Four Seasons reinvests in retail business as consumers shift spending to travel

Everyone has those friends who seem like they’ve been traveling in Europe all summer. Well, you’re not imagining it; the data shows that more than three years removed from the pandemic, more and more people are traveling, and Four Seasons is seizing the opportunity to boost its retail business.

In fact, the hotel chain is putting new emphasis on its retail operations with a campaign targeting millennials. The company originally debuted its “Four Seasons at Home” website in 2019 with the intention of getting its bedding, linens, towels, and robes into people’s homes.

Now, as consumers are spending more on travel as opposed to their homes, Four Seasons’s retail division, which is under new leadership, hopes to bring those customers to their resorts and expand its brand.

• “We launched this retail business in 2019, and the growth has been really remarkable,” Julie Bourgeois, the chain’s SVP and global head of retail, told WWD. “We’re one of the largest online retail hospitality businesses in North America. The reason why we embarked on this visual rebranding was to really resonate with our target consumers, who are mainly affluent millennials.”

Cloud nine: So far, Bourgeois said, Four Seasons has seen strong demand for the new products it introduced as part of the campaign. The company recently debuted its resort towels, and 93% of them were sold in two weeks. Of those shoppers, 78% were brand-new customers.

• Bourgeois added that mattresses, bedding, linens, pillows, bathrobes, towels, and bath essentials—the business’s core products—account for 97% of its retail sales.
• At the moment, all of the products are sold on the company’s website, but Four Seasons is hoping to introduce new distribution channels, according to WWD.

Taking flight: Home was one of the categories that stood to gain the most from the pandemic but three years later, that spending has largely shifted to travel. As of February, the number of travel-related transactions increased 21.3% YoY despite higher prices, according to a Consumer Signals report.

• Conversely, the report found that home stores saw a 4.4% YoY decline in transactions, as consumers looked to travel instead of outfitting their homes.
• Jason Gaughan, head of consumer credit card products at Bank of America, told CNBC in June that consumer spending is holding strong in the face of inflation, but “the categories that are holding up the strongest are the travel categories.”

Zoom out: Four Seasons isn’t the only brand tapping into the travel market for customers. Home goods brand Parachute introduced its Resort Collection of hotel-inspired bedding and bathwares earlier this month.