Locum Destination Review - Issue 7

The journal of record for the global destination industry

Editorial

It is my duty to open this first issue of 2002 with the sad news that Robert Herber, whose article on retailing in museums made such excellent reading in the Winter 2001 edition of Locum Destination Review, was tragically killed just after we went to press last November. We pay tribute to Robert’s outstanding contribution to the industry over the last 30 years, and pass on our deepest sympathies to his family and friends.

For four days in March, the leading lights of the world-wide property and investment market will gather in Cannes for this year’s MIPIM (the Marché International des Professionels de l’Immobilier). In anticipation of this major event in the global destination calendar, we present a series of articles focusing on key development issues. We begin by interviewing the UK’s most exciting young property developer, Tom Bloxham MBE, of Urban Splash, whose mixed-use schemes in neglected inner-city areas of northwest England have earned him a host of awards – and friends in high places. He explains the commercial background and business philosophy that has set him from apart from the majority of UK developers.

Arvind Bajaj of Morgan Stanley offers an introductory guide to securitisation, a financing tool well known to US developers. Is there a more prominent role for securitisation in the development of new commercial destinations in the UK? Locum’s James Alexander, meanwhile, pleads with developers and investors to defy convention and look beyond traditional norms in formulating visitor-based schemes. He urges them to consider the ’destination effect’, a phenomenon that has become apparent at visitor destinations which have adopted a brand-led operating framework developed by Locum. Can the development community at large be persuaded of the benefits that flow from this new approach?

Award-winning retail designers Rasshied Din and John Harvey, founders of Din Associates, have worked with some of the world’s leading retailers, playing a central role in the evolution of their brand positioning in the market. Here, they share with us expert insights into the key requirements for successful consumer environments. Dr Yvonne Court of Healey & Baker investigates another facet of retail: its growing role in urban renewal programmes across Europe.

We dedicate the whole of this issue’s ‘Analysis’ section to one central theme: Hospitality and Individuality. We seek to answer the question ‘How can hotels offer, and promote, experiences for individuals?’ We begin with Brandwatch, which traces the evolution of advertising campaigns led by some of the world’s major hotel operators. How many appear to understand the individual in today’s market, and how many simply pretend to? Separately, but still on the issue of branding, we speak to Paul Simmons, the newly appointed Vice President of the Inter-Continental brand, part of the Six Continents hotel group. He discusses the challenge of positioning the Inter-Continental brand consistently in the market, as the company plans for expansion. We also investigate ‘the boutique hotel’, from its origins back in the 1970s through to today, and ask whether such destinations will continue to grow as fast as they have done. Two leading authorities who remain convinced that well-crafted ‘alternative hotels’ still hold much appeal for the discerning individual are Robin Hutson, founder of Hotel du Vin, and Olga Polizzi, designer for RF Hotels and owner of Hotel Tresanton in Cornwall. We talk to both about the issues which have been central to the success of their ‘unchained’ hotels.

A final thought for our friends in the property industry: in the last issue of Locum Destination Review, we ran a special feature on World Heritage Sites in the UK and Europe, examining the potential of this UNESCO designation scheme to enable all types of locations to preserve and promote themselves. It has been interesting to read in the national press that, since its designation as Britain’s newest World Heritage Site, land values along the ‘Jurassic Coastline’ in Devon and Dorset have rocketed. Suddenly the words ‘heritage’ and ‘value’ in the same sentence don’t seem too odd after all.

Owen Burdekin
Editor