Luxury Bloc is social business. The latter sees three days of one-to-one pre-scheduled 20-minute meetings. Suppliers stay put. Buyers move around. The plan covers hotels and resorts from around the world that want to connect with high-spending travellers from the 14 countries of Central and Eastern Europe CEE. This connection is done via those travellers’ consultants, who may well be more confidants than travel advisors in the usual sense of the word. They handle big money. 34% of CEE advisors polled have typical bookings of €15,000-€20,000 a time.
Adriana Sladovnikova, for instance, is the Bratislava-based Founder and Owner of Faveo Concierge. She gives her clients time, the most precious thing we have, she says. Her clients are prioritising health and wellbeing more and more, with preferences being taken into consideration, be they detox, anti-aging, nutrition consultation or mental health.
She says that private jets will always remain the ultimate experience. Any small details can be accommodated, including for their pets (Girlahead heard from someone else at the show about a lion that was recently flown privately from a circus in Russia back to the wilds of Tanzania).
ANDAZ PRAGUE is beautifully equipped for such meetings. Some sellers, say RAFFLES LONDON AT OWO, are assigned main, ground, floor tables, handy for the day-long refreshment area. Upstairs on the first floor there is a splendid meeting room with panelling and a 19th century fireplace, not now working, that must have kept the Chairman of Kommezin Bank warm and toastie winter-long. Also up there are small rooms. Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group has taken a pair of connecting rooms, and decorated both with mandarins and greenery. One&Only has taken another room, as have JOALI and JOALI BEING (how did they get their pale lime old-fashioned bike here?), and their new sibling, a 19 all-pools villa resort, BIJAL, opening as we speak in Antalya…. And now for the social side. See you tomorrow.
