The Future of Destination Shopping in Luxury Retail

In 2025, global ultra-high-net-worth individuals surveyed for BoF and McKinsey & Co.’s The State of Fashion: Luxury report expressed excitement to spend more on categories including home décor (71 percent) and travel and hospitality (64 percent) over personal luxury goods. The report also called out a heightened interest in luxury experiences in particular.

Indeed, meeting these consumer needs will be critical for luxury businesses looking to counter the luxury market’s slowdown, with macroeconomic headwinds weighing heavily on the sector.

Physical stores play a critical role in the luxury consumer journey — with their potential to deliver high-touch and personalised customer service. Consequently, businesses present in destination shopping locations — which typically offer a holistic approach to luxury by engaging consumers in world-leading retail, hospitality, food and beverage, culture, events and experiences with a lens on local communities and neighbourhoods — are leaning further into the opportunities present.

In recognition of the growing power and purpose of destination shopping within the luxury market and capturing consumer interest, property manager, investor and developer Cadogan invested £46 million to transform Sloane Street over the last two years.

Situated in London’s affluent Chelsea neighbourhood, Sloane Street is a kilometre-long road that has long held a reputation as a luxury retail destination for British and international consumers alike. At the north end sits Knightsbridge tube station and luxury department store Harvey Nichols. From there, visitors wind down the road past manicured gardens, five-star hotels, fine dining restaurants and dozens of luxury retail stores to Sloane Square, home to the likes of the Saatchi Gallery, Royal Court Theatre and luxury design store The Conran Shop.

Cadogan’s recent investment was designed to further enhance the luxury experience by transforming the road into a “green boulevard”, widening the pavements and expanding its offering with a spate of hotel, restaurant and store openings. These include Hotel Costes’ first London property, along with the city offshoot of members club Beaverbrook, and flagships from Temperley London, Zimmermann and décor company L’Objet. Other major luxury players that already had a presence, including Brunello Cucinelli, Dior, Bottega Veneta and Saint Laurent, received significantly upsized new stores — as well as a new townhouse for Valentino.

Such offerings aim to capture not only local residents’ attention but that of international tourists too. Indeed, with global travel on the agenda for 2025, tourists are expected to drive substantial market growth. The number of foreign arrivals in Europe is expected to grow by 8 percent per year from 2024 to 2026, according to BoF and McKinsey’s The State of Fashion 2025 report.

To unpack the future of destination shopping and Sloane Street’s own response to the luxury consumer’s expectations in this space, BoF and Cadogan co-hosted a panel discussion in March at The Cadogan, A Belmond Hotel.

Moderated by BoF’s commercial features editorial director Sophie Soar, panellists included Sarah Crook, brand consultant and former CEO of Christopher Kane, Dundas Worldwide and Stella McCartney; Rachel Ingram, founder of luxury social media consultancy We Are Folk; and Alice Temperley MBE, founder and creative director of Temperley London.

Now, BoF shares condensed insights from the discussion.

Create memorable experiences for destination shoppers

AT: The aim [with the new Temperley London store on Sloane Street] with Cadogan is to have more people coming through and doing events — parties, that sort of thing — and create a community again, which we have to do.

You can’t just have a store and expect it to sell. You have to be in there and you have to drive it. But it is about creating that experience and hopefully having a bit more budget to bring a bit more of that sunset feeling.

RI: Customers have access to everything on their phones. So when I’m thinking about this next level VIC experience, it’s about experience. It’s MyTheresa taking everyone to Brunello [Cucinelli’]s 70th birthday. It’s Gucci with the vault in LA, which basically has no product in it. It’s these things that take you to that next level.

People are looking at brands now and they have really big expectations. They want you to be these creators and curators of culture. They don’t just want you to mirror the culture of what’s going on in the world. If you’re a big company with lots of money, you can lean in heavily to connect through partnerships with either curators or creators, or events and activations from art through to events like Glastonbury. You can lean into those moments.

Integrate hospitality and food & beverage for a holistic luxury experience

SC: Food is such a fascinating subject and we’re really good at it in this country. You look at the street and you think, for me to hang out here longer, I want to go and have a coffee — I want to have an amazing experience. […] You’ll [always] get someone in the brand that goes, “We don’t really want that type of customer in our store because we don’t want someone just popping in for coffee,” […] but I think F&B is a huge opportunity.

AT: Underneath our Sloane Street store is the [in-store] bar, as well as the best of the heritage pieces from the last 25 years. I’m going to have drinks from my parents’ farm [served there]. You can then order your [heritage] pieces down there and make it more bespoke. This is our way of just saying, “Okay, let’s really slow down and think about what people want.”

