Luxury sector urged to think ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’

A trends session at the TTG Luxury Travel Summit in London on Friday (7 October) revealed that just as consumers will seek fitness activities that blend entertainment and training (“entertraining”), so too will they seek travel that meets different needs and desires at the same time.

Antonia Ward, chief futurist at Stylus, said the key to understanding the future is to push yourself beyond the “either/or”.

“Clients often ask me about what’s ultimately a binary decision: ‘Do consumers want sustainability or do they want value? Do customers want curation or do they want choice?’,” she revealed.

“But we encourage the brands we work with to push themselves beyond the binary choices. Open another door, and look inside. Consumers don’t want either/or. They want both.

Consumers will also expect luxury brands in particular to play a bigger part in civic life, Ward warned.

“Consumers are asking you to stand up and speak out,” she said, citing LVMH (Louis Vuitton)’s conservation project in Chelsea, which will see it create a “pocket forest” of native trees over the next 8-10 years, as a perfect example of the “neighbourgooding” phenomenon.

Tokyo’s BnA_Wall hotel, which features a two-storey canvas wall for artists to create ever-changing artworks, was given as an example of the hospitality industry already doing this well.