The Savoy after renovations in 2010. Image via weareprivate.net

When Duran Duran released its lush, ten-minute comeback video “Girl Panic!” in November, the real star wasn’t the band or the five 1990s supermodels (Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen, Eva Herzigová and Yasmin Le Bon) who played the roles of the vintage new-wave rockers, but a sixth show-stealing beauty: London’s Savoy hotel.

In the part-mockumentary, part-music video created by director Jonas Åkerlund (whose previous musical mini-movie, the sexy, stylized Lady Gaga-Beyoncé collaboration “Telephone,” has nearly 136 million YouTube views), the pedigreed models wake up in an elegantly appointed (but slightly trashed) suite, seduce female groupies outside the hotel’s iconic entrance, rock out in the ballroom and have to be wheeled back to their room in a bellman’s cart.

To the public, the video is pure eye candy. To hospitality industry insiders, it’s a stroke of marketing genius.

Hotel with as character

“Girl Panic!” is just one example of the emerging trend of hotels appearing as “characters” in short, subtly branded films. As TiVo and Netflix make the 30-second ad spot a thing of the past, such co-pro “advertainment” is quickly filling in the gap.

For the Savoy, that meant a handshake agreement with the filmmaker in which the hotel offered to host the 300-member crew for a whirlwind 48-hour shoot; the payoff was a priceless piece of publicity that will live online forever.

The Savoy, managed by Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, reopened its doors in 2010 following a three-year, 220-million-pound renovation. In Europe, the 10.10.10 launch didn’t just make the newspaper travel sections, it made the front pages.

The historic hotel on the Thames is the stuff of legend, the place where Oscar Wilde carried out the affair for which he was later tried, where a young Princess Elizabeth first appeared in public with suitor Prince Philip, where Maria Callas performed an impromptu concert in the ballroom and where Bob Dylan stayed while filming “Subterranean Homesick Blues” in an adjacent alley.

For more than a century, celebrities have danced and drunk and sometimes behaved badly under the Savoy’s sparkling chandeliers and behind its heavy chintz draperies. It was the first hotel in London where women could dine in public – and later smoke. But rather than sweeping its vices under the rug, the Savoy readily embraces them.

“Not many hotels would have done this,” says Savoy director of communications Brett Perkins. “But the Savoy is a sexy hotel. It’s often said that we’ve done events for royalty and rock royalty.”

Luxury hotel brands with historic properties in their portfolios like to speak of “hotels as destinations” whose storied personalities beckon visitors as much as their locations.

With this music video, the Savoy played its character – regal, with an edge – to perfection. Aside from showcasing the interiors, brand recognition was facilitated by a lengthy establishing shot of the hotel entrance and signage, as well as a title screen indicating that the video was “Shot at the Savoy hotel, London, 6th of June 2011.”

The publicity didn’t end with the video release. The world premiere at the Harper’s Bazaar UK Women of the Year awards ceremony was followed by a cover and 22-page shoot in the magazine with hands-on styling by Dolce & Gabbana.

The result? More than 5.3 million YouTube views and, according to Perkins, countless phone-in requests from guests, media and event planners to use the spaces seen in the film.

The next generation

Luxury Collection by Starwood Hotels and Resorts, the elite tier of the company that runs Sheraton and W Hotels, among other brands, took a slightly different approach to its foray into filmmaking.

Here is a short film conceived by Indo-American actor Waris Ahluwalia (along with friends actress Tilda Swinton and artist Sandro Kopp) after he became the Luxury Collection’s brand ambassador.

This time the film was created solely for use by the hotel group and has its own branded microsite. Ahluwalia has said the concept was inspired by the brand’s slogan, “Life Is a Collection of Experiences. Let Us Be Your Guide.”

In the 15-minute short released in January 2012, we find another supermodel, this time England’s Agyness Deyn. Styled like a Hitchcock classic of the 1960s (all tailored clothing and Technicolor palette), the story follows the platinum-blonde heroine as she’s led by a series of clues on an elaborate scavenger hunt to three of the brand’s most illustrious American properties, the Equinox in Vermont, the Phoenician in Arizona and the Royal Hawaiian on the island of Oahu.

Deyn navigates through the most spectacular aspects of the properties: the Equinox’s British School of Falconry and its bucolic lakeside setting; the Phoenician’s enormous mother-of-pearl pool and vistas of the pink Camelback Mountain; the Royal Hawaiian’s Royal Beach Tower and its lush tropical grounds.

Actor Agyness Deyn at Equinox’s British School of Falconry. Image by Alessio Bolzoni.

