findings uncover some of the current positive and negative issues in the London luxury hotel spa sector. There turned out to be ambiguity among the interviewees about the definition of a hotel spa and the amenities it should offer. It was concluded that a luxury hotel will be at a severe disadvantage if it has no wellness facilities. What those facilities must consist of, however, is not clearly defined. Further research is needed to look from the consumer’s point of view when defining the value of a hotel spa. It would benefit both the hotels and their guests to have more understanding of what actually is expected from the spa experience

Do passengers perceive flying first class as a luxury experience?

The definition of a single luxury experience has remained elusive to the airline industry, experts, scholars, and even luxury consumers. The duality of luxury suggests that experiences must provide a sense of prestige and hedonic well-being to be perceived as luxurious by consumers. This study proposed that consumers’ feeling of prestige influences their hedonic well-being, as suggested by self-determination theory. Passengers derive a sense of prestige from their sensory and behavioural experiences. Meanwhile, they derive hedonic well-being from their sense of prestige and their sensory and intellectual experiences. Thus, the first-class cabin experience was confirmed as luxurious. The airline industry should enhance sensory, intellectual, and behavioural experiences in their first-class cabins to increase the luxuriousness of the first-class experience. Keywords: airlines, consumer behaviour, duality of luxury, experience, luxur

A nice surprise? Predictive processing and the active pursuit of novelty

Recent work in cognitive and computational neuroscience depicts human brains as devices that minimize prediction error signals: signals that encode the difference between actual and expected sensory stimulations. This raises a series of puzzles whose common theme concerns a potential misfit between this bedrock informationtheoretic vision and familiar facts about the attractions of the unexpected. We humans often seem to actively seek out surprising events, deliberately harvesting novel and exciting streams of sensory stimulation. Conversely, we often experience some wellexpected sensations as unpleasant and to-be-avoided. In this paper, I explore several core and variant forms of this puzzle, using them to display multiple interacting elements that together deliver a satisfying solution. That solution requires us to go beyond the discussion of simple information-theoretic imperatives (such as 'minimize long-term prediction error') and to recognize the essential role of species-specific prestructuring, epistemic foraging, and cultural practices in shaping the restless, curious, novelty-seeking human mind

É possível que um hotel de luxo tenha competitividade, sem um spa? Opiniões de gerentes de hotéis de luxo de Londres

O desenvolvimento das facilidades relacionadas ao bem estar no segmento de hotéis de luxo, em todo o mundo, tem sido evidente, com muitos profissionais apostando que os spas sejam um dos equipamentos obrigatórios nos hotéis de luxo. Este artigo foi escrito com o objetivo de fornecer informações mais consistentes a hoteleiros que estejam interessados em abrir um hotel de luxo na cidade de Londres, para ampliar o conhecimento sobre spas e para estimular pesquisas futuras sobre o assunto. A literatura mostrou que os profissionais hoteleiros não têm uma visão realista sobre o assunto. As estatísticas são muito genéricas e costumam dedicar-se mais atentamente a outros mercados e não diretamente aos hotéis localizados na cidade de Londres. O artigo foi escrito a partir de entrevistas realizadas com cinco gestores dos mais conhecidos hotéis de luxo de Londres. Nessas entrevistas, foram colhidas as opiniões dos gestores sobre a importância do spa para o hotel, o objetivo geral de mantê-los em operação, opiniões sobre a gestão dos espaços e o benefício geral que a facilidade traz para o hotel, em termos econômicos. Os resultados expõem algumas questões positivas e outras negativas relacionadas aos spas em operação nos hotéis de luxo de Londres. Mostraram haver ambiguidade entre os entrevistados, no que diz respeito à própria definição de um spa hoteleiro e sobre os serviços que ele deve oferecer. As conclusões foram que um hotel de luxo estará em grande desvantagem se não dispuser de facilidades relacionadas ao bem estar. No entanto, não há uma definição clara sobre quais devem ser essas facilidades. É necessário que haja mais pesquisas que considerem o ponto de vista do consumidor, a fim de que se possa definir o valor de um spa, no contexto hoteleiro. Seria um benefício tanto para os hotéis quanto para os seus hóspedes, se houvesse mais entendimento sobre o que realmente se espera de uma experiência em um spa