Dear guest,
I hope you have had a fantastic week.
It’s finally September, a.k.a girl new year, where we reorient ourselves toward routine and lock in on our goals for the rest of the year.
While the standard approach may be to reach higher and dream bigger, I’m here to offer an alternative perspective à la Audemars Piguet.
Hôtel des Horlogers
Welcome to Turndown Service, where we immerse ourselves in an experiential detail or sentiment.
In this letter: Watchmaking meets hospitality, and why would a 5 star property willingly downgrade its star rating?
Hôtel des Horlogers (literally: hotel of the watchmakers) is a hotel owned and operated by Swiss luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet.
It’s located in the Vallée de Joux near AP’s Musée Atelier to which expectant watch lovers journey to immerse themselves in the AP world and often leave with a (obviously preordered) AP watch.
The brand was founded in 1875 and has in its over century-long history become associated with prestige and excellence, and is considered to be part of the ‘holy trinity’ of Swiss watchmakers next to Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin.
Just to give you a ballpark, an entry-level AP watch costs around $18,000, and ambassadors include elite athletes by the likes of Serena Williams, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and LeBron James.
So surely, the hotel must be a 5 star, right?
Well, it’s not, and I think it’s super smart.
Luxury standards belong everywhere
It was during my first semester of studies at EHL when I met André Cheminade, the general manager of Hôtel des Horlogers.
He presented the property, showed its biophilic architecture that blends into the valley’s landscape, talked about the hotel’s not one but two Michelin-starred restaurants, as well as the Alpeor spa with personalized treatments and proper Finnish sauna.
The property pays attention to experience down to the most seemingly minuscule detail, such as weighted shampoo and body wash bottles so that they still feel substantial even as they empty (nothing unsexier than an almost-empty body wash, am I right?)
So you can imagine my shock or audible gasp, rather, when Cheminade said that the property is officially a 4 star.
First thought: something’s wrong with the property
Second thought: but nothing is wrong?? It’s literally perfect?
Hôtel des Horlogers easily ticks all the boxes of a five star property in Switzerland, a country which has a standardized list of criteria to qualify for a specific star rating (which is not the case in all countries or markets).
Despite this, AP chose to be stamped as a 4 star property. People come in expecting a 4 star experience, which makes the 5 star experience feel even better.
The pressure is off to be perfect and the baseline is set lower, which makes exceeding expectations much simpler and surprised guests a daily occurrence.
Staying at a 5 star and having the GM come personally greet you? Lovely but almost expected.
Staying at a 4 star but having the GM go on a bike ride with you showing you around the valley? Off-the-charts service, core memory made.
How AP avoided the luxury hospitality trap
Audemars Piguet owns this hotel outright, meaning that it’s a fully owned brand extension. Very crucially, the hotel doesn’t need to be the company’s profit center, as AP’s revenue comes from watches that are significantly more valuable than the hotel’s rates (starting from around $400 a night).
The hotel exists for the sole purpose of deepening the brand world and to give clients the opportunity to fall in love with it.
When your hotel is not chasing profit margins or competing on visibility, you can operate on almost another plane of existence. You don’t need the 5-star stamp or to signal luxury through a rating because the brand already is almost synonymous to luxury.
Instead, you get to underpromise and overdeliver, which creates immense loyalty in the clientele. Most hotels are doing the opposite by overpromising and then underdeliver when the experience doesn’t match the polished branding or inflated star rating.
This is the luxury hospitality trap: when you sell perfection, anything less than perfection is a failure.
So, why be a 5 star when you can be a 4 star?
That’s all for this week’s letter.
What do you think? Does this approach resonate with you, or is there another property that you know that does the same?
Can’t wait to hear your thoughts:
See you in the next one,
🔑 Emma
Soo interesting! 😵 In India, stars are awarded by a committee operating under the Ministry of Tourism rather than an independent global body, and fall in certain fee brackets. I think recently in Goa a few hotels self-downgraded from 5 to 4 stars because they didn’t want to pay additional govt fees 🙈