Culture

There was much more on display at Art Basel in Miami last week than culture, the visual arts, and the beautiful people: like strategic alliances between luxury brands wanting to identify with the art world, build and reward their affluent client databases, and in some cases, sell product right on the spot. Between visiting numerous shows, playing host to visiting friends from New York, and the social events, I didn’t get to see all of the luxury promotional events by any means. So, one caveat, there could have been some good examples I missed. With that in mind, here are my picks for doing it right and doing it wrong.

Nordstrom’s high-end department stores may have their fine art, and Ferragamo their in-house art gallery space, but Seoul’s Lotte Department Store raises the culture bar to new heights. According to the U.K.’s Monocle magazine, the flagship Lotte has an entire culture center offering activities from cooking and dance classes to lifestyle lectures. And time-starved shoppers will enjoy the added services of a sports center, wedding consultancy, baby carriage rental and free mobile phone charging. On the drawing board are stores in China, Vietnam and India. Sounds like a winning formula to me.

Everything is going mobile - spas, art galleries, shops, and now hotels. How about a one room hotel for those who just can’t get enough culture? Paris’ contemporary art museum, Palais de Tokyo, is now topped with a one room hotel that’s all about art. In fact, it’s a work of living art, functioning as a museum exhibit and lodging. As described in E-hotelier, “it looks like the bachelor pad of an imaginary pop star from 1972″, with curvy beige sofas, turquoise tiled bathroom and record player with the music to go with it. The Hotel Everland comes to the Palais from a stand at the Gallery for Contemporary Art in Leipzig, and is the creation of Swiss artists Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann. And no, an overnight stay doesn’t come with the cost of admission. Guests pay 333 Euros per night weekdays and 444 Euros on Weekends. The catch? Guests have to make the room available to museum visitors during the day (let’s hope it comes with a safety deposit box). The exhibit runs until the end of this year. Guests can book online but stay for only one night.

Destination management companies and destinations themselves should take a page out of the book of La Belle Ecole, a Paris-based company that’s a school in “the art of living French style”. I came upon them by way of the internet as I was looking for new Paris experiences this past summer, having been to the “city of light” numerous times on business and pleasure (we used to represent the Hotel Le Bristol and Grand Hotel). It was time to do something different, creative and fun. Plus, I was a solo traveler and thought this was just the thing to meet people and practice my French.

The word “tourism” usually conjures up imagines of lazy days, beaches, plush hotels or sometimes an adventure of some sort. But now, a darker, educational form of tourism is gaining popularity, and its increasingly being labeled Grief Tourism.

While grief tourism is a relatively new word, the general concept is not. It has recently been associated with traveling to Ground Zero in New York, where the World Trade Center was destroyed. Battlefield tourism is another old concept and includes visits to Civil War battlefields, reenactments, or war memorials such as the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, the USS Arizona and the beaches of Normandy. Dead celebrity tourism has also been popular for some time. From Princess Diana’s memorial in England and Jim Morrison’s grave site in Paris, to the Dakota Building in New York City, the scene of John Lennon’s murder, people have a clear fascination with the dead.

With many of the top tourism destinations becoming overrun by hordes of travelers, what’s the luxury strategy for avoiding the masses besides 1) having to travel in the off-season and 2) making exotic travel picks, to the likes of Mali, Antartica, Tibet or the wilds of Indonesia?