This weekend I had the pleasure to speak at LUXRE, the conference for professionals and operators in the luxury rental business [link here]. My talk focussed on the concept of territorial excellence: specifically, I explored why certain places generate a sense of luxury in visitors and how rental professionals can leverage the luxury potential of places.
I started off my talk challenging some common views about luxury and place.
- Luxury is not intrinsic to an object or a brand. Luxury lies in human values, in the feelings, emotions and ideals that people attach to luxury. Exclusivity, achievement, responsibility and personalism are the 4 main value areas that characterise our idea of luxury nowadays.
- Place does not equal location. It is a much ‘thicker’ and richer concept. Place is the outcome of the interaction between human beings, space and time. This interaction generates the so-called genius loci, the spirit of a place. It is the genius loci that endows a place with its own identity, making it unique.
With this in mind, I moved to consider territorial excellence. Territorial excellence emerges when individuals, immersing themselves in a place, fulfill their luxury values. Depending on their values, visitors might find territorial excellence in places imbued with the traditional signifiers of social distinction, such as art and culture (exclusivity). For others, territorial excellence might be a matter of getting access to “celebrity places,” where to see and be seen (achievement); savouring the genius loci of a place through the first-hand appreciation of its natural and societal ecosystem (responsibility); going places as a way to cater one’s internal needs, such as to energize creativity or to live more mindfully (personalism).
In the luxury rental business it is crucial to activate the territorial excellence of places. To do so, rental professionals must first identify which luxury value areas are relevant to their clients. This will allow them to select or craft the most suitable place-related offerings. Both a private museum tour led by a famous art critic or night out fishing with the locals can be marks of territorial excellence. The difference lies in whom these are offered to and how.
Kudos to the organizers Paola Gheis and Maurizio Battelli for including a socio-cultural viewpoint into LUXRE.