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Author Archives: Music Concierge

Opening a successful landmark hotel or restaurant in the middle of Central London is a piece of cake – at least, it is compared to doing the same in the relative wilds of Stratford.

Seven years on from the Olympics, and although E20 has a lot more going on than it used to – Westfield, the Queen Elizabeth Park, a handful of big-name ventures and a nascent arts scene – it’s still seen as a bit of hinterland by the diners, drinkers and scenesters of the capital.

That might be about to change. May 2019 saw the official opening of Manhattan Loft Gardens – a 42-floor architectural trailblazer beside Stratford International. Housing a ‘vertical community’ comprising boutique hotel, private loft apartments, destination restaurant, and members’ club, the development is intended to pour rocket fuel on Stratford’s urban evolution, powering the neighbourhood’s transformation from uncertain post-Olympic muddle to confident, characterful and cultured London hub.

If anyone can pull it off, it’s Harry Handelsman. As founder of Manhattan Loft Corporation, he has prior, having led the restoration of the St Pancras Hotel, thus kickstarting the rehabilitation of King’s Cross; and co-launched the Chiltern Firehouse, turning Marylebone into London’s uncontested A-list ’hood.

The first six floors of the building belong to The Stratford – a 145-room design hotel stuffed with head-turning features, including a triple-height lobby, sky gardens (complete with pine trees and wildflower meadow). It comes with a duo of eating options – The Stratford Brasserie on the ground floor and destination dining care of Allegra on the seventh.

For the project, Harry assembled what even the most ardent critic would call a dream team. Architecture by SOM (Burj Khalifa, One World Trade Centre); interiors by Space Copenhagen, (NOMA, 11 Howard); food by head chef Patrick Powell (Chiltern Firehouse, Wild Honey) and music by, well, us.

Music Concierge came on board to ensure the project launched with a sonic impact to match its stellar design, dining and service credentials. Alongside developing the sound for all areas of the hotel, The Stratford team asked us to take responsibility for directing all aspects of its music, including putting together a suite of brand-matched Spotify playlists the hotel could share with its customers.

Needless to say, both the capital’s hospitality industry and Londoners at large have their eyes – and ears – open to see if Harry Handelsman and his new hotel really can pull off the reinvention of Stratford. We’re not normally betting types, but having seen the project from the inside, we certainly think they will.

Music Concierge client The Rosewood

Early in 2019, a new landmark arose on the Hong Kong skyline. Towering above Victoria Harbour on the southern tip of the Kowloon peninsula, the Rosewood Hong Kong is a 43-storey labour of love from group CEO Sonia Cheng.

Where most hotel chains launch new properties purely for reasons of commercial strategy, for Rosewood and Cheng, the opening of this new brand flagship represents something altogether more personal.

Rosewood Hong Kong stands on the site of what was once the New World Centre. Set up by Sonia Cheng’s father and grandfather, the business hub spearheaded the city’s transition to modernity in the 1980s and spawned the hospitality group that bought Rosewood in 2011. Now, nine years on, Sonia has brought the brand home.

Since taking the helm, Sonia Cheng has helped evolve both the Rosewood brand and the global understanding of luxury hospitality, recognising that quality of experience is at the heart of customer loyalty, and that identikit, cookie-cutter hotels have become a turn-off, no matter how finely tuned the formula may be. Rosewood hotels around the world may offer the same standard of service, but no two properties will ever offer the same experience.

One of the ways Rosewood has been able to achieve this is ensuring that ‘a sense of place’ is encoded into the DNA of the brand – that every hotel is a distinct expression of its setting. That’s as true of its new Hong Kong outpost as it is anywhere – if not more so. It’s there in the design, in the home-like, consciously mismatched modern interiors and hand-picked of objets d’art. It’s in the food, care of four in-house restaurants providing an exemplary up-to-the-minute insight into modern Hong Kong dining. And, of course, it’s there in the in the music, too.

