The Hotel Gift Shop Is The New High-End Luxury Boutique
What’s the fanciest shop in town? It could be your local hotel gift shop!
Hotel shops everywhere are getting a makeover and installing fireplaces, marble floors, and even crystal chandeliers. And don’t expect them to sell common tourist items like postcards, t-shirts or toothpaste!
Instead, they’re stocking luxury items. Everything from $150 leather cigar cases, to $1,000 beach cover-ups, to earrings that cost $60,000.
So, why are gift shops getting fancy? Because they’re cash cows. Studies show when people check into a hotel, one of the first things they want to do is go shopping. People want a memento from their visit. And since they’re passing through the lobby several times a day – why not capitalize on that?
So hotels are stocking their shops with a wide range of unique and high-end items so that guests spend money at their store instead of at nearby boutiques.
And the strategy is working. For example, profits have jumped fivefold at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hawaii ever since they gave their gift shop a luxury makeover. The shop now rakes in a jaw dropping $20,000 dollars a day.