Ahluwalia describes the hotels as characters in the film. “I picked three properties that seemed intriguing, that seemed to tell a story, that seemed to cover the landscape,” he says in the film’s behind-the-scenes video.

Behind the scenes is also where we find other big names: actor-musician Jason Schwartzman created the score; celebrity costume designer Heidi Bivens styled the wardrobe, including dresses by Versace and Yigal Azrouël and jewellery by Ahluwalia’s own line, House of Waris.

Luxury Collection created advance buzz by allowing Starwood Preferred Guests to bid on a chance to see the exclusive premiere and stay at the Chatwal, a Luxury Collection hotel in New York.

Fashion and luxury-brand writers then blogged and tweeted the 31-second trailer ahead of the film release. (Starwood wouldn’t release the number of hits received on its microsite but the video on YouTube has just under 200,000 views).

The result has been increased brand awareness for Starwood’s top-shelf properties, and engagement with the next generation of luxury hotel guests. As Melanie Brandman, founder of the New York-based high-end travel PR firm, the Brandman Agency, told Luxury Daily, “I believe their vision was to showcase these properties in a narrative way that would entice prospective guests to visit and build a new audience – younger, savvier, more artistically inclined – that may have not considered these properties before.”

With most new luxury hotel openings focused on ultra-modern interiors and amenities, these competing historic properties have upped the ante by drawing on their cultural cachet. Through these videos, hotels that once hosted Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly are showing a new generation that they’re also the choice of the glitterati of today.

Retailers aren’t just tapping into the past on baby boomers’ behalf – they’re playing on a generation’s nostalgia for a time they never knew.

While some brands are cashing in on their own rich cultural cachet (see: Coca Cola or Adidas), others are hopping on the retro bandwagon, providing eager young buyers with faux (but fashionable) relics faster than you can say Lana Del Rey. But this instant aura of authenticity may ultimately be their downfall.

“The ironic fate that extinguishes so many trends built on suggesting and exploiting authenticity is that their very popularity extinguishes that which made them popular,” argues Nathan Jurgenson in the online sociology journal The Society Pages.

Jurgenson adds that faux-vintage photos made through Hipstamatic and Instagram serve “to highlight the larger trend of our viewing the present as increasingly a potentially documented past.” (And this was written before Facebook Timeline became standard.)

For posterity’s sake, here are some of my faux nostalgia finds in the world of fashion, film and more.

Fauxtography

A Harcourt portrait of actor Jean Dujardin

The tweeted photo: a quiet, snowy street scene. The comment: “It was so beautiful I didn’t even need Instagram.”

We’ve gone from grainy, faded polaroids to disposable cameras to crisp digital photos to… grainy, faded digital photos. The new mantra: When in doubt, add a filter. That way you’ll place “yourself and your present into the context of the past, the authentic, the important and the real,” according to Jurgenson.

But if you want to be really original, you’ll take a photo that can’t be Photoshopped. On a recent trip to chic Parisian department store Franck et Fils, I happily paid €10 (one tenth of the price of my last digital camera) for a single picture from a photo booth.

Developed by legendary photo studio Harcourt, the booth debuted at Cannes and produces bright, flattering headshots that are a far cry from the stark portraits made at your local DMV.

Vintage reinvented

Banana Republic’s Mad Men capsule collections aren’t just cashing in on a sexy, award-winning series set in the 1960s – they’re appealing to men who collect bowties and women who long for the days when Marilyn Monroe’s voluptuous figure was the standard of beauty (whether these days even existed – just try nailing down Marilyn Monroe’s dress size, I dare you – is another matter).

The first collection, created in collaboration with Mad Men costumer Janie Bryant, was promoted through an online casting call that let fans reenact and upload scenes from the show.

Banana Republic's Mad Men clothing launch. Image via PSFK.com

In a nod to (or a swipe at) the copycat series Pan Am, the second collection launched on a branded Virgin America flight from JFK to LAX, with a suspicious number of fashion bloggers on board.

The cinched waists and tailored tops are accessibly retro, whether you’re a Peggy, Joan or Betty, but never stray into kitschy costume territory. And no girdles required. Can Debenhams’ Downton Abbey line be far behind?

Classic cocktails

Singapore Sling, from Fairmont's "Everyone's an Original" website

Forget alcopops and molecular mixology. Old-school spirits are front and centre in hip bar and hotel menus like Fairmont hotels’ Classic Cocktails program, which lets guests order a Singapore Sling, Boxcar or Brandy Alexander at any Fairmont property in the world.