When it came to launching a property so close to the heart of the brand, the Rosewood team knew that sound would be integral to their vision, so they asked Music Concierge to craft a signature audio identity for the hotel that would enhance the guest experience and root the hotel in the Hong Kong harbour-side.

The new Rosewood opened its doors in March 2019, marking a new era for the neighbourhood and a new kind of luxury hospitality. Several months on, and it’s clear that Sonia Cheng’s authentic, sensory and experience-driven approach to hotels is paying dividends.

Galeries Lafayette - client of Music Concierge

It’s often acknowledged that in the age of online shopping, bricks-and-mortar retailers have suffered. Many haven’t survived the transition to online, and launching new physical outlets can be a real roll of the dice. Luckily, there’s a way to ensure those dice are loaded.

The brands that have lived through the online revolution are those that have evolved; the ones that have recognised that if you’re going to thrive as a physical retail space, you have to exploit the advantages that physicality involves. Namely, the opportunity to create an immersive sensory environment. Shopping has become more than a series of choices and transactions. It’s not enough to offer customers a product any more; to stay afloat in a highly competitive market, you have to offer them an experience.

And when it comes to highly competitive markets, Doha is up there with the fiercest. As recently as 2017, the Qatari capital, was listed as the world’s fourth biggest retail market for new entrants, sandwiched between Dubai and Tokyo in 3rd and 5th, respectively. (Hong Kong tops the table.) For a new brand to crack a market like this, it has to – to borrow a phrase – go hard, or go home.

The Paris-born department store Galeries Lafayette is an iconic retail brand, with 120 years of experience in the fashion arena, 62 stores in France, outlets in international hubs including Berlin, Beijing, Jakarta, Dubaï, Istanbul, Shanghai and now Doha. It has maintained its market position and rate of growth in part through its acute understanding of the relationship between the customer’s digital experience in store and sales.

To that end, Galeries Lafayette commissioned retail technology agency VIVID to develop the digital environment of the new Doha store. VIVID’s aim was to design innovative and compelling experiences for the entire three-floor 14,000sqm department store that would capture the attention – and therefore spend – of Doha’s affluent and discerning audience, both local and international. VIVID created jigsaw of digital solutions that helped customers navigate the store while clearly communicating Galeries Lafayette’s brand identity and its promise to embody the ‘French Art of Living’.

Music was, of course, one of the key pieces in the puzzle. To complement VIVID’s visual elements, the agency asked Music Concierge to develop solutions for the store’s background music that would act as the signature sound of Galeries Lafayette Qatar. By breaking the store down into distinct retail zones  – from retail to food and beverage  areas – we were able to develop a family of playlists tailored to the required experience in each zone which were delivered via VIVID’s audio system design.

Galeries Lafayette Doha opened its doors in April 2019, and has rapidly become one of the city’s must-visit retail spaces – yet another argument for the fact that, when it comes to making a mark as a bricks-and-mortar brand, experience matters.

BBC Radio 3 - Music Concierge's Rob Wood speaks about luxury

Luxury can be a complex business. Ever-present in human history, evolving from one era to the next, luxury has always been a problematic, occasionally paradoxical concept, and those businesses that deal it are engaged in a balancing act between indulgence, success and exclusivity. And yet it has endured.

For BBC Radio 3’s Sunday Feature recently, the University of Sheffield’s Dr Seán Williams hosts a documentary on the enduring appeal of luxury, its social impact, and its present-day manifestations. His journey takes him from ancient Rome to modern Bond Street, calling in at some of the world’s leading hotels along the way, including the likes of Rosewood in London.

Among the cultural critics, master craftsman and brand leaders lending their voices, Music Concierge founder Rob Wood rocked up to share the sensory side of the luxury story, explaining how sound and music are used to define brands and elevate customer experiences in the world of the five-star boutique hotel.

Listen now https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003rpl

Catch The Deluxe Edition now on the BBC Sounds app.

Alilia - a client of Music Concierge and AWARD winners

The second cycle of the AHEAD awards is now in full swing, bringing international hospitality giants, upward-punching independents, and boutique disruptors into contention for some of the biggest awards in the hotel world.

