As Consumers Travel For Experiences, Destination Retail Is Becoming Part Of The Journey

The Bicester Collection’s new travel guides connect its Villages with the restaurants, makers, culture and communities that give each destination its identity.

Bicester Collective

Travel, hospitality and retail are becoming ever more closely connected. Hotels are emerging as powerful retailers in their own right, while their suites, poolsides and lobbies have become valuable settings for brand launches and pop-ups. Elsewhere, a particular store, restaurant or retail experience can influence the choice of destination, with discovery of the wider place following from there.

Hotels now sell their scent, sleep rituals, tableware and furniture, allowing guests to take part of the experience home. Brands value hospitality spaces because they provide a ready-made mood, audience and sense of escape, and retailers are creating destinations that can become part of an itinerary rather than simply somewhere to shop.

The Bicester Collection’s new travel guides are a timely expression of that relationship. The Thrill of Discovery connects its Villages to the cities, countryside and communities around them, positioning the shopping experience as one part of a much broader journey.

The Bicester Collection is leaning more deliberately into that relationship with The Thrill of Discovery, a new series of complimentary travel guides connecting its Villages with the cities, countryside and communities around them.

Following a digital launch in June, the guides are now appearing in print across the Collection. It is an interesting move at a time when so much travel planning begins with an algorithm and ends with the same heavily circulated recommendations.

Beyond the Village

There are two formats. The Local Pocket Guides offer two-day itineraries built around each Village and its surrounding region, including restaurants, studios, galleries, producers and less obvious local addresses. The City Guides are more substantial 128-page books covering nearby capitals including London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Munich, Brussels, Barcelona and Dublin.

The Collection’s geography gives the idea credibility. Each of its Villages sits within reach of a major international city, but the real opportunity is not simply to move guests between a city centre and a shopping destination. It is to encourage them to spend longer in the wider region and understand more of it.

Desiree Bollier, Chair and Global Chief Merchant for The Bicester Collection, explained: “Retail and fashion are more than ever intertwined with the word experience. For more than thirty years, The Bicester Collection has celebrated the uniqueness of each destination and communities surrounding the Village in which we operate.

“Our travel guides are a way of sharing that knowledge with our guests. The guides open up the regions around our Villages and connect them to the people, culture and experiences that make each place distinctive. In doing so, we are creating a richer, more meaningful experience and new ways to discover and connect with the world beyond each Village.”

Experience has to earn its name

Of course, “experience” has become one of the most overworked words in retail. Adding a restaurant, an installation or a beautifully designed guide does not automatically create something meaningful. Guests recognise very quickly when local culture is being used as decoration rather than treated with genuine curiosity.

The strength of this proposition will therefore sit in the quality and independence of its recommendations. The guides need to introduce visitors to places they would not simply find at the top of a search result and give smaller businesses a worthwhile route into an international audience.

That editorial direction has been led by Melinda Stevens, former Editor-in-Chief of Condé Nast Traveller in both the UK and US.

“Travelling has become our number one priority. It’s what we dream of and what we work towards,” Stevens says exclusively. “How we get to know a place, while not performatively ticking a box, feeds into the bloodstream of our desire for discovery. And what we want is for each place to taste of its own self, and its own self alone.”

She describes the Villages as “a moment of calm and thoughtful style from which the wider world opens up”, with itineraries that might lead guests towards a small maker’s studio or a storied vineyard as readily as a recognised cultural landmark.

A reason to linger longer

There is sound commercial thinking beneath the romance. A destination that helps visitors build a better day, not merely complete a transaction clearly has a greater chance of earning their time, affection and return visit. The surrounding restaurants, hotels, cultural venues and independent businesses benefit too, provided the relationship is reciprocal.

Print is also a thoughtful choice and offers an analogue alternative in a world of digital overload. A physical guide can feel more considered and collectible than another tab open on a phone, particularly when the object itself has the authority of a good travel publication. Digital access remains important, however, and City Guide chapters will be released monthly to members through The Bicester Collection app.

Retail has always been part of travel, from the grand European arcades to the department stores, markets and specialist shops that become landmarks in their own right.

The opportunity is not to make every journey so seamless that discovery becomes prescribed. People still want the pleasure of taking a different turn, finding something for themselves and feeling that a place has not been entirely curated on their behalf. The role of retail is to provide enough connection to open up a destination without closing down that sense of possibility.

That has much wider relevance may be for struggling towns and city centres. Too often, brilliant retailers, restaurants, cultural venues and independent businesses exist only a few doors apart but operate as separate islands. Visitors may leave without ever knowing what was nearby. Better connections, shared storytelling and more thoughtful signposting could turn those individual businesses into a destination with far greater collective value. At a time when many places are searching for reasons to bring people back, helping them see what is already there may be one of retail’s biggest opportunities.