Arnie Weissmann
I heard a fascinating presentation by a woman who monitors, day by day, the aggregate purchases consumers make using MasterCard. She knows, category by category, what's up, down and flat, then looks at what's going on in the world: the weather, the stock market, the price of gas, the day of the week, the month of the year, automotive design changes, retailing trends, technological innovations and travel habits (to name a few). Finally, she makes predictions about spending patterns for important clients of MasterCard.
Sarah Quinlan, senior vice president and group head of market insight for MasterCard Advisors, addressed delegates to Tourism Australia's G'Day USA summit late last month, and overall she painted a rosy picture of a strong American economy. She is confident that gas prices and interest rates will stay low for quite some time, and she characterized the U.S. economy as the strongest in the world, with the U.K. coming in second. She forecasts softening in the Chinese economy.
And she connected two dots that struck me as particularly important to a travel audience. She said that several trends indicate a shift away from purchasing material goods and toward spending on "experience," be it dinner at a restaurant or a vacation. She pointed out that as a category, luxury has been trending down -- the one important exception being upscale jewelry. She squared the exception for jewelry by suggesting that necklaces, earrings, bracelets and rings have become experiences.
Or perhaps more accurately, they trigger experiential narratives, which may include where the item was purchased and the history of its components (e.g., "I bought this from a Masai warrior in Mombassa. This is a rare gem found only in one valley in Tanzania, and the gold was imported from a South African mine that produces a distinctive hue but which will be completely exhausted in two years ..."). The story might include who was with the buyer -- a daughter, perhaps? -- and when she made the purchase.
(And yes, "she." Women buy most of the jewelry. "We got tired of waiting for you," Quinlan told men in the audience).
Former Carnival Cruise Lines CEO Bob Dickinson used to say that travel advisers competed with sellers of washing machines and refrigerators for discretionary dollars, but Quinlan said that even sales of durable household appliances are dropping as people shed themselves of material goods (and even houses: There's a decided migration from suburbs to city apartments).
The mystery woman from the Mystery Shop. Photo Credit: Arnie Weissmann
The insight that certain things can be valued as experiences makes sense to me. The piece of art on my walls that is most likely to draw a comment from guests is a framed studio photo of a woman I don't know. My wife and I bought it for $20 from a neighborhood secondhand store aptly named the Mystery Shop.
It appears to be from the Princess Grace/Jackie Kennedy era, and under photographer Jo Stara's signature is written "Paris-Cannes."
I don't know who the woman is, but that, in some ways, enhances the photo's story line. I have filled in some blanks about Monsieur Stara. He was the official photographer of the Carlton Hotel in Cannes and once was with a group of three men who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.
Often, the provenance of physical art can transforms it into "experience" as much as (or, perhaps, more than) the imagery. And jewelry is wearable art.
Although we men aren't buying as much jewelry for women as we used to, we nonetheless can turn our own jewelry into experience. I can tell you a story about almost every watch I own. One was bought in Beijing for $10 in 1984. Another was assembled in Detroit by a group seeking to train the unemployed and bring high-quality watch manufacturing to America. And another was handmade by a Japanese designer I met on the Lower East Side.
In other words, don't get me started.
Two takeaways from Quinlan's speech quickly come to mind. The travel industry has long been saying that a vacation is a purchase that doesn't rust, bust, collect dust or become obsolete, and the rise in experiential travel indicates that the public agrees. But we need to be aware that we're part of a larger trend that redefines "experience" so that travel competes head-to-head with luxury bangles.
Travel counselors can co-opt this competition by being the ones who bring destination-unique products to a client's attention before departure. A Tibetan silver-and-turquoise bracelet, black pearl earrings from Tahiti or, beyond jewelry, a voodoo doll from Haiti or a thangka painting from Bhutan are imbued with more emotional texture than what we traditionally have thought of as souvenirs. A Miami Beach snow globe with flamingoes just doesn't cut it anymore.
Do a little research, and you may in fact become a seminal figure in your client's purchase narrative.
And: It would be a great ending to my story about the woman on my wall if it turns out that someone reading this recognizes and can identify her. My email address is below.
Email Arnie Weissmann at aweissmann@travelweekly.com and follow him on Twitter.