Not only is Fairmont appealing to a prohibition party-throwing, Boardwalk Empire-watching crowd, each drink serves as an intro to the hotel brand’s illustrious history. e.g. The Jazz Bar at The Peace Hotel in Shanghai, or The American Bar at The Savoy in London, former home to bartender Harry Craddock (who created The White Lady and published the seminal Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930).

Fairmont is also using the program to send fans to their social networking microsite – Everyone’s An Original – for recipes and tips.

Found footage

Popularized by 1999’s The Blair Witch Project (or, if you must, 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust), the found-footage genre is running strong in movies such as Cloverfield, The Devil Inside and the Paranormal Activity franchise.

With less of an air of manipulation than a mockumentary, found footage gives viewers an “authentic” alternative to scripted scenes and slick CGI. In the case of recent teen comedy Project X, the goal is “simply to look like the wildest viral video of all time,” wrote The Globe & Mail’s Andy Nayman.

And while early faux footage films may have strained audiences’ credibility – what kind of person would keep the camera running with her life at stake? – in 2012, it’s all too believable that someone would document every waking moment of her life, assuming it will interest someone else (see also: Twitter updates).

Even more believable? That in the future, all footage will be found with iMovie’s Aged Film effect already applied.

Did I miss anything? Live performances of podcasts? Joysticks for your iPad? New albums on vinyl? Mobile phone attachments that look like rotary handsets? Feel free to weigh in with your favourite old-school-inspired goods.

Original photography in top image by Yu Tsai.

Mary Gostelow is editor-at-large of WOW.travel, the online magazine of kiwicollection.com.

As someone who has flown pretty much every airline and stayed at hotels around the world, is there anything you’re still waiting to see from a luxury travel brand?

I want a luxury brand not to say to me, “I’m your butler.” I dread that. What I really want from a brand is an ‘invisible wife.’ I want someone who can do all those little things that happen when you’re travelling.

For instance, I bought a new pair of trousers along Robson Street in Vancouver and the pockets were all stitched up. I had to ask my hotel concierge to bring me a pair of scissors, which meant waiting around for them, and then I’m sitting there picking them myself. I want a luxury brand to be able to do that. I want a luxury brand to send me a simple e-mail two days ahead of my trip saying, “What can we do for you?”

You’ve said that hotels should teach their staff “thoughtfulness” instead of “service.” What do you mean by that?

You might want to ask somebody at Fairmont; they are doing an amazing thing at the moment. I was at their new property at Boston’s Battery Wharf, where they get the most amazing TripAdvisor ratings. They don’t have any concierges. Instead, every staff member is trained and empowered to act as an unofficial concierge for any guest. Now that’s thoughtfulness.

I experienced the same thing on an Oberoi ship on the Nile. Every staff member was so alert but not in an intrusive way. They just noticed, and then quietly did. I took a day trip down into the tombs and a staff member noticed a little spot on my leg that was beginning to bleed. I hadn’t even noticed it. He quickly ran after me and asked if he could put a Band-Aid on it. When I got back to our cabin there was a supply of new Band-Aids for me.

They also have a beautiful breakfast buffet. On the first day of the cruise I helped myself to various fruits – put in certain places on the plate ­– and a big portion of yogurt. The following morning a waiter with a big smile presented me with an exact replica of what I’d helped myself to the previous day! Now, this is the Oberoi school of thoughtfulness, which is interpreting body language and thinking ahead without making a song and dance of it.

Is there such a thing as brand loyalty these days? Should there be?

This is where we have a big difference between the airline world and the hotel world. It makes sense to work toward one airline’s loyalty program and get its benefits.

Hotel groups just don’t get it, frankly. Hardly anyone is loyal to a brand. They’re loyal to a particular hotel in a particular destination. Most Transumers have dozens or more hotel cards. They just have to remember to take the hotel card with them.

I am totally loyal to my Porsche wheelie bag because I only ever travel hand baggage and my Porsche wheelie is just the perfect size and I love it.

What are some of the challenges of your lifestyle? How do you maintain some semblance of routine when you’re away from home 300 days a year?

It’s essential to keep your body in tune with where you are and how you are feeling. I always exercise as close to a flight taking off as I can and as soon after arriving as I can. I do not go to bed. I go to a gym. I always swim at Heathrow before I fly out. If worst comes to worst I just find some stairs to run up and down, which I remember doing in Minneapolis in the snow. I also like to be vegetarian when I’m flying and immediately after I land.

I believe in getting to airports early because I don’t like stress. I have never yet missed a flight but I nearly have and I don’t want that situation again. I’d rather have extra time at the airport because I can always work there.

If you’re an ultimate Transumer you have to be in control of your body and in control of your life. You can’t expect travel agents to do it all for you. You certainly can’t expect airlines or even concierges to do everything for you. It’s easier and safer to do things yourself.

