The 21st century has already seen immense changes in how people travel and their demands for hotel services and amenities. In focus here is the growth, evolution and diversification of the luxury segment, wherein we recently sat down with the team behind the rebranding of EAST Hotels, a hotel brand that’s emblematic of this modern dynamic and the aspirational nature of travel for the 2020s and beyond. EAST Hotels has launched three hotels in Beijing, Hong Kong and Miami, with several more in the pipeline on multiple continents.

Accelerated by the pandemic, travelers of all demographics and geographics are coming to increasingly prioritize experiences, wellness, eco-conscious hotels and connecting with likeminded individuals, and they are willing to pay a premium to brands that combine those elements that align with their identities. As discussed with the EAST team, this trend is so mega that the word ‘demographic’ may soon not really apply as age becomes only one of many contributors towards a consumer’s buying decisions, favoring psychographics, interests and other behavioral qualities to better inform marketing and operations. In a word, brands like EAST are designed for an ‘attitude’, not a specific age group.

While some luxury brands have veered into the uber-exclusive and stratospherically priced ultraluxury subcategory, other companies are embracing the rise of the knowledge class and HENRYs (high earners, not rich yet) with approachable, wellness-oriented, eco-friendly properties that bring together a global community of alternative thinkers while maintaining the hallmarks of luxury service standards. Most call it ‘lifestyle’ but we deem this too ambiguous so we’ve labeled as ‘progressive luxury’ and it’s worth a moment to dwell on its budding nichification away from traditional stalwarts in the luxury category.

Here are the qualities that we associate with lifestyle or progressive luxury:

1. Brands that are, as the word implies, ‘making progress’ in terms of advancing a better way of living centered around everyday wellness, longevity and sustainability.
2. Having direct appeal to the knowledge class, denoting people who work in creative, collaborative, largely tech-based and proliferating industries.
3. Providing amenable spaces that facilitate a sense of community for the now-common lifestyle trend of working from anywhere, while also abiding by the tenets of ‘quiet luxury’ with other spaces for secluded relaxation and privacy.
4. Approachable and flexible interior design that blends the casual and formal with ergonomic furnishings, biophilia and inspirational artwork or finishes.
5. A strong emphasis on thoughtful, localized, curated and exclusive experiences, understanding that modern consumers often value their time over materialistic gains.
6. Being mission-driven, largely by aligning with wellness practices, healthy living, sustainable practices, locavore and agrobiodiversity movements or stewarding traditional cultures.
7. Appealing to other concurrent growth trends in hospitality with appropriate area planning for branded residences and larger guestrooms suitable for multigenerational travel.
8. Ingrained in the brand DNA is the understanding that youth is a mindset and that the attitude of current and near-future luxury guests is one of aligning with purposeful community.

And it’s hardly a cookie-cutter approach here. Lifestyle brands like EAST are finding ways to mix these eight tenets to build unique identities that appeal to a cluster of emerging consumer segments.

How EAST Hotels Addresses These Emerging Segments
For reference, the EAST Hotels brand hails from Hong Kong where its parent company, Swire Hotels, has longstanding experience in luxury hotel development and management via its other established hospitality brand, The House Collective. Embodying the principle that each property is ‘Houses Not Hotels’, this has been interpreted thus far into three artfully designed, urban luxury gems, including The Upper House in Hong Kong, The Middle House in Shanghai and The Temple House in Chengdu.

As luck would have it, we were able to find a time that coincided with the availabilities of not one but three members of the dream team behind the rebranding of EAST while they were together in Miami visiting this 40-story, 352-key North American property. All of them hospitality veterans, we met with Dean Winter, Managing Director of Swire Hotels, Teresa Muk, Head of Brand and Strategic Marketing at Swire Hotels, and Toby Smith, Chief Commercial Officer for Swire Hotels.

While The House Collective’s brand playbook includes great culinary, the signature Mi Xun Spa, fitness classes with renowned instructors, eco-oriented experiences, fireside talks with tastemakers and a year-round events calendar, EAST takes these all these hallmarks and evolves them for the lifestyle or (our term) progressive luxury niche of alternative thinkers. One prominent way that this is reflected is through the brand’s appeal to the wellness-secondary travel segment – guests who are traveling for another purpose but still want to maintain their at-home health regimen while abroad.

