French label A.P.C. has opened its first store in the Middle East inside the high-end Solitaire shopping mall in Riyadh, which was recently inaugurated in the capital of Saudi Arabia. The A.P.C. store is located on the first of the mall’s three floors, near stores by Corneliani, Liu Jo, Hanro and Eleventy.
The A.P.C. store extends over more than 100 square metres, and showcases the French label’s womenswear, menswear and accessories collections, in a refined environment designed by architecture studio Laurent Deroo Architecte. The opening is the first step in A.P.C.’s collaboration in the Middle East with local retail group Beside.
Beside was founded in 1991 and is active in nine countries, operating some 160 stores for various Western brands. Last December, Beside opened a Longchamp store at the Dubai Mall, and is also the local partner for labels such as Diesel, Fred Perry, Pinko and Scotch & Soda. The group is led by Hisham Bedier and is part of Saudi conglomerate Taj Holding, founded in 2008 by Omar Abdulaziz Henaidy, currently its president.
The agreement with A.P.C. is set to lead to store openings in the Gulf Cooperation Council region (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) as well as in Egypt. Another opening is planned in Abu Dhabi in 2025, and a third A.P.C. store is expected to be confirmed in 2026.
A.P.C., led since last autumn by CEO Pierre-Arnaud Grenade, operates nearly 80 stores worldwide, and in 2023 it recorded revenue exceeding €100 million.
Venetian apparel and lighting fixtures brand Fortuny has signed a licensing and international distribution deal with Italian producer Mavive for a new line of fragrances inspired by the artistic eclecticism of Mariano Fortuny. The licence will be handled by the high-end division of Mavive, founded in 1986 by Massimo Vidal, via the Merchant of Venice brand.
A Delphos dress, the inspiration behind the bottle of Fortuny’s new perfumes
The new Fortuny fragrance collection will consist of three items and will be presented by the end of 2025. The line will be distributed via selected perfumeries and international department stores, and is the result of a synergy between two top-notch Venetian producers.
The Fortuny brand was created in 1984 by Lino Lando, a businessman with a passion for the style of Venetian painter, stylist and set designer Mariano Fortuny, and is also inspired by Fortuny’s youth, notably his stunning museum house, still home to sumptuous furnishings and works of art. Mavive was founded in 1986 by Massimo Vidal, as an extension of family perfumery company Vidal Profumi. It is now led by the family’s third and fourth generations, having started in the personal care sector as far back as in 1900. Mavive manages a portfolio including mass-market, prestige and niche perfumery brands, and is active in over 90 countries worldwide.
Fine fabrics, high-quality craftsmanship and attention to detail are the hallmarks of the products sold in the Fortuny boutiques, ranging from lighting fixtures to clothes. They include silk lampshades, hand-printed velvet overcoats, pleated scarves and the iconic Delphos dress, which in its many versions, always in pleated fabric, has been praised by Marcel Proust and worn by style icons like Isadora Duncan, Eleonora Duse, Lili Guerlain and Peggy Guggenheim.
“At a time when women were looking for new experiences and dreamt of freedom, Mariano Fortuny and his wife Henriette Negrin created Delphos in 1907. A simple, sensual dress fashioned around the female body, heedless of fashion trends and unwilling to change to adapt to external pressure,” said Fortuny in a press release. “When it was sewn and worn for the first time it was absolutely revolutionary. Women still used to wear stiff corseted dresses that were mostly uncomfortable, and not always able to enhance the wearer’s body. Mariano Fortuny freed women from some of the constraints they were subjected to dress-wise, while making them more sensual and elegant,” added Fortuny.
The dress’s pared-down shape was inspired by the Charioteer of Delphi, a Greek statue from around 475 BC. It consists of four to five satin or silk taffeta panels featuring an extremely fine, handmade pleating, still produced in Venice’s artisanal workshops.
The Delphos dress will be the starting point for the development of the first collection of fragrances designed by the Merchant of Venice’s team of perfumers who, working with set designer Pier Luigi Pizzi, will create a bottle inspired by the dress’ shape.
The Merchant of Venice is an artistic perfumery brand inspired by Venice’s ancient fragrance expertise. The brand is currently distributed in over 50 countries worldwide, via corners and shop-in-shops in Italian and international department stores, the brand’s flagship stores in Venice, Verona and Milan, and in select independent perfumeries.
The Fortuny brand’s business ranges from the production of exclusive lampshades to the creation of handmade clothes and accessories. Its silk lampshades are still made and decorated using the same methods adopted by Mariano Fortuny. The Studio 1907 collection is inspired by an original project by Mariano Fortuny: The floor lamp, resting on a tripod designed by the artist in 1907, is still considered iconic, and has an adjustably body providing indirect and diffused lighting. Fortuny operates stores in Venice, Paris and Munich.
