The only person who thinks more about the travel experience you aspire to – and more often – is the general manger of the hotel which hopes to provide it. In Australia, one of the people who’s been thinking hardest about the luxury market during the last decade is Joost Heymeijer, General Manager, Wolgan Valley Resort and Spa.
He speaks to John O’Neill.* (This article was first published in SPRING 2011 edition of Australia's Luxury Travel Magazine)
When Emirates Airlines determined to spend what became more than $100 million to create Wolgan Valley Resort and Spa, a luxury resort near Sydney in Australia’s Blue Mountains, it was taking a 50-year view of its relationship with the country and its appetite for luxury.
“We looked at what happens in South Africa where investors work closely with national parks to provide an incredible wildlife experience; where it’s not all glitz and glamour. People come back and say ‘that was extreme luxury’ and they actually slept in a tent,” explains Joost Heymeijer, General Manager, Wolgan Valley Resort and Spa.
“We looked at how it is that a small country like New Zealand, with a population of five million, can have such an array of incredible lodges and what it is that they do that makes guests come back time and again. We looked at what Aman resorts do: luxury based on an incredible location.”
Heymeijer, formerly of Hilton Hotels, learned that whatever the location, “when people from the luxury segment come they want to engage and leave with an experience they can’t get at home.”
Heymeijer says his guests are typical of the luxury segment – “they trust us with their time. “We provide an experience which is quintessentially from that area – food from that area, nature-based, something we can be ambassadors of ...”
Aman Resorts has pioneered the model.
“Including the Aman junkies, they now have a 300,000 mailing list that on average visits two properties a year. They have openings around the world in wonderful and weird locations – Croatia, Greece, Turkey and the new Amangiri in Utah.
"Guests get an experience and genuine cultural interaction they wouldn’t normally get at a five-star hotel.” In terms of trends, Heymeijer says “sustainability is huge. I don’t know if it’s a trend or more of an awakening.”
To be discrete is to be successful. “We don’t want to be the hotel that says ‘Kylie Minogue stayed here’ or ‘Russell Crowe had a great time’. We warrant exceptional luxury and privacy.
“We host not just the celebrities in sport, movies and music, but also people from the business world.
“[Our staff] treat our guests like they are your parent’s best friends. When you do that it doesn’t matter whether you are Rupert Murdoch or a guy who arrived in Australia from Lebanon 20 years ago and have done tremendously well in construction.“
“We profile our guests. We have an exceptionally good guest profile system and we know what they like and don’t like. If we don’t know them, we Google them to learn about who they are.”
Nevertheless, the biggest challenge for Wolgan Valley and luxury operators in Australia more generally is the dramatic shift in the global economy, exchange rate and locus of wealth and power.
“We don’t get a lot of Arabic guests but if we do we know not to throw one of our six course degustation menus at them because they won’t eat it. We know to sit down and say what would you like to eat, is it a simple grilled fish?” he explains.
“Americans – we cook the living daylights out of the bacon in the morning because if it isn’t burnt to a crisp they don’t like it.
“When I wrote the business plan six years ago the dollar was 55-65 cents and now it’s $1.10.
“For me the percentage should be 60 per cent to 70 per cent international and at the moment its 20 per cent. They’re not there. And Australians at an exchange rate of $1.05-1.10 have got choice. They can stay three nights at Wolgan or fly seven nights to Fiji or Bali or Hawaii."
*John O’Neill is chairman of Luxury Travel Magazine’s advisory board and Managing Director of the digital marketing agency Komosion.