The finale of the first two-year round took place in January this year, seeing the regional winners of 2018’s regional heats fight it out for global titles (while the Music Concierge team took to the decks to soundtrack the night). From the 2019 crop of champions, our clients Alila Hotels & Resorts took home the heavyweight title of ‘AHEAD Global Ultimate Winner’ for its architecturally astonishing sugar-mill conversion Alila Yangshuo.

With the first awards cycle complete, the second has kicked off in earnest, starting with AHEAD Asia at Andaz Singapore in March (kudos to our friends at the Middle House in Shanghai for taking home gongs in both the Lobby & Public Spaces and Spa & Wellness categories), and followed by AHEAD Americas last month. The MEA and Europe rounds will take place in November, and Music Concierge is once again on soundtrack duty for both events. Be sure to let us know if we’ll see you there.

www.aheadawards.com

Music Concierge client - Tom Kerridge restaurant, TheCoach

What kind of music do chefs listen to off-duty? Is Gordon Ramsay into Finnish death metal? Is James Martin a drive-time soft-rock ballads kinda man? Does Michel Roux Jr have a penchant for obscure ‘90s ambient gabba?

This isn’t just a game the Music Concierge team play when there’s a lull in dinner conversation, it’s sometimes genuine, tax-deductible business research. Case in point: if we hadn’t thought about Tom Kerridge’s taste in tuneage before he launched Kerridge’s Bar & Grill at London’s Corinthia hotel last year, we could easily have killed the vibe before starters hit the table.

When you’re a chef with a name known up and down the country and written on the door of the restaurant, then your personality is front and centre of the brand. All your establishment’s touchpoints – the food, the decor, the tone of voice the menu’s written in – have to match what your customer knows about you or the atmosphere will feel off-key.

Music is particularly important in this regard. There’s a reason Raymond Blanc doesn’t play country and western and Nuno Mendes avoids acid jazz. They wouldn’t listen to this genres in real life, so if they came leaking out of the speakers in their restaurants, customers would clock the inauthenticity instantly.

West Country super chef Tom Kerridge is famous for wonderfully crafted, down-to-earth British cooking and a warm, approachable charisma. He’s a man with an easy laugh and a twinkle in his eye – pretentious he ain’t. The Corinthia is one of the most celebrated luxury hotels in Central London, with an international clientele accustomed to the finest of fine dining. If Kerridge’s Bar & Grill was going to work, it had to find the point of connection between the two.

Tom’s priority was, of course, ensuring the menu balanced his passion for British ingredients and hearty classic dishes with the refinement one would expect from a grand dame of the London hotel scene, but he knew also that the sound of the space had to follow suit. Music Concierge were brought in to translate Tom’s own tastes and personal musical heritage into a soundtrack that would complement the space and elevate the dining experience – making a man into a mixtape, so to speak.

“Music is a massive influence in my life.” Says Tom. “It can bring back a memory, or help you relax. That’s why it’s so important to get the right music to support your pub or restaurant. Music Concierge tuned into which music I liked and created some lush playlists for our guests.”

We drew on Tom’s passion for British bands to develop the playlists for the bar and grill, selecting and juxtaposing tracks to weave an atmosphere that was as upbeat, welcoming and accessible as the chef himself. Tom was so happy with it, he asked us to do the same for his Michelin-starred pub, The Coach in Marlow. Rock on.

Until relatively recently, you knew what you were getting from the Great British country-house hotel: white linens and waist-coated staff, chintz and pelmets, tweed and brandy. Barring the view from the windows, the template was generally the same, whether you were in Hampshire or Herefordshire.

Now, things have changed. In the last few years the world of the country-house hotel has been transformed by the arrival of bold and imaginative properties that have set new standards in design and experience. Places like Lime Wood (Hampshire), Dormy House (Cotswolds), Barnsley House (Cotswolds) and The Pig (throughout the South) have redefined rural luxury, injecting a distinct contemporary sensibility into a sector more closely associated with tradition.

