Blazing a trail

The brand with bags of potential
An Chieh Chiang,CEO, Lojel

An Chieh Chiang has spent the past decade reviving Lojel, a suitcase business that his grandfather launched in 1989. The Taiwanese product-design graduate has squeezed a lot into that time. Lojel led the industry in 2017 with its first top-opening hard-shell suitcase. Two years later it became a standalone corporate entity, distinct from the family’s main luggage business. It is now headquartered in Hong Kong, where Chiang is based. The 41-year-old’s most consequential decision has been to start selling directly to consumers. monocle meets him at a shop opening in Bangkok to unpack his brand and the wider luggage industry.

How’s business?
When I took over Lojel in 2014, it was turning over $3.5m [€3.3m] in our three legacy markets: Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia. Next year, we’re targeting $40m [€38m], split evenly between distribution and direct sales.

Do you plan to stop working with distributors?
No. We’re a private, family-owned business so we don’t have the resources to enter every market through our own investment. The problem with the model is that distributors only put in 60 to 80 per cent effort – it’s not their brand and it’s contract-based.

You now make most of your products in Indonesia.
We got lucky. Our factory near Jakarta opened before the US-China trade war. The idea was to have two production bases; now 80 per cent of our products are made in Indonesia and 20 per cent in mainland China.

Why streamline your suitcase range from 12 collections to two?
The decision came from listening to our customers instead of just relying on what distributors told us. That led us to our design-for-repair initiative. Having fewer collections means we can standardise and re-engineer parts to increase repairability. Replacing a broken wheel is much simpler these days. We promote “Buy less, buy better”.

Do airports and airlines influence your products?
You have to balance weight, durability, functionality and style. When Lojel launched, there was no weight regulation from airlines so we were able to create a very robust shell. People are still coming back to us after 35 years to repair the wheels. That means the shell is perfectly fine.

Monocle has its own thoughts but what do you make of developments such as ride-on suitcases?
As manufacturers, we have seen so many brands launching new products without proper r&d. Putting power banks into suitcases was a classic example: our distributors asked for this but we questioned the value for customers.

... and equally questionable ‘driverless’ baggage?
It’s not a bad idea compared to the ride-on but there are so many issues to solve when it comes to automation. You would have to make compromises, especially if you’re talking about a lifetime of usage. Changing the entire business model could be interesting. Suitcases don’t get used 95 per cent of the time, so do we need to own one?

Is suitcase sharing a good thing?
We’re not worried about disrupting our business, as long as it makes sense to customers. We could set up a start-up to explore this, even if it’s not under the Lojel brand.

What does Lojel’s future growth look like?
We currently have 53 staff. We have just moved into our new headquarters in Hong Kong that can seat 100 people. So that’s an indication of my expectations.
lojel.com

The man re-examining short-term rentals
Marc Blazer, CEO, Boutique

In 2017, Marc Blazer co-founded Prior, a travel company that creates itineraries using insider knowledge. He is also the ceo of Boutique, a company elbowing into the short-stay rental market with homes and hideaways aimed at “creative minds”. He began his career in politics, serving as an aide to then-senator Jay Rockefeller, before moving into finance. In 2001, he was working for Cantor Fitzgerald in New York’s World Trade Center; when the towers fell, he happened to be on holiday in Thailand. “I was given a second bite of the apple,” he says. “It’s important to do things that give you joy.”

Where is the opportunity in hospitality right now?
Short-term rentals are a $300bn [€269bn] industry. We can all name our favourite luxury hotel brands but there’s no single, trusted brand for homes. Our first step is to become the Relais & Châteaux or the Design Hotels of homes.

How do you ensure that the homes that you list are characterful as your network grows?
The Rosewood Hotel Group has curatorial integrity and that starts with its properties, which always have a story to tell. Boutique’s hospitality experience is delivered entirely by our host. We have no brand standards or 300-point checklist. We want to create a system that ensures, for instance, that there are no other houses within a five-mile radius of a property and that the fridges are always stocked with local products when a guest arrives. It needs to be an expression of what’s real and true to a place.

You invested in Copenhagen’s Noma restaurant in 2013. Could you tell us about that?
At the time, it was just a 40-seat restaurant – a tiny business with a huge brand. René [Redzepi, chef and co-founder] was trying to build something permanent. We had tremendously talented people coming through the kitchen and spent years training them but they would go off and set up their own thing. So we said, “Why don’t we give them a hand and own a piece of the business?” We developed a group that now includes Sanchez and Hart Bageri, among others. It’s an enterprise with cash flow from multiple operations. At Noma, I learned that scarcity and quality are key ingredients for luxury brands.

Airbnb is being squeezed from multiple sides: cities are bringing in restrictions and the revenue in once-thriving markets is declining. Boutique is an evolution of this model. Are you concerned?
Airbnb has been incredibly successful but seems to have forgotten the consumer. It’s the Walmart of stays, whereas we’re the Colette. It’s an entirely different experience. When you have millions of listings and billions of stays, there’ll be bad experiences.

