SparkBlog by The Hartman Group

Pet luxury takes to the skies

With our nations airlines in trouble, a new airline, Pet Airways, is launching in July for pets only. Instead of relegating cats and dogs to the cargo hold, this airline seats its "pawsengers" in the main cabin, fitted specifically for animals featuring with pet attendants and calming essences.

So, who's going to pay $149 each way for their pet to fly First Class?

Seeking objects on which to lavish attention, single and married but childless people are continuing to turn to their pets.

And we see this trend that's been evolving for some years now touching everything from pet boutiques to what they eat. But, Fido isn't getting mere table scraps as his "people food" anymore. "Mom" and "Dad" are often buying food for him at the same places they shop for themselves – and not in the pet aisle. Accelerated by the melamine scare of two years ago, Fido enjoys eating a BARF (Biologically Approved Raw Foods or Bones and Raw Foods) diet, vigorously munching away at raw meats and organic vegetables, that his owners spend quite a bit of time preparing every day.  If Fido is lucky, he may get treats from the doggie bakery, or if he is a very good boy, he'll get a visit to the doggie day spa, for a trim and a massage.

Locations for Fido to get the royal treatment continue to pop up, and we see growth in the number of specialized pet retail boutiques and pet service establishments, even in the current economic climate.

Do You Like Us? Check Yes or No.

What do you like most about us? Our dazzling smile? Our winning personality? Our sparkling dinner conversation?

Although we missed out on National De-Lurking Week by about eight months, we are now officially sounding the call for comments. We'd like to know what you think of our blog.

Do we have something in our teeth? Does this outfit make us look fat?

Now is the time to fess up. Leave a comment below and let us know what you think!

Too shy to speak up in front of the class? Send an email to [email protected]

Act now, or we may just take to the sunny skies forever.

Taking Hotel Service to the Next Level

It is perhaps no surprise that it was, in Asia, that we most recently found a boutique hotel taking hospitality to new levels of generosity. The power of branding 'experience' in this global tier of hotels is old news. Westin brands its bed. W brands its vibe. Examples abound. But in our constant tracking of luxury consumption trends, we were amazed to discover a tiny boutique hotel in northern Thailand, dubbed the D2, offering a truly unique category of experience to its guests: the daily gift.

Upon arrival in our room, we found a gift box containing two lively sweetened rice cake treats. At first, we interpreted this merely as a welcome gift, something even the Wyndham hotel chain has glommed onto...mainly to make up for its otherwise mediocre experience. Instead, we found that, every day when we returned to the room, a new gift had been placed in the transparent box. And not just food either. Our hotel swag included:

• Herbal ayurvedic massage compresses
• Thai biscuits
• Thai rice cake cookies
• Thai candy
• Incense sticks

The notion of welcoming the hotel guest back to their room each night with a gift struck us as a brilliant extension of the boutique hotel experience, because it gets interpreted as a gift, not as something 'paid for' by the room rate. And, as we know from gift theory class, the gift obligates some form of reciprocration...i.e. spending elsewhere in the hotel.

But the main effect was to take the brand experience to a whole new level with the notion that the guest is welcomed again each day...

Keeping up with the Kris'

If you have any connection to the airline industry, you’re probably aware that upscale international travel is where all the money is right now. As the US legacy carriers struggle to compete with domestic upstarts like JetBlue, there seem to be real, honest-to-goodness profits to be made by hauling our collective butts overseas in style.

To that end, even the stingy US carriers are finally getting around to equipping their aging fleets with the lie-flat beds which have long been a staple in the premium cabins of more cutting-edge airlines like Singapore Air and Qantas.

So we guess it shouldn’t come as much surprise that in keeping up with their cutting-edge reputation, Singapore has now upped the ante with the announcement of their new first-class product scheduled for a December rollout. If you can afford the $10,000 ante, you can expect roughly 24 square feet of cabin space, luxury down duvets and pillows, 23” LCD monitors, Dom Perignon, Krug, a wide selection of oils (truffle, olive, etc.), Ferragamo cosmetics and fragrances and so on and so forth.

Sure beats our last experience up front with Delta, where they ran out of wine before dinner was even over.

