Watch the clock, new ideas are emerging thick and fast. For instance, watch brands come to the hotel scene, The forthcoming HOTEL DES HORLOGERS is in Le Brassus, Vaud, home to many Swiss designer watch companies. One, Audemars Piguet, owns this 50-room hotel. Architect is Danish wonderboy Bjarke Ingels who once built a city incinerator with a ski slop atop, and designer is AUM Pierre Minassian, from France. GM is André Cheminade. The hotel’s food is overseen by Michelin-3 starred Emmanuel Renaut MOF, of Flocons de Sel in Megève, whose dishes are described as ‘local products reinvented with malice’. Audemars Piguet, still family-owned, partners with Art Basel and the Montreux Jazz Festival and its Foundation is passionate about educating youngsters in nature and the environment: Chairman in former economics journalist Jasmine Audemars-Dhaliwal and interim CEO is Satpao Dhaliwal.
AMANGIRI in the Utah desert created worldwide awareness waves when it opened. When it became too small to accommodate all those who wanted to stay there, it added a tented sibling, CAMP SARIKA, shown above. Now, it is rumoured, it may reveal that its owners are adding residences for sale. Girlahead predicts even those will not be enough (listen to the Man Who Made Amangiri, Homi Vazifdar, chatting on a PODCAST soon).
Even in the private aviation world suppliers sometimes need more. Dubai-based Jetex leads the way on the expansion front – scroll down to Girlahead, 29th June 2022. Jetex Singapore is Seletar Airport, 19.7 kms from Marina Bay Sands, has 1,836-metre runway that can accommodate larger private jets without payload restrictions. Part of Seletar Aerospace Park, set up by the Government in 2006, its private jet airport has full aircraft services and support. Expect a private drop-off area, a lounge area and other personalized services. Question, will Jetex one day offer ground-based beds as well as snoozes in the air?).
Interestingly as Dubai becomes increasingly dominant in so many facets of life, so it is in private jets (why is the New York-based giant, Wheels Up, dropping its market department, is it retrenching?). Will Dubai therefore be the first to offer what some see as the future of toppest-luxury travel, the ability to mould around the needs of an extended family or other group – a hotel that expands and changes like blu-tack? Watch this space.