But this is an evolution, not a revolution; a sensitive rethink, rather than a radical overhaul. Successfully updating the country-house model takes more than chucking out the chintz and ditching the traditional for the sake of it. The best country hotels get the balance right between looking to the future and cherishing the past.

The cookie-cutter approach doesn’t work anymore. Location has always been important, of course, but today’s travellers want to feel that the hotel they are staying in had a palpable sense of place – that it has grown naturally from its setting, not just been dumped there. A truly great country-house hotel belongs where it is; it couldn’t exist in the same way anywhere else.

It’s a tough tightrope to walk, involving thousands of decisions that are all too easy to get wrong – a bad call on the design, a misjudgement on the menu, or a poor choice on the playlist can all burst a guest’s bubble. With so many elements to consider, it’s no wonder it has taken Heckfield Place six years to get around to opening.

Gerald Chan, the owner of the grand Georgian family home and 400-acre estate in Hampshire recognised that, if he were to launch a new, modern-minded property into the this freshly evolved and increasingly competitive country-house landscape, every sensory detail had to be perfectly judged – furnishings, art, books, food, music and more. Chan spent significant time recruiting the right creative team: ex-Aman manager Olivia Richli as launch GM; Petersham Nurseries chef Skye Gyngell to take charge of Marle and Hearth Restaurants and the extensive kitchen garden; Ilse Crawford protegé Ben Thompson on design duty – and Music Concierge to set the scene with sound.

Of all the sensory touch points that shape the guest experience, sound is perhaps the easiest to overlook, but it’s arguably the linchpin that ties the other senses together and breathes life into the atmosphere. Sound is also the easiest element to overdo – when you’re creating a soundscape it can be tempting to cram in attention-grabbing tracks that you love to hear in isolation, but which sound brash and indulgent when they become part of a soundtrack on-site.

At Heckfield Place, designer Ben Thompson deployed a a calming palette of muted greys, greens and blues to provide a rustic feel that complemented the Georgian building and sat well with the bucolic setting. A restrained, effortlessly elegant look that didn’t attempt to outshine its surroundings. We followed suit with the soundtrack, developing a delicate and distinctive blend of contemporary classical and delicate folk-oriented vocal tracks that support the Heckfield mood: elegant, relaxed and pastoral – underlining, not overpowering, the natural beauty of the landscape.

To enrich the atmosphere of the Moon Bar, the hotel’s intimate nightspot, we injected a dose of rock ’n’ roll into the air to keep the evening energy up. In the screening room bar attached to Heckfield Place’s full-size, Dolby surround-sound cinema, we made sure that the playlist made thoughtful references to cult film soundtracks where the eagle-eared might hear the work of Nino Rota, Bernard Hermann, or Lalo Schifrin. The Little Bothy Spa, set to open fully in 2019, has a soothing classical sound interspersed with spoken-word English literature to relax both body and mind. Despite the subtle shifts in sound, in every area of the hotel, our aim was the same – to elevate the mood and cultivate the beauty of the moment.

Often the most successful elements of a hotel are its smallest touches, not its boldest statements. At Heckfield, there is a thoughtfulness behind every detail, from the corn-dolly do-not-disturb signs to the cocktails mixed from estate-grown ingredients. One of the most distinctive touches is the vinyl library. You can tell a lot about a person from their record collection, after all.

As well as creating Heckfield’s audio identity, GM Olivia Richli asked Music Concierge to put together a collection of albums that would reflect the hotel’s personality and surprise and impress its guests. Hopping between genres and across eras, the Heckfield collection is a something-for-everyone selection of iconic British masters, rock legends, soul giants and classical greats. A harmonious marriage of contemporary and traditional executed with care and near-obsessive consideration – just like Heckfield Place itself.

 

The Silo, Cape Town

After two years of fierce hotel-on-hotel competition, in which hundreds of the world’s most remarkable properties have gone head-to-head, the first cycle of Sleeper magazine’s AHEAD awards is set to culminate on 28 January – with simultaneous ceremonies in London (Ham Yard Hotel)  and New York (Crosby Street) and a livestream on the AHEAD website.