Tinderbox: “Could I have some more red wine please”

Delta FA: “I’m sorry sir, we’re out of wine, how would you like a nice cold beer…”

Virtual Starwood?: Monday’s Second Life roundup continues…

It’s been quite a while since the Starwood folks ruffled a lot of feathers with their “next big thing” announcement. Conceived by the same design team behind the successful W brand, aloft was conceived as a “more affordable alternative to the W, bringing style, technology and sophistication to the budget-conscious traveler.”

When it comes to aloft, think: urban, contemporary, loft, boutique, platform beds, etc. all for under $200/night.

While aloft is not scheduled to launch until fall of ’08, residents of the MMORPG game Second Life will get early access into the new brand because the design team have taken the unusual step of designing and building the “real world” hotel in the virtual space within Second Life. Among other things, this means that Starwood will be the first company to open a new hotel brand inside a virtual world.

Take that Marriott!

A visit to the website tracking these developments shows that the land has been purchased and, as of press time, the bridges are being built. Pretty soon the aloft hotel will be open and ready for avatar business.

No word yet as to how spg points convert to linden dollars.

Welcome the AirPower Wiki!

Road warriors rejoice!

There is a new wiki devoted to help folks locate publicly-accessible power supplies in airport terminals around the globe. Now you can avoid having to unnecessarily frighten airport personnel as you suspiciously scan the entire infrastructure looking for security vulnerabilities power outlets.

Head on over and expect to encounter something like the following:

LAX : Tom Bradley

Gates 120+ *One on the pole on first gate lounge along the long hallway on the way to gates 121+ (The Qantas departure gates)

• Various ones along the walls... no chairs, get their early as everyone chargestheir IPODS there.
• Lounge far end before security, upper level. Near the pay phones, (opposite end from the MacDonalds side.) tuck in along the payphones in the back corner.
• Wifi available in the concourse area.
• More plugs available in the food court lounge with all the tables over looking the unways....head up escalators straight back

It's pretty sparse for the moment, which is all the more reason to hop on over and do your wiki duty.

Rashid gets all up in their grille in Dubai

Infamous designer Karim Rashid used his slot as keynote speaker at the Dubai Hotel Show to launch into a spirited critique of conventional notions of luxury, suggesting that many designers and developers must work quickly to keep pace with shifting consumer notions of luxury.

Echoing points made by the book Bobos in Paradise some years ago, Rashid highlighted Dubai’s odd obsession with pretense and décor in luxury hotels :

"This notion of using luxury materials - marble on floors, gold gild on columns, heavy woods - I don't want to get philosophical, but in 1953 Roland Barthes said we have to transcend these ideas of material. Dreams are becoming reality in Dubai, but now the question is, are they the right dreams?"

What followed was a more stylized call for hotel designers finally come to their senses and quit pretending that folks with cash to spend prefer to live as if they were 19th century royalty, surrounded by plush velvet sofas, thick dark woods, baroque columns, and a butler staff.

Instead, Rashid called for contemporary luxury hotels to focus on ideas like customized amenities and services, personalized check in, truly creative concierge services, ecologically friendly and sustainable environments, and a truly functional, world-class communications infrastructure. Isn't it ironic how challenging something as simple as a phone call can prove to be--even when you happen to be spending $350 a night?

What’s strange here is that someone as well known as Rashid would have to take the time to explain these sorts of things to, of all people, luxury hotel operators. For if there has been a single development that has so characterized the higher-end hotel business in the past 15 years it has been precisely this evolution in luxury hotels from dusty museum of yesteryear’s elite style to more relevant reflections of contemporary consumer desire. Sure, nobody’s perfect and folks will always stumble (Westin’s W chain comes to mind), but at least hotel designers are finally learning that when folks find themselves with cash to spend, their first goal is not to pretend to live like their grandparents.

(via AMEInfo)

A truly unique hotel

Here’s a hotel that offers a truly unique customer experience. In fact, the experience is so unique that there can be only one guest at a time. The Hotel Everland is a mobile hotel installation in the form of a single room perched atop the gallery for contemporary art in Leipzig, Germany.

