MAKING BOUTIQUE HOTELS BETTER.

Thompson Hotels, a luxury boutique brand of Hyatt, recently launched a distinctive ‘Culture Lives Here’ campaign to draw attention to emerging creatives – aka, ‘culture shifters’ – and themselves by connecting guests and locals to the talent in their midst. The Cape, A Thompson Hotel in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, for instance, collaborated with The Shamans, a local band whose members love music as much as the surf and celebrate the two cultural pillars with monthly live performances on property. And Thompson Washington D.C. has collaborated with Aaron Crist of Hyde Closet, a tech-savvy player in the city’s fashion retail space, to offer guests personalized styling and complete outfits on-demand via simple add-on at check-in or scan of an in-room QR code.

Posting recently on LinkedIn, hospitality consultant Elaine Simpson noted ways boutique hotels can shape trends and compete with big brands, including offering more connectivity, social engagement, and localization, and embracing of-the-moment digital trends to grab attention of digital natives, who want “a cozy and home-like setting, the convenience of digital connectivity, and to learn more about the hotel before booking.”

Simpson’s conclusion? On-the-ball boutiques have nothing to fear: “They follow the trends in the hospitality industry while looking for new ways to advertise and create a more unique and personalized experience for each guest.”

Back in the ‘00s, a boutique hotel client asked us to pen a letter to the editor of a national newspaper pointing out that a New York developer was being celebrated for a boutique property that wasn’t a ‘boutique’ at all. It was too big, he told us, too brassy, et cetera.

Dial forward to today, and what isn’t a boutique hotel? There are nearly 5,500 in the U.S., according to IBISWorld, up 7.7% from 2021. As Skift noted last year: “We’re now in a boutique glut: there are still great ones, but there are also larger brands trying to emulate the boutique ethos and coming off not-quite-sincere in the process.”

As their numbers rise, we see a necessary trend of boutique brands setting themselves apart to stand out in their destinations or risk being gobbled up by big brands. The way to fend off – or succeed despite – those brands is by emulating them through appealing brand campaigns and clever collaborations.

A couple of years ago, for instance, as highlighted by Pegasus, a big brand’s ‘boutique’ address in downtown Seattle collaborated with a local adventure outfitter to offer guests a fully outfitted Volkswagen Vanagon to explore the Pacific Northwest beyond the city limits, while a glamorous, 5-star, boutique luxury hotel in Manhattan fashioned partnerships with upscale brands to pamper guests, including complimentary round-trip transfers through traffic for shopping via a retailer’s runway-worthy pedicab.