But Boutique has a lot of listings too. How do you maintain quality?
A pretty home isn’t enough: it’s about the homeowners. Many are self-made people and entrepreneurs from creative industries. Those are the ones we want to get to know. Our guests are very discerning and give us feedback. If there’s a shortcoming, we address it with the host. If it happens again, we archive the listing until it’s fixed.

Airbnb lets the market decide through the use of reviews but you don’t. Why?
Look at Tripadvisor: the best restaurant in Rome is apparently a burger joint. The crowd doesn’t know what “good” is. We’re seeing a backlash against aggregation. There’s an opportunity for well-travelled people with taste to offer advice to consumers seeking quality experiences. That’s what we’ve done with Prior [Blazer’s travel advisory firm], which has become authoritative.

What’s on the horizon for you?
Either Boutique becomes a multigenerational Mittelstand business – much like what you see in Germany or in Japan – or somebody comes along wanting to add it to their portfolio. I pursue things that give me joy, then figure out how to keep the lights on while doing it.
boutique-homes.com

The Texan queen of quirk
Liz Lambert, partner, MML Hospitality

When Liz Lambert shared a business plan to buy a seedy motel on Austin’s South Congress Avenue, a friend scribbled in the margins, “Yeah, right.” But Hotel San José has become a buzzing spot since reopening its doors in 2000. For Lambert, the scion of Texas cattle royalty, this was the start of a burgeoning hospitality portfolio spanning California, her home state and beyond. She named her company Bunkhouse after her family ranch’s guest quarters. Friction with investors Standard International and later Thailand’s Sansiri led to her departure in 2019 (Hyatt purchased the brand in August) but she knew how to land on her feet. She is now a partner at mml Hospitality, where she spearheaded the company’s first lodging property, Hotel Saint Vincent in New Orleans. Lambert also retains ownership of her treasured Marfa property, El Cosmico. monocle speaks to the veteran hotelier from her Austin home about her next moves. 

How did you convince a global clientele that motels could be charming?
There’s a love for the myth of the American West and the motel is a part of that. But I didn’t set out to convince a global audience. No one was more surprised than I was when Hotel San José became so popular, landing above the fold in The New York Times travel section within a year. Road inns and travel lodges are being revitalised. They have more romance than new builds. What’s missing right now is a travel brand for them that’s thoughtful, well designed, simple and not expensive. If someone would let me take over the US chain Motel 6, I would love to do it.

What did hotels mean to you as you grew up?
My dad was a rancher and didn’t have an office so we would often go to the local hotel, where you could have your shoes shined and hold a business meeting. My mother loved hotels. In New York we would stay at the Waldorf, where we could sit in the lobby after shopping.

You once said that a good hotel changes a neighbourhood. Why is that?
At their best, they’re neighbourhood hubs. The area around Hotel Saint Vincent in New Orleans didn’t have one. Now it’s a gathering spot where you can have drinks with friends who live around the corner or pop into the shop for a gift. People in the neighbourhood can get a coffee there, and it’s a place where their friends can stay.

Any new lodging properties in the pipeline?
Two hotels. One is a renovation of the Mountain Chalet, an Aspen landmark. The other is Sixth & Blanco, Herzog & de Meuron’s first new build in Texas. The project occupies a city block and will include retail, restaurant and residential spaces with a hotel in the middle.

Are you focusing on new markets or concentrating on where you know?
We naturally go to places that we’re already interested in. My partners are into luxury and spend a lot of time in Aspen. With El Cosmico, I foresee going into other markets such as New Mexico, upstate New York, the Great Smoky Mountains or California. But it’s hard to find the right piece of land.

Tell us about the 3D-printed structures at El Cosmico.
Many new hotels are stick-frame buildings or poured concrete boxes because that’s how we know how to build – it’s easiest for us to build things at right angles. The rooms that we’re creating at the new El Cosmico are domes, silos and parabolas, curved spaces that hold you with roofs that arch towards the sky. They are infinitely more interesting to me than conventional construction.

Who would be your ideal first guests, alive or dead, when El Cosmico reopens in 2026?
Rainier Judd and Maiya Keck, who were the first people I bonded with in Marfa in the mid-1990s. Also, my brother Lyndon, who led me into the world of design but who I lost in 1999. And Le Corbusier – but only to make him jealous.
mmlhospitality.com; elcosmico.com

The firm rethinking the timeshare
Shinji Hamauzu, founder & CEO, Not a Hotel

Shinji Hamauzu’s Not a Hotel is a brand of premium holiday homes in Japan. His team deals with the business of paying utilities and local taxes, while a concierge service takes care of everything from transport and on-site storage to ideas for cultural excursions. With six properties and sales of almost €150m, the idea is clearly catching on. 