Thailand’s ambitious goal of attracting as many as 9 million tourists from China this year looks in doubt, after the kidnapping of a Chinese actor started driving mainland visitors to the safety of Japan and Singapore.
Bloomberg
Flight cancellations to the country that brands itself as the “Land of Smiles” surged 94% last month, according to Bloomberg Intelligence research, as more Chinese opted instead to take their families to the ski fields and hot springs of Japan during Lunar New Year. Trips to Thailand in the first two weeks of February were still lagging behind last year’s levels, the note showed.
News of Chinese actor Wang Xing’s kidnapping to Myanmar through Thailand and his subsequent rescue prompted a wave of Lunar New Year trip cancellations by mainland travelers. Tourism-reliant Thailand has since cracked down on scammers and criminal rings that use the country as a transit hub to traffic unwitting victims to work in cyber-scam centers. But so far it’s done little to ease travelers’ fears
“Safety concerns do have enough weight with Chinese tourists to make them think twice about travel to Thailand,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Zhu said. “Uptake of bad news has been far higher than steps it’s taken to boost safety, which will make its reputation repair a likely uphill battle.”
Flight bookings from China to Japan have, meanwhile, more than doubled in the first quarter from a year earlier, thanks also to the weaker yen and airfares as low as $150 from Shanghai to Tokyo. That helped Japan overtake Thailand as the top overseas destination for Chinese holidaymakers during the eight-day holiday this year. Visa-free entries to Singapore and Malaysia have also drawn Chinese tourists away from Thailand.
Japan alone attracted a record 980,000 Chinese tourists last month — more than double from last year, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. Meanwhile, Thailand said nearly 711,000 Chinese had visited this year through Feb. 2.
Bangkok has shut power to operators of illicit businesses in Myanmar, while working with its neighbor to clamp down on the scam centers, from where more than 1,000 foreign workers, including several hundred Chinese, were recently freed.
Whether the crackdowns will help win back more Chinese tourists, the top source of foreign receipts in Thailand’s tourism industry, remains to be seen. Tourism, which accounts for about 12% of the country’s gross domestic product and a fifth of total employment, is forecast to bring in an estimated $55 billion this year.
It’s unlikely that Thailand will be able to hit the top range of its target for Chinese visitors, and will struggle to surpass the 8.8 million it proposes at the lower end if it doesn’t swiftly address safety concerns of Chinese tourists by the end of this quarter, Zhu wrote in the note. If the problem persists through 2025, Thailand may struggle to attract more than 7.5 million Chinese arrivals, he said.
There are some signs that concerns are abating, but it’s still too early to call a turnaround in sentiment. While bookings from China to Thailand for March are still down about 10% week-on-week, flight demand for April and May are showing growth of more than 3%, according to marketing firm China Trading Desk, which tracks the mainland travel market.
“The fear over travel to Thailand has ebbed,” said China Trading Desk Chief Executive Officer Subramania Bhatt. “Still, Thailand is way off compared to 2019, while both Malaysia and Singapore have a very strong recovery of Chinese visitors.”
Beyond shutting down scam operations, Thailand’s government and industry need to do more to develop tourism beyond the popular destinations such as capital Bangkok, the beaches of Phuket and the jungles of Chiang Mai, said Thai Hotel Association President Thienprasit Chaiyapatranun.
“Even Thai people love to go to Japan instead of going to Phuket domestically,” he said. “We have lost good quality travelers favoring the currency exchange. We need to do more, offer more destinations to attract visitors.”
François Pinault, the billionaire behind such brands as Gucci and Balenciaga, is amping up his investments in an industry far outside fashion: cruising. Ten years after the Pinault family’s private investment company, Groupe Artémis, took ownership of French cruise line Ponant—which has 13 ships best known for sailing throughout the Arctic and Antarctic—it has bought a majority share in Aqua Expeditions, a boutique luxury line known for exploring Indonesia’s Raja Ampat archipelago and the Peruvian Amazon in high style.
Pinault – Bloomberg
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the announcement was made in mid-January. Aqua Expeditions’ Peruvian founder Francesco Galli Zugaro remains a shareholder and is staying on to run the brand.
The Aqua acquisition is a small one in terms of assets: The Singapore-based company has just five ships, all with capacities of 40 passengers or fewer. But the move represents a significant step toward increasing the Pinault family’s stake in the luxury cruise industry.
It comes at a notable time. On the one hand Pinault’s rivals, Bernard Arnault and LVMH, are doubling down on luxury resorts and travel experiences—mostly on land, though their investment in the Orient Express brand includes what’s set to be the world’s largest sailing ship, expected to debut in 2026. On the other, luxury hotel brands are investing in yacht-inspired, small-ship cruising, with Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons and Aman all building their own versions of “floating hotels.”
