They have no sombreros today at La Caty 555, the gift shop tucked
inside Mexico’s new Live Aqua Urban Resort in San Miguel de Allende. But a
dozen or so mod, wide-brimmed straw and felt hats hang on the boutique’s gray
stone back wall, seemingly left by some stylish, latter-day Frida Kahlo (or awaiting
purchase by a Mexico City fashion blogger). Like everything else in the shop —
leather bomber jackets trimmed with bright embroidery panels, lava-stone salt
cellars, wooden skull-motif trays in neon hues — the hats are “hecho en Mexico”
but feel far from stereotypical souvenirs.
“Contemporary Mexican design is booming, and a lot of tourists
don’t know that,” says Michelle Galante, the shop’s owner and buyer. “Newer
brands are having a blast taking old painting, sewing and weaving methods and
doing them in fresh shapes or forms.” She assembled the collection for the new
property in the central Mexican travel hot spot using up-and-coming designers,
lesser-known artisans and a cadre of small-batch mescal and botanical lotion
producers.
Like La Caty 555, many hotel gift shops — at least those in
higher-end or boutique properties — have been moving away from selling kitschy
snow globes, “I Love (insert destination)” T-shirts and paperback books.
They’re stocking or commissioning locally made merchandise, such as from
Virginia microbrews (sold by the six-pack at Shenandoah National Park lodge
shops) and women’s caftans, Westernized via slimmer angles and fewer spangles,
in the ochre-walled boutique of Marrakesh, Morocco’s El Fenn hotel. And while
these shops are positioned to serve folks staying on property, they’re often
groovy enough to draw residents and other tourists, too.
“One of the overarching themes in the hotel industry today is
being in touch with the local area,” says Jan Freitag, senior vice president of
lodging insights at hospitality data analysis firm STR. “It’s the idea that
people don’t want a beige box, they want to feel like something can only happen
in this specific hotel. Gift shops can be an extension of that.”
This means that hoteliers have a financial interest in making
any in-house retail memorable, different and reflective of the surroundings.
Take the new Omni Louisville Hotel in Kentucky. There, just off a grand lobby
with a ceiling mimicking a stylized bourbon barrel, the Miller & Co. shop
deals in leather belts and bags from nearby workshop Clayton & Crume and
locally poured, mint-scented candles in — what else? — metal julep cups.
“I often roll my eyes at hotel gift shops, because they’re
either full of overpriced candy bars or magnets, or, in higher-end places,
Gucci and Louis Vuitton bags, which you can buy anywhere,” says Kati Green
Curtis, a New York City interior designer who travels — and shops — frequently
for work. But, on a recent trip, she and her husband bunked at the Sofitel
Moorea la Ora Beach Resort, where the on-site boutique attracted her with
dresses and jewelry, and she left with a robe and a black pearl pendant. “I’d
never see things like what they had there in Manhattan, and I loved that what I
bought seemed to really represent Polynesia,” Curtis says.
The best
of Gift Shops 2.0 combine retail curation with brand narration. By hawking
tailored-to-the-spot stuff (Hawaiian table salt in Waikiki, African wax-print
jackets in Cape Town), hotels can exemplify a destination and unspool a story
about the property’s target audience. “A hotel shop used to be like a
convenience store, but now I think it’s much more about sourcing local goods
that speak of that destination or finding cool, local brands to partner with,”
says Deanna Ting, senior hospitality editor at travel media and analysis firm
Skift. “Smart hoteliers realize that if they are going to have a retail
component, it’s got to serve some purpose, or it needs to draw the clientele
they want.”
That might mean a well-known, homegrown boutique gets an outpost
just off the lobby of a hotel. There’s a mini branch of edgy New York City
clothing emporium Opening Ceremony attached to midtown Manhattan’s Ace Hotel,
full of bright-hued sneakers, quirky T-shirts and dresses by emerging
designers. It’s the sort of street wear you’ll spot on the creative-class crowd
hunched over laptops amid the taxidermy and library tables in the lobby, or
downing spendy cocktails in the dimly lit Breslin restaurant next door. (One
imagines a visitor checking in wearing khakis and a polo, then skulking over to
Opening Ceremony to snag a beanie or hoodie for Big Apple hipster camouflage.)
Detroit’s new Shinola Hotel even inverted the bed-and-browse
concept by opening a whole hotel inspired by the Motor City wristwatch,
electronics and leather goods brand. Guests stay in rooms with Shinola
wood-and-leather-trimmed turntables and retro alarm clocks that they can
purchase in the shop downstairs. “In-store retail experiences give you the
ability to touch, smell and hear things before buying them, so it makes sense
that the hospitality industry is also getting into this,” Ting says. “And if
you purchase something that you’ve already tried at the hotel, it’ll further
emphasize and commemorate your stay.”
Casa Mae in Lagos, Portugal, has done the same: Guests stay in
rooms decorated with locally made textiles, pottery and art, which they can
also snap up in its Loja shop. Flower-arranging and ceramics classes are also
held on site.
Lodgings in destinations with still-thriving craft cultures have
a natural advantage when it comes to creating distinctive,
it’s-like-we’re-at-the-souk boutiques. They’ve simply got more homegrown
merchandise and artisans to draw from. In the spirit of farm-to-table dining,
they’re embracing a workshop-to-gift-shop ethos.
But instead of selling the same handicrafts you’d dig up in
Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar or at any number of night markets across Asia, hotels
often try to put a modern spin on traditional methods. The South Asian-meets-Western
IDLI boutique just outside the Narain Niwas Palace Hotel in Jaipur, India,
trades in tie-dyed duvets, men’s skinny pants in block-print cotton and
ethereal silk dresses, all whipped up by local weavers and dyers but designed
by French expat Thierry Journo. The El Fenn boutique in Marrakesh draws on the
city’s workshops to fashion wool blankets, baskets and leather slippers in more
subdued colors and styles than what you’ll find in the medina outside.
Other hotels market a combo of trendy and traditional items,
such as the Safari Shop at the Angama Mara lodge in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley,
which stocks African-made products such as peacock-feather-trimmed pashminas by
Nairobi designer Anna Trzebinski and Masai wooden staffs wrapped in a rainbow
of beads. The latter are created on-site by a quartet of tribal women in
traditional shuka robes, who gather for work around a long table every day,
singing as their hands slide over the tiny glass rounds. Visitors can join in,
too. “The same guests often come back several days in a row to learn from the
women, sometimes even skipping a safari drive,” says resort owner Nicky
Fitzgerald. “I think they love taking home their own beaded memory.” Plus, when
visitors witness indigenous crafting, it drives home how much buying local
helps support the culture.
A memento, after all, is a memory of a place or time made
tangible. And this wave of stores seems determined to sell just that. Call it
stuff with a story, an encapsulation of a place in a handbag or a throw pillow.
“Plus artisanal or handmade things may make you feel better about buying
something,” Freitag says. “There’s the sense that someone who knows the place
has curated something for you, that they’ve tried to think about what might
bring you joy.”
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