How EAST Hotels defines a new luxury hotel category

A great motto to live by is that the only constant is change. Right now, in late 2024, the hotel industry has been through the ringer over the past five years, with profound shifts to how we operate as induced by the pandemic, the experience economy, inflation, labor market changes, demographic shifts, climate action policy, the growth of wellness and a host of other forces. From this invisible yet chaotic hand, new brands are nevertheless emerging to triumphantly address the modern traveler.

A problem with all this is that most trends can only be identified in hindsight based on concurrent and lagging indicators. Thus, it takes a true leader to not only see where the future is headed but to invent it. At Hotel Mogel, our sourdough bread and truffle butter is the luxury sector, so much like how we tried the bifurcation of ultraluxury away from the heretofore labeled ‘traditional luxury’ segment we are constantly looking ahead to what’s next for this hotel category.

On the forefront is EAST Hotels for which we recently had the opportunity sit down with the team behind its rebranding. EAST Hotels has launched three hotels in Beijing, Hong Kong and Miami, with several more in the pipeline on multiple continents, wherein this brand’s unique blend of services and amenities exemplifies a further evolution and diversification of hospitality luxury.

In particular, what we want to emphasize is the dimming of primary importance of demographics in favor of psychographics, interests and other behavioral qualities that will influence operations, capex, sales and marketing. In a word, brands like EAST are designed for an ‘attitude’, not a specific age group.

This is a hotel organization that’s embracing the rise of the knowledge class and HENRYs (high earners, not rich yet) with approachable, wellness-oriented, eco-friendly properties that bring together a global community of alternative thinkers while maintaining the hallmarks of luxury service standards. Presently, most are calling this ‘lifestyle’, but the two of us don’t think this term does the evolution justice.

Lifestyle is too vague a word because practically anything can be classified as a lifestyle. To borrow from physical sciences, ‘lifestyle’ has no vector, no compass. Instead, we prefer the term ‘progressive luxury’ because this emerging niche holds at its core the march towards something truly better in this world.

Here are the qualities that we associate with lifestyle or progressive luxury:

1. Brands that are, as the word implies, ‘making progress’ in terms of advancing a better way of living centered around everyday wellness, longevity and sustainability.
2. Having direct appeal to the knowledge class, denoting people who work in creative, collaborative, largely tech-based and proliferating industries.
3. Providing amenable spaces that facilitate a sense of community for the now-common lifestyle trend of working from anywhere, while also abiding by the tenets of ‘quiet luxury’ with other spaces for secluded relaxation and privacy.
4. Approachable and flexible interior design that blends the casual and formal with ergonomic furnishings, biophilia and inspirational artwork or finishes.
5. A strong emphasis on thoughtful, localized, curated and exclusive experiences, understanding that modern consumers often value their time over materialistic gains.
6. Being mission-driven, largely by aligning with wellness practices, healthy living, sustainable practices, locavore and agrobiodiversity movements or stewarding traditional cultures.
7. Appealing to other concurrent growth trends in hospitality with appropriate area planning for branded residences and larger guestrooms suitable for multigenerational travel.
8. Ingrained in the brand DNA is the understanding that youth is a mindset and that the attitude of current and near-future luxury guests is one of aligning with purposeful community.

Defining progressive luxury through EAST

While there’s a lot to digest from those eight tenets alone, there’s also a lot of room to play within. For reference, the EAST Hotels brand hails from Hong Kong where its parent company, Swire Hotels, has longstanding experience in luxury hotel development and management via its other established hospitality brand, The House Collective. Embodying the principle that each property is ‘Houses Not Hotels’, this has been interpreted thus far into three artfully designed, urban luxury gems, including The Upper House in Hong Kong, The Middle House in Shanghai and The Temple House in Chengdu.

While in Miami to oversee the rebranding of this city’s 40-story, 325-key property, we met with Dean Winters, Managing Director of Swire Hotels, Teresa Muk, Head of Brand and Strategic Marketing at Swire Hotels, and Toby Smith, Chief Commercial Officer for Swire Hotels. As its brand DNA, EAST combines great culinary, fitness, eco-oriented experiences and a year-round calendar of events with tastemakers into a progressive luxury brand whose primary target traveler persona is ‘alternative thinkers’.

