Brand spin-offs can be tricky to pull off. So how did Bulgari’s ritzy hospitality business accomplish its success?
If you had a chance to build a hospitality brand from scratch, what would you create? For Silvio Ursini, it is a small collection of ultraluxurious properties in the world’s most international cities and glamorous resort destinations. The hotels will eventually number 20, with each commanding the pinnacle rate in its market – think US$1,000 (S$1,380) a night and beyond.
But with three openings thus far in Milan (2004), Bali (2006) and London (2012), and another trio slated to receive guests this year (see box), the executive vice-president of Bulgari Hotels & Resorts is in no hurry to complete the mission with which he was tasked in 2000. What started as a pet project while he was still the creative director of the jewellery company soon became a full-time responsibility. These days, Ursini jets across the world weekly to scout out locations and check on existing projects.
“We reject cities that do not sustain the high rate,” he declares over tea on a languid afternoon at Bulgari Resort & Mansions, Bali, fresh off a plane from Dubai. A wedding is taking place on a glass-paved platform fashioned to appear to float over an infinity pool, while well-heeled honeymooners sip margaritas at the bar, listening to waves crashing onto the private beach some 150m below this cliff -side, all-villa hotel.
He continues: “In other cases, the physical location is not right. In our business, a difference of 100m can mean a good or bad address. The views, the energy, the exposure to sunlight, the arrival, they have to be perfect. Sometimes, even though it is a neighbourhood we want to be in, the building just does not work. So, it is a real coincidence that we are opening three hotels this year. Each property usually takes six to seven years from start to finish.
This is the kind of pace: one or two per year.”
His goal is not to amass a sprawling hotel empire, but to ensure that each of his carefully considered properties communicates the same lifestyle message as Bulgari does, as a high-end jeweller with a proud 135-year Roman heritage.
