High-end hotels are collaborating with designers

The days when taking home a souvenir from your favorite hotel meant a bad logo T-shirt or golf visor are long gone.

How about a Rebecca Minkoff bag? The W Hotel's stores have one in an exclusive shade of turquoise. A pair of Band of Outsiders pajamas? They were made especially for the Ace Hotel in New York. A pink Stephen Jones trilby hat? You have to hit the gift shop at the Beverly Hills Hotel to buy one.

Luxury hotel chains are upping the ante on their retail offerings by bringing in exclusive items and, in some cases, designing their own. In an era of global sameness, they have opted to offer unique, localized experiences.

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"As we get more design-oriented hotels, the idea will continue to percolate," said Bruce Baltin, a hotel industry analyst and senior vice president of Colliers PKF Consulting USA, a management consulting firm in Los Angeles that covers the hospitality industry. "It's a point of differentiation. And now that you have designers like Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani getting into the hotel business, they will pair that with retail opportunities as well."

Historically, W Hotels have been innovators in hotel gift shops, with the first W store opening at the W Times Square in 2001. "From the beginning, the concept was designed to go beyond the basic idea of providing the same 400-thread-count sheets that are in the rooms," said Eva Ziegler, W's global brand leader (yes, that's her title; she's in charge of the chain's growth strategy).

In the past, the resort chain has targeted Diane von Furstenberg to create a Fashion Emergency Kit (a black wrap dress and thong underwear) for its stores, and Michael Kors to design staff uniforms. But in February, Ziegler hired an expert, naming Amanda Ross, a stylist and designer consultant, to the newly created post of fashion director.

So far, Ross has attended fashion weeks on the hotel's behalf, consulted on uniforms for new properties and helped select designers for the Global Glam collection of apparel created especially for the chain and sold in all 17 W Hotel stores.

The store at the W Times Square feels like a trendy Robertson Boulevard boutique, with $80 Melissa brand jelly shoes, $275 jeweled caftans and gift books with such cheeky titles as "Is Your Dog Gay?" If there were exclusive products, they weren't obvious, but the merchandise is a far cry from garish costume jewelry and packages of dried fruit and nuts that one might associate with a hotel gift shop.

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"Designers want to be positioned in the Ace Hotel because they want to get their things in front of the consumer who stays and hangs out there - photographers and fashion directors. They want to be in that environment," said Zach Augustine, chief creative officer of Winston Retail, a retail consulting firm based in San Francisco and New York.

The Dorchester Collection, which operates the Beverly Hills Hotel and Paris' Le Meurice among others, tapped milliner Stephen Jones and handbag designer Louise Hempleman to create summer hats and travel bags for all seven of its stores. The hotel chain is also sponsoring a fashion prize for up-and-coming designers. The contest is being judged by a team of fashion insiders, including designers Manolo Blahnik and Giles Deacon and style icon Daphne Guinness.

"Fashion is playing an increasingly prevalent part in the luxury hotel industry as hotels become an essential lifestyle component and design becomes more integrated into everyday life," Helen Smith, Dorchester Collection's vice president of sales and marketing, wrote in an e-mail.

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"When you do research on what guests want to do on their vacations, it's amazing how over the last 10 years, it has gone from visiting the spa or playing golf to shopping," said Patrick Fitzgerald, chief executive of Hualalai resort. "We saw we were missing a real opportunity." Seaside Luxe buyers travel the globe, visiting places such as the Gem Palace in Jaipur, India, and the Paris runways to find exclusive jewelry designs, beach bags, bikinis, surfboards and more.

This refashioning of resort retail mirrors what happened in the resort food and beverage industry, Fitzgerald said. "Several years ago, we started seeing hotels bringing in chefs such as Michael Mina, Wolfgang Puck and Thomas Keller to develop restaurants not only for hotel guests, but for locals. Now we're starting to see the same targeted approach in resort retail."

Plus, when someone asks, "Where did you get that?" you don't have to say Nordstrom. You can say you got it on vacation in Hawaii. The story is so much better.

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