One way that this is reflected is through the brand’s appeal to the wellness-secondary travel segment – guests who are traveling for another purpose but still want to stay healthy. Instead of the traditional focus on spa, EAST is centered more around fitness, nutrition and fostering connections amongst these modern ‘glocal’ travelers. The hotel’s Run Club brings the community together with regularly scheduled activities like Run and Brunch and Midnight Runners. They’ve also hosted acclaimed speakers focusing on women’s health and the new body literacy movement.

Here are some other ways that this philosophy is interpreted on premises across EAST properties:

• An architectural and engineering marvel that is the property’s Climate Ribbon canopy, creating natural shading to reduce the load on air conditioning units and collecting rainwater for later use
• Filtered water tap in every room, simultaneously reducing single-use plastic (by upwards of 300,000 bottles per year) while also improving guest health by eliminating potentially hazardous pollutants in water as well as exposure to microplastics
• Fulfilling fitness needs with a 24-hour gym, BEAST (Body by EAST), outdoor pool area, EASTudio for multipurpose classes and personal training and complimentary electric bike rentals
• Exceptionally high quality cuisine with locally sourced and organic ingredients wherever possible to enhance flavor and nutrition (and reduce food miles), while minimizing the usage of artificial additives or ultra-processed foods
• Joining the World Wildlife Fund’s Sustainable Seafood Business and the WWF’s Sustainable Restaurant Association
• Adherence to the company’s 2030 Sustainability Goals and Green Kitchen initiative, including onsite food waste treatment via ORCA digesters as well as food waste upcycling procedures such as using unsold bread as malt for craft beer or coffee grounds as onsite vegetable fertilizer
• Biophilic design by incorporating greenscapes throughout and using regenerative materials or those with lower embodied carbon

The triple bottom line of progressive luxury

As emphasized by the growing awareness for the ‘people, planet, prosperity’, brands like EAST are demonstrating the profound business case that can be made when strongly embracing sustainability and eco-consciousness. Especially for travel companies, a heartfelt commitment to environmentalism is exactly what the new age cohort of alternative thinkers is looking for, and they are willing to pay a premium for supporting aspirational, mission-driven brands.

“It seems like almost every week now the travel industry is cited as a major contributor to climate change and as a result consumers of all demographics and mindsets are highly conscious of the impact they are making,” commented Dean Winters. “Still, travel isn’t going away; it’s too vital for both commerce and individual self-actualization. Instead, smart hotel brands are getting ahead of the curve by becoming true stewards of a greener future. It’s a lot more work to approach sustainability from this framework, but it makes dividends when it comes to brand equity, loyalty and business growth.”

With a pipeline that includes properties in exciting gateway locations around the world, EAST represents the ‘next big thing’ for hospitality in terms of the lifestyle category and giving guests accommodations that are more than just decent rooms.

For comparison, consider some of the other brands that are actively evolving in this progressive luxury space that include 1 Hotels, Andaz, Appellation, Capella, EDITION, Equinox Hotels, Janu, MGallery, Nobu Hotels, Pendry, SIRO, SLS, Soho House and Viceroy. All of these brands and all of their properties that have a profound ‘reason to visit’ that brings together service, F&B, wellness, events, activities, art and community in varying combinations that are approachable but still make each stay memorable.

This isn’t to say that the major chains like Marriott and Hilton aren’t keen on this trend as they continue to incentivize properties to reposition themselves into Autograph or Curio hotels respectively. This is an arms race. Ultimately, though, the progressive luxury trend presents a bright future for the entire industry because it shows that there are many different travelers who all want different things – alternatives for alternative thinkers, if you will. To conclude our interview with the EAST team, Muk, Smith and Winters all emphasized that this point of differentiation stems from the passion of the entire team to see it through, and that’s what our industry has always been about.

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