Nov 26, 2012

Turning Hotel Gift Shop Glum Into GoldBy Sarah TurcotteFastCompany.com

Try to remember the last time you wanted to visit a hotel gift shop. Not because you were dying for aspirin or needed a gift for your kid, but because you were actually interested in the goods it sold. Try. It’s like trying to remember using a hotel phone for a long-distance call.

Lee Ann Sauter wants guests to want to visit hotel shops–and started a company, Seaside Luxe, to ensure that they do. The concept stemmed from her 2007 stay at the Hualalai Four Seasons, in Hawaii. “The gift shop was the same mess I see at every hotel,” she recalls. So she bet the hotel’s CEO that she could do it better. After getting sign-off to open a store in an unused lobby alcove, Sauter, who had been a buyer for brands like Gap and Tommy Hilfiger, called in favors from high-end vendors and scrutinized design details. Within a month of her shop’s opening, the resort’s retail revenue had quintupled.

That success gave rise to Seaside Luxe, which now overhauls and operates shops for other resorts. “Hotel retail is a gray area,” says Anne Lloyd-Jones, managing director of the consulting firm HVS Global Hospitality Services. “Properties need it but pay little attention because shops aren’t revenue sources in the way rooms, food and drink, or golf and spa are.” Some chains, such as W Hotels and the Morgans Hotel Group, have brand-specific signature stores. But most hoteliers lack buying experience and just stock shops with basics, or lease the space out. Notes Lloyd-Jones, “Seaside is the only company treating shops as profit centers.”

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