Past World’s Greatest Lodge Honor, Joanna Gunn Talks Rosewood’s Life-style Ambition

LONDON — Rosewood has each purpose to rejoice.

Final week its Hong Kong flagship by Victoria Harbour landed the highest spot on this yr’s The World’s 50 Greatest Motels rating for the primary time.

However the Hong Kong-based luxurious resort group is already considering forward, having revealed its ambition to rebrand, shifting from a hospitality supplier to a purpose-led cultural way of life model at the start of October.

The rebrand concerned a brand new font for the Rosewood wordmark, a brand new signature shade shade known as discovery inexperienced, and a brand new RW monogram emblem. A variety of sleepwear, bedding and bathrobes — which might be known as “resort merch” — with the brand new visible identities can be obtainable to buy on-line.

In an unique interview, Joanna Gunn, chief model officer of Rosewood Lodge Group, detailed the considering behind the rebrand and the steps required to make the transformation occur.

“Our model evolution is reflective of the elemental shift in luxurious. We have now witnessed shopper patterns evolve from private collectibles towards expertise collectibles,” stated Gunn, who had a high-profile profession within the style business with luxurious retailer Lane Crawford earlier than becoming a member of Rosewood in 2020.

She added that the rebrand has additionally been an inside journey for the groups and has required an entire rewiring and rethinking of the ecosystem throughout advertising, digital, expertise and tradition, operations, design, industrial, retail and clienteling.

“Collectively now we have been making a collective imaginative and prescient: to think about collectively the Rosewood expertise. We see our alternative in hospitality to develop into the gateway to tradition, curiosity, and reference to objective,” Gunn stated.

Strategically, the model elevation is about future-proofing: interesting to the subsequent era of worldwide luxurious vacationers by investing in emotional resonance, cultural relevance and social consciousness.

Gunn identified that inside the rising expertise financial system, with expertise being at this time’s social language, Rosewood’s model refresh is about amplifying its strategic shift from typical hospitality to “curators of discovery.” This requires key differentiators reminiscent of being considerate with the place it reveals up, activating inside the cultural cloth of its locations, deepening buyer relationships and viewing sustainability as stewardship.

“We’re constructing a complete way of life proposition the place we observe our visitors into the realms they worth most — sincerity and cultural connection,” stated Gunn, including that Rosewood has a bonus in realizing what really resonates with its core viewers because of a long time of relationships with the purchasers relationship again to 1979, when American oil heiress Caroline Rose Hunt opened the primary Rosewood resort in Dallas.

Now a member of the Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, Rosewood operates round 40 lodges and resorts worldwide.

A lot of them are thought-about the benchmark of luxurious hospitality of their respective cities, reminiscent of Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, The Carlyle in New York and the newly unveiled Chancery Rosewood in London, which was once the American Embassy in Grosvenor Sq..

A respect for historical past has been a recurring theme in Rosewood’s latest tasks, particularly in Europe. Its Amsterdam location, for instance, opened this yr, occupies the town’s former Palace of Justice, initially in-built 1665.

Rosewood Schloss Fuschl, in the meantime, is situated within the former searching lodge of the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg, and its Munich department sits on the former Bavarian State Financial institution headquarters and the adjoining Palais Neuhaus-Preysing, initially an aristocratic residence from the 1700s.

Gunn emphasised that whereas the business norm is to scale and deal with gateway cities, the staff at Rosewood appears to be like at the place the viewers’s curiosity leads them.

“Life-style is the truest expression of what the brand new era of shoppers seeks. We have now at all times been greater than a group of properties. We’re selective with our improvement alternatives as a result of we’re not merely constructing lodges: we’re creating postcards for the model, each a narrative of our model and an interpretation of its vacation spot and tradition,” she touted.

“We go the place others wait, making a curated journey that extends past our partitions, making our visitors’ experiences extra enriching by deeply understanding the vacation spot, tradition and place,” Gunn added.

However simply having lodges in nice areas shouldn’t be sufficient, Gunn stated. As a way of life model, Rosewood has to curate an entire ecosystem of discovery round its properties.

Rosewood Amsterdam, for instance, is an artwork gallery in its personal proper, with an expansive assortment of greater than 1,000 artworks that highlight each new-generation expertise and Dutch masters. Rosewood Mandarina in Mexico is devoted to celebrating the artistry of the Indigenous Wixárika and Cora peoples.

Forthcoming Rosewood properties are being crafted to deepen their dedication to native sensibilities and objective as properly, in accordance with Gunn.

Each opening within the coming weeks, Rosewood Amaala in Saudi Arabia will discover regenerative experiences by way of wellbeing and sustainability, whereas being powered by renewable vitality, and its Courchevel location within the French Alps will likely be Rosewood’s first devoted winter sports activities property.

Rosewood Calistogain Napa Valley, Northern California, opening in 2027, will put a significant deal with meals, wine and regenerative residing, spanning 118 acres of land.

Present Rosewood properties, each offline and on-line, are additionally being finetuned to higher combine with the local people and locations.

The Artwork Library idea in Rosewood São Paolo, as an example, is being reworked as a retail platform for native craft. There’s additionally extra content material being created round retail, gastronomy and well-being for Rosewood’s digital channels to higher inform and join with its viewers.

To conclude, Gunn stated the model refresh offers a unified imaginative and prescient that amplifies what makes every of its locations outstanding.

“For Rosewood, that is about making certain every vacation spot acts as a profound enrichment of individuals and place, and requires everybody in our staff to be a part of this journey collectively,” she added.