With the Aqua acquisition, Artémis is committing itself to further growth in cruising. That’s according to Hervé Gastinel, a businessman and yachtsman who joined Ponant as chief executive officer in 2021. He was brought in by Pinault and his son François-Henri, who co-runs Artémis, to get the cruise line back in the black after the industry’s Covid shutdown. Gastinel says the Pinaults’ goal is to double Ponant’s revenue by 2028, though he didn’t disclose specific figures.
“After Covid there was obviously a reshuffling of the landscape of this industry,” Gastinel says, speaking to Bloomberg onboard Ponant’s 270-passenger Le Commandant Charcot. “A lot of cruise companies are open for cooperation, acquisitions, investments.”
Titans of cruising?
Although small ship cruising to remote places is a niche market, the Pinaults want to be as recognized in that arena as Kering SA is in fashion. “We can build leadership in that segment,” Gastinel says. Despite its reputation for leading luxury retail brands, Kering has struggled financially in recent years, with Gucci’s 2024 fourth quarter sales down 24%.)
The Pinaults thought Gastinel was the right person for that job thanks to his track record scaling small companies: As CEO of leading pleasure craft company Groupe Beneteau, he led a four-year growth period that saw revenue increase from €970 million to more than €1.3 billion.
Now Gastinel is scaling Ponant, aiming to fast-track growth through more acquisitions. He considered buying Hurtigruten Expeditions, he says, but that company’s five ships, which top out at about 500 passengers, felt too large. The ideal ships, Gastinel says, max out at 300 guests.
Even that would be large for Aqua and Ponant. Both fleets compete more with private yachts than, say, megaships with dinner buffets. And they are more expensive than some charters, too. At the top end, Ponant’s 15-night North Pole sailings start at $50,000 per person, and more than double that for the top suite—caviar, Champagne and Alain Ducasse-designed dinners included. Aqua’s ships can be even pricier. The 16-passenger Aqua Mare, the world’s first superyacht in the Galapagos, charges around $30,000 per person for seven nights in its sprawling Owner’s Suite. Cabins on Aqua Blu, a separate 30-passenger ship that explores Indonesia’s biodiverse Raja Ampat region, start at about $10,000 per person for seven nights.
Gastinel says Aqua and Ponant are natural siblings. “We can build some interesting bridges between the two companies,” he says, adding that tropical and polar destinations make for nice combinations.
In addition to the Ponant ships, the company separately markets the one-ship line Paul Gauguin Cruises in French Polynesia, acquired in 2019. And Ponant’s revenue includes full-ship charters by such prestigious tour operators as Abercrombie & Kent and Smithsonian Journeys, including in Antarctica.
Growth Mode
Ponant inherits Aqua in growth mode; a third ocean ship under construction is set to explore the outer islands of the Seychelles and Tanzania’s Zanzibar Archipelago. And Ponant is building new ships, too. Last spring it added its first six-cabin sailing catamaran, Spirit of Ponant, to explore areas such as Corsica and the Seychelles (a newly hot destination); Gastinel says more may follow.
Then there’s river cruising, another area where Gastinel and Artémis want to double down. “There are a lot of beautiful rivers in the world that are still unspoiled and fit for expedition,” Gastinel says, pointing to the Zambezi as one option. “That’s where we want to grow and launch the next generation of ships.”
But competition will grow alongside Gastinel’s ambitions. Take Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.: It announced last month that it will also expand into river cruising with its upscale Celebrity Cruises brand, with 10 initial ships expected to sail around Europe starting in 2027.
Onshore Developments
The Pinaults’ focus on cruising will, ironically, extend onto land and even into the air.
“We want to offer our guests a product that includes pre- and post-cruise stays, flights and so on,” Gastinel says, outlining a plan that would make Artémis’ cruise line a full-fledged tour company. “That is the direction we are following.”
As for Gastinel’s biggest challenge? It isn’t money.
Aware of the ironies of operating in remote and fragile landscapes, he’s committed to growing the company’s sustainability efforts. In 2030 or thereabouts, he hopes to debut the world’s first net-zero-carbon ship, a 594-foot vessel that will carry about 200 passengers and operate on wind and sun energy combined with non-fossil-fuel-powered batteries. It would be a prototype for additional ships, so Gastinel is looking for a multi-ship deal.
But amid a busy growth period sectorwide, many European shipyards are already maxed out with orders from other lines. Trying to be at the forefront of sustainability is one thing; construction bandwidth, it turns out, is another.
Entertainment8 years ago