Throughout 2017 and 2018, eight awards events took place across Asia, Americas, MEA and Europe, crowning the best hotels by category in each region. Now, the cycle is ending with AHEAD’s first ever global showdown, when the regional champions are pitted against each other to determine what are, quite simply, the best designed hotels in the world.

As with previous AHEAD events, Music Concierge were asked to curate the soundtrack for the grand finale, but what we’re most excited about is seeing so many hotels we’ve worked with on the shortlist for an international title – including our clients Gleneagles and Nobu Shoreditch, who both took home gongs at the recent London awards.

And the fun doesn’t end on the 28th – the next AHEAD cycle kicks into gear in Singapore on 7 March, when the first Asia leg of 2019–20 sees a whole new set of hotels battling it out…

The rapid rise of aparthotels is celebrated at this year’s Serviced Apartments Awards 2019.

Now in the award’s fourth year, journalists, architects, designers and operators will come together at Park Plaza Riverbank in London on 14 March to acknowledge category leaders such as Best Interior Design and Best Service Provider.

The serviced apartments sector is thriving through the convenience, price point, and millennial approach to design it brings to the hospitality market. The awards recognise excellence globally at the individual, team and corporate level.

Music Concierge were asked by organisers Serviced Apartment Summit / International Hospitality Media to provide the soundtrack to the event and after-party and we were delighted to oblige.

https://www.servicedapartmentawards.com/

The relationship between music and mood is well-documented. The sound of your surroundings can lift your spirit, focus your mind, steer you to sleep or prime you for action – often without you consciously noticing the change. But can music make you perform better at sport? With the help of Music Concierge, Tottenham Hotspur is currently in the process of finding out.

In May 2018, Spurs opened the doors to The Lodge – a state-of-the-art 40-bedroom accommodation offering to accompany the team’s world-class training centre in Enfield. The training centre exists to get the players in peak condition on the pitch. The Lodge is designed to look after them off pitch; not merely offering the first team a place to stay before games, but providing them with a precision-engineered environment totally focused on enhancing their well-being, team spirit and performance.

When the first guests – the Brazilian national team on their way to the World Cup in Russia – set foot in the purpose-built crescent building last summer, they were welcomed into a setting where every detail had been considered. The Lodge is designed to be the optimum environment for players to spend time between training sessions, free from the stress, distraction and unpredictability of everyday life. By spending time in surroundings where everything is geared towards their wellbeing, the players are mentally and emotionally primed to perform the second they step onto the pitch.

That means all the facilities you might expect – teched-up gym, hydrotherapy spa with hot and cold recovery pools, relaxation lounge, cinema room that doubles as both an exercise studio and a venue for team talks.

Biophilia abounds, with plant life and greenery exerting their calming, oxygenating influence both throughout the building and surrounding it.

Areas such as the dining room and garden are designed to foster team spirit and camaraderie, with communal tables and a firepit encircled with bean bags.

Lighting has been coordinated to shift in temperature depending on the time of day and the activity being performed. And, when Harry Kane and co head to bed, they walk down a 30ft corridor illuminated by a play of star-like lights mapping out the movement of the ball in some of the greatest goals in history.

In short, everything has been done to encourage Tottenham’s players to relax, bond, and focus when they’re in residence before a game – and that, of course, includes the sounds that they hear. As the Lodge neared completion, the club approached Music Concierge to complete the aural piece of the jigsaw. Management were determined to ensure that the sounds the players were exposed to as they progressed through the day worked in harmony with The Lodge’s other sensory stimuli to improve player’s wellbeing and gently steer their behaviour from dawn to dusk – a best-practice daily routine set in sound.

Drawing on our research into the psychology of music, the Music Concierge team have put together a programme specifically designed to shepherd elite athletes through the training day. From highly motivating morning sounds, to uplifting, positive music that encourage team socialising over lunch. The soundtrack creates a subtle emotional framework that brings rhythm to the day, culminating in soothing, restful compositions that kick in at set times each day to encourage rest and sleep.