The concept is the brainchild of artists Sabina Land & Daniel Baumann who were reportedly fond of tinkering with the contradictions inherent in notions of public and private; inclusivity and exclusivity.

This “exclusive” hotel offers its own concierge, wifi, in-room breakfast, luxury bath amenities and even access to a MINI car and free parking-all for the not so exclusive rate of 222 € a day.

During the day, the hotel is open to the public as part and parcel of the general exhibits at the gallery for contemporary art, but during the night things are much more private. Supposedly the hotel is moving to Paris in the fall of 2007.

(Via Max)

Starwood enters the blogosphere...

Though it hasn't been officially announced, the folks at Starwood have quietly tipped their hat into the emerging world of consumer-courting corporate blogs with The Lobby. So far the content is a safe mix of product announcements, current events and cultural happenings, but one wonders where the boundaries will be stretched?

At one level this, seems like a great opportunity to tinker with the elusive notion of brand community, those rare--yet coveted--instances where genuine, indigenous consumer enthusiasm spills out into culture as like-minded enthusiasts gather to swap tips, share stories, occasionally bemoan and otherwise extol the virtues of their favorite product, service or brand.    

But traditionally such communities have emerged without conscious forethought or design, as if the product of metaphysics or some other epi-phenomenon. Who among us, for example, could have predicted, planned or staged the peculiar rise of scrap-booking enthusiasts?

Moreover, such communities rest on a critical foundation of authenticity and credibility. Simply put, the folks playing along need to believe their world is "real." While we've found that consumers do not necessarily reject obvious commercial interest, they still need to believe in the overall mission. The trick lies in figuring out the proper means of generating genuine enthusiasm without obvious hucksterism. 

The Starwood site is merely an early offering in what will be a huge ongoing trend over the coming months as brand managers seek to extend and authenticate their brand presence by reaching out to the consumer in an otherwise non-traditional medium. What remains to be seen, of course, is precisely how these efforts will succeed on the important dimensions of authenticity and credibility.

Looking back to move forward: New directions in air travel…

What if the next big thing in air travel offered loads of convenience, space and comfort, and did so by quadrupling the travel time in air? Imagine, a mere 18 hours to traverse the continental US?

That’s what the folks at Worldwide Aeros Corporation are betting with the development of their new helium and rotor powered airship the Aeroscraft (think blimp on steroids). Slated for launch in 2010, the airship would offer a whopping one acre of cabin space, accommodate several hundred passengers, and do so traveling at an altitude of only 8,000 feet (making it possible to view dramatic scenery from above and avoiding the need for a pressurized cabin). Moreover, because the design as proposed could take off and land vertically, it would require much less ground space than conventional jets which require lengthy runways.

At first glance, the idea of selling consumers on sluggish airship travel might seem absurd. In a world where time is of the essence and the price of conventional passenger-jet travel continues to plummet ($200 from LAX to JFK?!?!), why on earth would anybody want to book passage on a sloth-like, helium-filled airship similar to the dirigibles of yesteryear?

And then again…If there is one lesson to be learned by the demise of the Concord it is that consumers are apparently not willing to pay top dollar for high-speed luxury jet transport—at least not in numbers large enough to support such a proposition. 

So what if you offer to move passengers from point A to point B (as conventional airlines do) but do so with all the amenities of a seagoing cruise ship such as luxury state rooms, a gym, a casino and restaurants. Imagine a scenic, 18 hour-luxury cruise which also gets you from LA to New York in time for a three day weekend?

Heck, even today’s dedicated corporate road warriors who traverse the continent for a single meeting might think twice about the promise of a luxury suite with working space for 5..How’s this for a power-meeting scenario. Set sail from Manhattan at 12:00 pm, sales meeting from 1 to 5, afternoon cocktails and sunset sight-seeing from 5 to 7. Dinner at 9, followed by a good night’s rest, with a comfortable 6 am arrival in LA. 

 

As far-fetched as this may seem, given the recent disdain most consumers express with the current conditions of air-travel (cramped cabins, surly staff, near-painful seat pitch, complete lack of services) we remain intrigued (and impressed) with anyone willing to test the proposition of moving people around in something approximating civility.

Richard Branson take note.