WHAT IT IS?
If you think about Marie Antoinette, late queen of France, you usually wouldn’t think of London. But that might change due to a cooperation between a hotel, a designer and a museum: The museum V&A South Kensington is featuring an exhibition about Marie Antoinettes style and how it still influences today designers. Designers such as Manolo Blahnik who is the creator of some of the shoes seen in the 2006 biopic on Marie Antoinette and who is sponsering the exhibtion. So far for the museum and the designer. As for the third party in this partnership, The Berkeley, London offers two special packages in collaboration with The V&A and Blahnik. You can book the Marie Antoinette Style package, stay at The Berkeley with a bottle of champagne to greet you, two tickets to the exhibition and your personal copy of the exhibitions accompanying book. Or you can have Cakes & Cocktails Fit for a Queen at the hotels’ café. The cocktails and mocktails were co-created by Manolo Blahnik and are accompanied by a collection of seasonal cakes in a blend of french savoir-vivre and british tea time. Some of the cocktails are inspired by Marie Antoinettes daily rituals, like Manolo’s Martini with orange blossom referring to the queens habit of bathing in orange blossom water. Too bad, these royal inspirations aren’t detailed on the menu which, of course, you won’t be enjoing with the common folk but instead in the cozy exclusivity of the highly instagrammable The Snug.
WHY IT´S COOL?
- Unique Experience: Through the partnership of The Berkley, the V&A and Manolo Blahnik, a completely new experience is created. You don’t just visit an exhibition or eat a pastry but are reliving a part of Marie Antoinette livestyle.
- Activity with friends: You might not usually go to a museum as a friend group, but this offer makes it a perfect outing with friends or family and something to remember
- What is more instagrammable than royalty, haute couture and artisinal pastry? Here you get both and at great locations, making this highly instagrammable and attractive to Gen Z and Millenials
WHY IT HAS FUTURE GROWTH POTENTIAL?
Collaborations between different players inside and outside the hospitality industry are very promising when it comes to creating memorable and unique experiences. As the Marie Antoinette Style-example shows, different partners can play to different aspects of a shared topic, inspiring each other and creating a kind of distributed experience for consumers. This enhances their sense of exploring for themselves against a feeling of merely consuming a given offer. It also makes room for catering to different consumer demographics and is very easily adaptable as well as up- or downsized in response to available ressources and needs.
Science of the Time