Not a Hotel offers something that lies between a hotel and a holiday home. Why is this concept right for Japan?
People typically stay at their holiday homes for 20 nights a year and often grow tired of going to the same place. Not a Hotel sells fractional ownership – 30 nights, 60 nights or more – for fully serviced holiday homes in Japan’s most scenic locations, designed by the world’s top creative talent. Once you become an owner, you can exchange your nights with stays at our other properties. On the nights that you don’t use, we operate the home like a hotel, reducing the owners’ management fees.

Will Not a Hotel be running day-to-day operations?
We have a dedicated operations team at every location. We also work on the latest software solutions. Our team made an app that lets owners book nights, unlock doors and control devices and lights.

How do you find the properties?
I started with a beachfront building in my hometown, Miyazaki. Once we were established, many estate agents and property holders across the country reached out to show off their sites. The Japanese countryside has so many different landscapes, from snowy mountains to sunny beaches. We want to give our owners access to all of that.

You’ve been teaming up with some big names in architecture and design. How did that come about?
We worked with Japanese architectural talent first: for example, Suppose Design, Yosuke Aizawa and Sou Fujimoto. Someone from the Bjarke Ingels Group contacted us one day; that started our collaboration on a three-villa site. Since then, we have announced a major project near Tokyo under fashion icon Nigo’s creative direction and a new Kita-Karuizawa property in the mountains with Wonderwall’s Masamichi Katayama. Plus, there’s a ski lodge in Hokkaido with Snøhetta. We try not to impose many limitations. They’ve enjoyed that freedom.

How are things going? And what’s next?
We have four sites operational: Aoshima, Kita-Karuizawa, Nasu and Fukuoka. We also have two Tokyo clubhouses for owners to reserve for dinners or business meetings. Toji in Minakami and Earth on Ishigaki Island in Okinawa will open in 2025. We have four more properties in the pipeline, not to mention many other projects that we’re working on but haven’t announced.

Who are your customers?
Eighty per cent are Japanese but we have made it much easier for those outside of the country to become owners now. Our owners are people who love exploring. We open properties thinking about where they want to travel next.

Can you see yourself expanding to overseas properties too?
Over the past few years, we have made Not a Hotel work well in Japan. To make this work overseas, we’ll have to understand the particular rules and challenges in each market. We’re now building partnerships in other countries to combine our know-how in order to make the most creative projects possible there as well.
notahotel.com

The veteran tourism talisman
Edmund Bartlett, minister for tourism, Jamaica

Edmund Bartlett, who first served as Jamaica’s tourism minister between 2007 and the end of 2011, returned to the post after the Jamaica Labour Party won the 2016 election. His current term has been defined by the pandemic, which caused visitor numbers to drop to nearly zero, depriving the country of one of its main sources of income. But there has since been a stunning rebound: 4.1 million people holidayed on the island last year, a 26 per cent increase on 2022. monocle sits down with Bartlett to hear his thoughts on Jamaican food and the two-way exchange that takes place when people visit. 

How important are travel trade fairs to you?
It’s necessary to gather and look at best practices, and develop relationships. It’s all about connectivity and bringing the global players in so they are buying and selling together. More importantly, there are always new thought-leadership activities. Every year fairs guide fresh ideas and enable innovation.

How important is the European market to Jamaica? 
It’s very important. It brings a particular demographic into our space that we need, enabling an extended period of vacation. We are close to the North American market, which has a two-to-three-day average stay. With Europeans, we’re talking about two to three weeks. So there’s enormous potential for greater penetration of tourism money into communities. Europe brings a wonderful opportunity for an exchange of ideas and best practices. But most of all, it’s wealth. That’s what tourism does: it is the fastest way to transfer wealth from one place to another. Sometimes, I say that it goes from the rich to the poor but it moves both ways. It’s all about wealth transmission. It has the fastest convertibility of all economic activities. The minute that a plane flies, dollars reach the ordinary man. It’s also the fastest means of recovery for an economy. Tourism is the only industry now that has fully recovered from the coronavirus pandemic and is growing. In the case of Jamaica, we fully recovered and hit 2019 numbers in 2023. Now we’re even ahead.

Jamaica is exposed to extreme weather. How has the country’s bounceback been after 2024’s hurricane season?
We’re resilient. We created a crisis-management centre at our university in 2018 and it helped us to recover quickly from the pandemic. But it has also given us the capacity to respond more effectively to hurricanes. We are vulnerable in the Caribbean and susceptible to other weather events. But we can say to tourists, “Feel free to come to Jamaica all year round. We are prepared and we are ready. We bounce back fast. You’ll be safe and secure. You will have a seamless vacation.

Why should Jamaica be on people’s list for 2025?
It has more attractions than all of the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean combined. We offer multiple experiences, not least the most exciting culinary scene in the region. This is thanks to a confluence of cultures and ethnicities. We know our spices and herbs – very important to our cuisine’s mix of elements, which excites the palate. This also makes visitors curious about our flora and fauna. And then the landscape reveals more about the people, who are Jamaica’s biggest attractions. We have a population of 2.9 million. That’s 2.9 million gems waiting for you.
mot.gov.jm