How has the world of luxury travel changed since you started doing this and what are you most excited for in the future?

The biggest change is the demise of bell men. It was only a decade ago when no one carried around their own suitcase. Now it’s perfectly acceptable that you take your own wheelie and look after it yourself.

We’re getting toward the last frontier: the perfect coffee. It’s now becoming the norm that every luxury property should have not just a Mr. Coffee but either a Nespresso machine or a FrancisFrancis! coffee maker. I’m looking forward to guaranteed fantastic coffee in every room.

I’m looking forward to the day when the purveyor realizes that it’s not about how much money you spend. It’s about getting the best.

Blank Check-Out

Challenge While the rest of the world moves 24/7, most hotels still cling to a dated 19- or 20-hour day concept with rigid check-in and -out times and nightly rates that penalize the fast-moving transumer.

Spark Top hotels, like GHM’s The Setai in Miami, The Peninsula in Beverly Hills and Raffles hotels have offered the courtesy of flexible in and out times; many more offer late check-out – for a fee. Airport hotels can learn from the “by the minute” practices of long-distance and cellular companies and charge guests for the number of hours they stay. By-the-hour business models like the Yotel capsule accommodations at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports and MetroNaps sleep pods at YVR in Vancouver show that the demand exists for something between a full-night hotel stay and snoozing on an airport lounge bench. The Fairmont hotel within YVR in Vancouver also offers short-term nap rates for stays in “Quiet Zone” rooms that offer comfy respite for connecting travellers.

Outlet Shopping

Challenge The frequent business traveller can develop rug burn from crawling under hotel desks in search of enough outlets for charging multiple devices.

Spark Hotels need to start by installing more, and more accessible, power outlets. Rooms geared to business travellers should showcase the latest in docking and charging stations. The devices could be placed in rooms through partnerships (with tech brands like Monster or Belkin, or design-conscious brands like Lessiv or Bedford). They could even become a potential for-sale item (think: the pre-WiFi internet cable) as part of in-room boutique offerings. Better yet, make the device solar (like iSun or Solio models) and make it an integral part of the desk design – but off the hotel’s power grid.

Savings and Loan

Challenge Attempts to travel light can be easily foiled by just one or two tasks that require more than your smartphone or PDA – not to mention what happens when that device doesn’t work well, or economically, overseas.

Spark In-room and loaner iPods are already common at boutique hotels; loaner cell phones should be de rigueur at business hotels (Fifteen Beacon in Boston has them), along with hotel switchboard call-forwarding to your temporary local number. Extend the service to having hotels provide loaner laptops, the way that Air Canada and IBM did on some flights a few years ago. It’s an opportunity to partner with brands that want to expose travellers to their latest and greatest technology.

Brand Muscle

Challenge An indoor fitness centre, no matter how well appointed, is never as good for you as getting out of the hotel and exploring a new locale.

Spark Hotel programs providing route maps and stylish loaner bicycles (like Jorg & Olif city bikes at Opus Hotel in Vancouver, Bianchi Nyala cycles at Four Seasons Marunouchi in Tokyo and BMW models at Fairmont) prove that this trend has legs. The Wynn Las Vegas has top Callaway loaner clubs for its golfers; Four Seasons Whistler will outfit you in Prada or Spyder ski gear. How long will it be before a savvy retailer opens something like Nike’s innovative Runner’s Lounges in a hotel near Central Park or Hyde Park, along with a retail store specializing in sporting goods for people on the go?

Scentology

Challenge A hotel room just can’t quite feel like home when canary-coloured shampoo and watery body lotion are the standard amenities.

Spark In a world where travel restrictions on liquids and gels mean bringing your own full grooming kit isn’t possible, more hotels are adopting top-end creature comforts: just witness what in-room placement with Four Seasons has done for L’Occitane en Provence’s Aromachologie Volumizing Shampoo and Repairing Conditioner, now a cult favourite product that L’Occitane sells as part of a popular travel set. Recognizing that scent creates powerful memories, hotel groups from Shangri-La (with its exclusive Essence of Shangri-La scent) to Starwood (which has unique “scent logos” for each of its brands, from Sheraton to St. Regis) are creating custom fragrances. The Intercontinental Montelucia in Scottsdale went local and unique, using the essence of a rare night-blooming cactus for the signature Joyambrosia scent for its spa. But One&Only Palmilla won my heart with the most personal touches of all: local agave-rich suds and a bespoke sewing kit with hand-wound thread to match the colours in my wardrobe.

