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This summer, all eyes were on Paris as the Olympics took centre stage. But across the continent, luxury players engaged in a competition of their own: the bid for tourist dollars as Euro summer surged on. Luxury brands took over beach clubs, hotel pools and yachts in hopes of making a splash in a crowded summer market.
It’s a smart strategy. Come July, European beaches are filled with wealthy tourists with money to spend. According to consumer insights platform GWI’s 2024 consumer survey, 41.9 per cent of high-net-worth travellers say they have an interest in fashion, and around a quarter say they are interested in luxury and designer brand collaborations. Why not capture them while they’re relaxing at the beach, and save them a trip to the main drag?
Beach club fervour kicked off at the very beginning of the summer season. Miu Miu’s Summer Club was the first luxury fashion brand to post up at the beach, generating $2.18 million in earned media value, or EMV (the amount of advertising spend required to achieve the same number of impressions). It was a hit on socials, says Annika Baer, marketing manager at marketing analytics firm Lefty. Beach club activations generated 13 per cent of the total EMV for brand activations at Cannes, per Lefty.
Then, things ramped up. At the end of May, Gucci hosted an influencer event at Tuscan seaside (and fashion favourite) hotel Il Pellicano. In June, Mytheresa and Valentino took a group off the coast of Monaco on the famous Christina O yacht, and Balmain teamed up with new Athenian Riviera hotel One&Only Aesthesis for a branded opening kick-off. And, throughout the summer, a slew of brands from Jacquemus to Loro Piana took over beach clubs and hotel pools in Saint-Tropez, the Italian Riviera and beyond.
“This summer’s host of luxury beach club and yacht partnerships demonstrate how cosy the luxury and hospitality worlds have become,” says Fiona Harkin, director of foresight at strategic foresight consultancy The Future Laboratory. “A seasonal resort-brand partnership is a clever way to engage with high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) as they relax on holiday, and luxury brands are free to leverage exclusive collections that carry destination cachet, while targeting a certain type of VIP customer.”
Luca Solca, Bernstein senior analyst of luxury goods, agrees. “Posh beach clubs are here to stay and are bound to become even more significant in the future. When you think about it, high-end demand — and, hand-in-hand, supply gentrification — has graced personal products, real estate and tourism. But, for the most part, we are still going to the beach the same way as 50 years ago.”
This summer, brands doubled down on what is a relatively new answer to this demand: branded beach clubs. But with luxury brand takeovers up from 2023, is the strategy at risk of oversaturation before it’s even set in stone?
Top of the top
Many brands took over public beach clubs, as a way to tap wealthy consumers that might be going to, say, Saint-Tropez’s Indie Beach (where Jacquemus popped up) or Sicily’s Verdura Resort (Missoni’s beach of choice). It also draws the influencer crowd, Baer flags, bringing in creators — and their followers — who might not have otherwise opted for that particular venue.
Balmain’s pop-up, for one, is generating sales. It’s the brand’s first European beach club pop-up — and it’s proving successful. Beachwear items are performing well with consistent sales in swimwear and casual summer ready-to-wear, but the brand saw an even stronger performance in signature embellished garments and accessories with higher price points, according to Balmain.
Others, though, leaned into even more exclusive experiences. Miu Miu’s Cannes Summer Club, and Mytheresa and Valentino’s yacht experience, for instance, took this approach. And it’s here that the right curation of guests is “essential”, says Mytheresa CEO Michael Kliger.
The trend for more invitation-only or influencer-led events is a smart move for both the brands and their partners, Harkin says. “These feel like a step up to target VIPs, and for luxury brands to join forces with hotel groups or yacht memberships to pool contacts and target shared HNWIs as joint customers.”
For Mytheresa, the invite-only Valentino-partnership event was about connecting with its top-spending customers — a well-established strategy for the retailer. Alongside recognisable fashion names like stylists Gabriella Karefa-Johnson and Julia Sarr-Jamois, the trip welcomed some of Mytheresa’s biggest spenders. “Of course, such an activation is meant to create buzz and establish the right elevated brand positioning, which in turn drives sales,” Kliger says. “However, a key objective was to jointly strengthen the relationship with our best customers, which is so important for everyone nowadays and always fundamental for us.”
Beyond the beach
As proven when the trend began to heat up last year, beach clubs do particularly well on social media.
Brands leaned into social platforms — especially TikTok — to promote their pop-ups. On TikTok, Tory Burch leaned into the ‘aura points’ trend, generating over 100,000 views. Jacquemus’s Saint-Tropez pop-ups garnered over 160,000 views on the brand’s top related video. Travel creator Erol Brasco’s TikTok of Louis Vuitton’s Cheval Blanc Saint-Tropez takeover generated 1.2 million views.
Ironically, it’s the private beach club events that tend to drive the highest social visibility in a given period, says Baer. Balmain’s One&Only generated an EMV of $63.2 million — $5 million of which came from the invite-only opening party, according to Lefty.
That said, public clubs are a draw for influencers and allow for extended promotion — and content creation — throughout the summer, Baer says. Alberta Ferretti, for instance, also saw success on socials with its Hotel de Mar Gran Meliá, Majorca pop-up. The partnership generated an EMV of $2.49 million — well below that of Balmain — but its engagement rate of 3.18 per cent far surpassed participating influencers’ average engagement, Baer says. The influencers that generated the highest engagement were Spanish influencer María Pombo, Italian actor Elisabetta Canalis and British actor Amy Jackson. “Italian and Spanish audiences interacted the most with the campaign,” she adds. “This is due to Alberta Ferretti’s strategic casting of influencers who have large followings among these audiences and are more likely to travel to Mallorca to stay at the Gran Meliá in terms of proximity.”
Ultimately, consumers care where their favourite celebrities and creators are spending time. Lefty’s hospitality report also found that athletes who posted content about their vacations at hotels rather than regular partnership posts generated EMVs 27 per cent higher. “This shows audiences’ intrigue about what their favourite influencers do on their holidays,” Baer says. By offering branded sunbeds for these creators to lounge and post on, brands can capitalise on this attention.
Just the beginning
But as more and more brands hop on board, will the concept tire?
Some brands are already looking for new ways to make the most of summer travel and to stand out from the sheer abundance of beach and pool club tie-ups – Mytheresa included. “There have been many beach club takeovers already over the last few seasons. We also celebrated two years ago with Valentino in Saint-Tropez at a beach club,” Kliger says. “This time, we wanted to frame the summer luxury experience in a new and even more luxurious setting.”
But this doesn’t mean all brands will shift away. Experts think the summer strategy is here to stay. “As the personal luxury goods market rebounds and consumers continue to seek out experiences across travel, leisure and dining, luxury brands are diversifying to meet changing expectations,” Harkin says. “With resort locations and seasonal tourism driving luxury’s experience economy, there is a mood of ephemeral exclusivity.” This is something consumers will continue to pay top dollar for, she expects.
But, Solca cautions, luxury fashion brands won’t be the only actors — nor the most important ones. He expects luxury hotel groups to play a larger role. That said, with the likes of LVMH doubling down on hospitality, this consolidation may well render these brands one and the same. Plus, the more luxury beach clubs on offer, the more partnership opportunities for luxury brands.
“What we have seen so far is just the beginning of a luxury beach club revolution,” Solca says.
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