Instead of the traditional focus on wellness through spa, EAST’s approach is centered more around fitness, nutrition and fostering connections amongst these modern ‘glocal’ travelers. For instance, the hotel’s Run Club brings the community together with regularly scheduled activities like Run and Brunch, and Midnight Runners. As an example from their onsite event series, they’ve hosted acclaimed speakers focusing on women’s health and the new body literacy movement. Especially for corporate guests where the lack of big open time chunks may preclude a visit to the spa, these sorts of ‘wellness in between’ activities hit a sweet spot.

Here are some other ways that this philosophy is interpreted on premises across EAST properties:

• An architectural and engineering marvel that is the property’s Climate Ribbon canopy, creating natural shading to reduce the load on air conditioning units and collecting rainwater for later use
• Filtered water tap in every room, simultaneously reducing single-use plastic (by upwards of 300,000 bottles per year) while also improving guest health by eliminating potentially hazardous pollutants in water as well as exposure to microplastics
• Fulfilling fitness needs with a 24-hour gym, BEAST (Body by EAST), outdoor pool area, EASTudio for multipurpose classes and personal training and complimentary electric bike rentals
• Exceptionally high quality cuisine with locally sourced and organic ingredients wherever possible to enhance flavor and nutrition (and reduce food miles), while minimizing the usage of artificial additives or ultra-processed foods
• Joining the World Wildlife Fund’s Sustainable Seafood Business and the WWF’s Sustainable Restaurant Association
• Adherence to the company’s 2030 Sustainability Goals and Green Kitchen initiative, including onsite food waste treatment via ORCA digesters as well as food waste upcycling procedures such as using unsold bread as malt for craft beer or coffee grounds as onsite vegetable fertilizer
• Biophilic design by incorporating greenscapes throughout and using regenerative materials or those with lower embodied carbon

Environmentalism as a Profit Maker
As can be readily evident from many of these bulleted features, besides wellness-secondary travel, sustainability and eco-consciousness are also in the brand DNA. But rather than treating sustainability as a project where the goal is to meet a minimal threshold, the team at EAST understands that a heartfelt commitment to environmentalism is exactly what the new age cohort of alternative thinkers is looking for in their accommodations, and they are willing to pay a premium for supporting aspirational brands.

“It seems like almost every week now the travel industry is cited as a major contributor to climate change and as a result consumers of all demographics and mindsets are highly conscious of the impact they are making,” commented Dean Winter. “Still, travel isn’t going away; it’s too vital for both commerce and individual self-actualization. Instead, smart hotel brands are getting ahead of the curve by becoming true stewards of a greener future. It’s a lot more work to approach sustainability from this framework, but it makes dividends when it comes to brand equity, loyalty and business growth.”

Where we distinguish this is in the difference between sustainability and stewardship. The former word denotes a checklist; guests can see that the hotel has attained a passing grade. Think going paperless, low flow toilets or IoT modulation for HVAC units. Don’t get us wrong, these are all important and guests expect them to be handled, but at the same time no guest is specifically selecting a hotel for those rather invisible features.

Stewardship, on the other hand, is something that guests feel and want to be a part of. It’s the makings of bona fide loyalty and the clearest way to show that investments into sustainable design can work out quite lucratively for a brand. EAST demonstrates that through a bolder commitment to these causes, a win for the environment is also a win for all other stakeholders.

The Bright Future for Progressive Luxury
With a pipeline that includes properties in exciting gateway locations around the world, EAST represents the ‘next big thing’ for hospitality in terms of the lifestyle category and giving guests accommodations that are more than just decent rooms.

For comparison, consider some of the other brands that are actively evolving in this progressive luxury space that include 1 Hotels, Andaz, Appellation, Capella, EDITION, Equinox Hotels, Janu, MGallery, Nobu Hotels, Pendry, SIRO, SLS, Soho House and Viceroy. All of these brands and all of their properties that have a profound ‘reason to visit’ that brings together service, F&B, wellness, events, activities, art and community in varying combinations that are approachable but still make each stay memorable.

This isn’t to say that the major chains like Marriott and Hilton aren’t keen on this trend. It’s an arms race, after all, and luxury hotels have to keep innovating to stay a step ahead. And yet, just as the industry megaliths push into this niche through their soft brands like Autograph and Curio respectively, the growth of relative newcomers like EAST reveal that travelers are nevertheless interested in more than what’s being offered by these table names, regardless of both enticing the scale of loyalty programs like Bonvoy or HHonors may be.

Ultimately, this presents a bright future for the entire industry because it shows that there are many different travelers who all want different things – alternatives for alternative thinkers, if you will. To conclude our interview with the EAST team, Muk, Smith and Winter all emphasized that this point of differentiation stems from the passion of the entire team to see it through, and that’s what our industry has always been about.