In the hotel industry “the box” is insider jargon for a typical room. Which makes it especially apropos and exciting for transumers to imagine more hoteliers thinking outside of it.

As director of partnerships for Fairmont hotels and resorts, you’ve joined forces with a variety of brands – from Adidas and Aveda, to Lexus and Napa Valley Vintners. Can you talk about some of the mutual benefits of these partnerships?

Our partnerships fall into three categories: the environment, food and beverage, and health and wellness. Adidas and BMW fit nicely under health and wellness. So what Adidas gets is brand exposure at every one of our properties globally through a variety of ways.

If you are a Fairmont President’s Club member, in the top two tiers, you can have your apparel size and shoe size on your profile and every time you stay with us you can have Adidas apparel and footwear delivered to your room. Adidas provides us with great pricing. We purchase the Adidas apparel. They get some great market research and our customers are very happy.

BMW is our exclusive car partner in Canada. Later this year we’re rolling out the new X5 Diesels as our official courtesy cars at our Canadian properties. But in order to highlight BMW’s green positioning as well as ours, we thought providing all of our Fairmont hotels in Canada with BMW bicycles was a great way for our guests to stay healthy and also see the local surroundings. That’s just an extra surprise and delight for our guests.

Transumers love buying things that enhance their experience, but I imagine they also see hotels as a kind of sanctuary from the 24/7 hustle and bustle of consumer life. How do you make sure guests don’t feel barraged or overwhelmed by brand partnerships and promotions?

We have opt-in-permission marketing rules that we adhere to fanatically and that ensure we are not bothering our guests with these partnerships and promotions. A lot of them are tied to our Fairmont President’s Club and the co-branded materials that we produce are subtle. But if you look to classic CRM (customer relationship management) strategies, every program we launch is deeply rooted in what our guests tell us they want.

So our belief is, if you have a very subtle piece of paper that’s in the check-in slip when someone picks up their key, and it’s something you know that is consistent with the psychographics of your guest, they’re not going to feel offended. I think guests feel offended when they’re getting barraged by marketing messages that mean nothing to them.

So it’s about providing content that is useful and not just advertorial?

Yes. It’s providing content in context.

Fairmont has been a leader in environmental policies and partnerships since 1990. Now that hotel greening campaigns have gone mainstream, how do you demonstrate to guests that you’re not just “greenwashing” to cut costs? How do you go beyond those “please re-use your towel” cards to show that sustainability is not just a marketing buzzword but an integral part of your brand?

We’ve been focused on this for 20 years, so we have some pretty innovative things like our rooftop herb gardens and our bees that produce fresh honey for our guests to enjoy at breakfast. And we also mandate that we source locally and, wherever possible, organic. We feel very passionate about this. We do not have a huge laundry list of global food suppliers so that when you sit down at the hotel restaurant 99 percent of ingredients on the menu are coming from one of the top five food conglomerates.

Do you think you’ve led your guests onto the local food bandwagon, or are you simply responding to customer demand?

We had such a head start but consumers have really caught up. That movie Food Inc. is striking a chord with a lot more people than you would think. A lot more people are starting to become very, very concerned about what’s in their food. So in some ways we are meeting expectations of our guests, and in some ways I think we may be ahead of the curve and we might be introducing a new way of eating to some customers.

Fairmont is known for its iconic, historic properties. How do you incorporate cutting-edge technology into a centuries-old shell without ruining the effect?

It’s really hard and really expensive. It is something that our global tech team is very focused on. Absolutely our guests need to be connected. A huge number of our guests are Blackberry users – it’s a disproportionate amount of Blackberries at our hotels. And so we have to accommodate that. It’s constant upgrades. It’s finding creative ways to use wireless technology. The guest does not care that they’re in a beautiful iconic property if they can’t check their e-mail.

As the traditional magazine industry struggles to retain its footing in the Internet age, custom publications like Fairmont Magazine [published by Spafax, Sparksheet’s publisher] are weathering the storm quite well. I know your father was the publisher of Flare magazine for many years. As someone who grew up around magazines, do you think branded content can save print media?

Our research shows that the people spending the most time with our magazine are the highest tier Fairmont President’s Club members and the most affluent. The content in the magazine is an opportunity for them to explore a brand that they feel very strongly about, that they already connect with. So again it’s about content in context. The magazines that really provide value to readers will thrive even when others are struggling.

We feel that in the intimacy of our hotel rooms there is a good opportunity for our guests and a good opportunity for us. People have a lot of time, more time perhaps than they do at home to pick up a magazine. And so it’s an opportunity for guests to explore relevant content, and for us to strengthen our bond with customers.