Mindfulness In Luxury

Mindfulness in the luxury experience context:

Defining luxury in today’s world can be misleading. What is the true meaning of luxury and a luxury experience and how do we create it in today’s hospitality industry?

When thinking about a luxurious experience, we often associate this to a premium priced product or service. Luxury then is something which seems to be perceived as adding value to people’s lives through upgraded quality or service components, normally in exchange for premium pricing. When saying people we mean individuals. And by individuals we understand each of us, outfitted with our own mind and personality. As personality is a very subjective characteristic of our individual being, so should each individual have a different point

These quality premium products and services consisted in the craftsmanship and quality of materials employed in the production process, as also in the level of service provided through a great amount of dedicated employees. Over the following decades – around the 1950’s - such single products then became identified and synonymous with luxury brands. An established brand name became a source of competitive advantage and albeit not always providing for the best quality product (and making it difficult for new market entrants to succeed), they were associated to luxury through the customer perception and experience of the past. What we can hence take away from this is that brands understood how to leverage their reputation by charging premium prices on their products. This phenomena not only explains why we today still have premium brands resting on their laurels from the past, but also the lethargic – or creature of habit - consumer behavior, enabling for brands that resist change to continue to hold on in a “survival mode” fashion of the product life cycle

Successful operations are already taking advantage of this fact and it is therefore no surprise that the most effective companies existing today find their master key process in the people they employ. It is these companies that strive to go to great lengths in developing employee induction programs and that place their employees at the center of their operations. Their credo is “Hire for attitude (mind set), train for skills” and, for now, it will be these enterprises that will maintain their competitive advantage by shutting out ego’s that ever so often distort focus and