Breaking Away From the Boutique Hotel Hype Formula
Skift Take
To avoid the sugar high and then the inevitable crash when launching a new property, brands need to adopt a mindset of reciprocity and be a participant, and not a drain on the artistic ecosystem of a city.
Colin Nagy, head of strategy at Fred & Farid, a global advertising agency, writes this opinion column for Skift on hospitality, innovation, and business travel.
"On Experience" dissects customer-centric experiences and innovation across hospitality, aviation, and beyond. You can read all of his columns here.
There’s a template for opening a new, hot boutique hotel. It includes earned media, generating a ton of immediate awareness, manufactured scandal, and striving to ensure that a new property quickly becomes part of the fabric of a city. The recipe is: Hire the smart nightlife coordinators, tap into whatever the zeitgeisty parties are, and pay performers much more than they would get elsewhere — at least for a limited hype window.
Then there’s the old school, earned media playbook. When its hotel on the High Line open