People are looking at brands now and they have really big expectations. They want you to be these creators and curators of culture.

—  Rachel Ingram, founder of luxury social media consultancy We Are Folk.

RI: The Gen-Z sitting next to you, if you told them they were going on holiday, how they would do research for that holiday [would be] on TikTok. […] They would be using it as a travel guide for where to go. So you’re a retailer and you want to be a part of that digital community that travellers are visiting — and it’s not just travellers [but] the kids going out on a Saturday afternoon […]. These are the next generation of destination shoppers.

Those children are telling [their parents], “Mum, can we go to Sloane Street because there’s a viral hot chocolate place at the Jumeirah [Carlton Tower hotel]. Have you heard of it?” […] This is the next generation of reasons to travel. So you have to be a part of this travel guide.

Think about your store that you own [or] you work in. What is in there that’s going on Instagram right now? You can’t rely on your products — […] there’s got to be something in your store that’s snappable, that’s shareable, that’s making people see you at home and go: “On the weekend, I’m going to go down to Sloane Street because it looks amazing.”

Be authentic to engage global consumers and local communities

SC: The number one thing for me [that customers] want is authenticity – and I don’t mean as in not a fake product. They want brands to re-engage with them, build a community […] and understand who they are.

A brand I really admire is On. They opened a store in Miami and they [catered it to a Latino audience] because […] a number of South Americans shop in Miami — so that localisation aspect, plus the type of things they bring into the store, is how they build their community. So they’ll start a running club that starts at the store.

If your brand is authentic, then you’ve got so many opportunities. […] The community aspect is [something] I think streetwear and street fashion has done really well — and luxury kind of ignores.

If you have your store staff [as] brand ambassadors, and trust them like you trust your social team, then I think they […] [can] engage a bit more with their customers.

—  Sarah Crook, brand consultant and former CEO of Christopher Kane, Dundas Worldwide and Stella McCartney.

AT: It depends on what region [you’re in] and how you’re going to serve people. Somerset, [where Temperley London has an outlet store] is obviously completely different because social media [engagement] there is [that] they love it when the horse comes to work and all the animals. Our content creation from Somerset is our kind of content gold because that’s what people know the brand for — we connect to the English countryside with what we sell.

We’re good at the authenticity of telling the story about how things are made. […] The best people in the [Sloane Street] store are the tailors, because what we want in the store is people to try things on, to change the linings — and to really educate people on how to wear things.

Empower store staff to amplify the luxury experience

SC: When you’re a customer and someone in the store says, “Hi, how are you? Did you have a nice holiday? We’ve got these five bags that have just come in…” It’s not really [interesting]. But if they said to you, “This amazing thing happened at the [fashion] show and you’ll never guess what happened backstage,” […] you suddenly engage in a different way.

We have got to slightly break down these barriers of control. If you have your store staff [as] brand ambassadors, and you trust them in the way that you trust your social team or your brand team or your advertisers, then I think they […] [can] engage a bit more with their customers.

RI: [Loewe, for example, is] curious for this online world, and they have brought art and culture and disruption into their stores — take the Loewe café [which opened in London in 2023]. Their staff are friendly, they’re warm, they ask you how you’re doing as you walk in. They have brought this connection in digital into the real world, and that’s an amazing path to follow.

AT: Now, it’s actually really hard to find store staff who are really engaging with customers and who want to work in a store. We’ve luckily got some amazing people who have been with me for a very long time, but it is about creating that experience.

Tap into the emotional power of luxury and aspiration

RI: It’s about […] giving [customers] something that maybe they haven’t experienced before with your brand. Sixty-five percent of Millennials want to experience joy from your brand — they want to feel something from your brand. So you can deliver that digitally and then bring them in for that experience in person. The bigger store, the more enticing the experience in terms of physicality.

SC: I always think that, in a downturn, there’s an opportunity. A lot of the big brands have been pushing prices, pushing their margins, probably diminishing on quality in some cases. Maybe we’ve forgotten the real aspirational element of what luxury is. We have forgotten that we have to engage our customer, make them dream.

No one needs luxury. We aspire to it and we engage emotionally with it. What we do have a lot of control over is how we engage with our customers and get them to come back, because I think people still want to feel emotion when they buy something, they’re just not [immersed] in the moment.

Explore Sloane Street’s website to stay up-to-date on new openings, events and cultural partnerships.

This is a sponsored feature paid for by Sloane Street as part of a BoF partnership.