Half a dozen new five-star hotels, flagship stores for Louis Vuitton, Prada and Emporio Armani: Vienna is undergoing a luxury facelift that is delighting Arab, Asian and Russian tourists, as well as locals.
Always the epitome of elegance and culture, the Austrian capital was long set on tradition.
Grand hotels like the famous Sacher, Bristol and Imperial dated back to the Austro-Hungarian empire and on the limited luxury shopping mile — the Kohlmarkt — internationally recognizable brand names jostled for space with local businesses.
Photo: AFP
However, walk through the city center now and sleek window displays boast the latest Miu Miu handbag or Vivienne Westwood fashion. A new bloc called the Golden Quarter houses a three-storey Vuitton shop, as well as Roberto Cavalli and Mulberry, and will soon welcome the first Yves Saint Laurent store in Austria.
Three five-star hotels — including a Ritz Carlton and a Kempinski — have also opened their doors in the last nine months. A Four Seasons, a Park Hyatt and a third top-ranked hotel are to follow by next year.
“There is hardly a brand that isn’t present in Vienna ... there is no reason to go anywhere else anymore for high-end shopping,” said Helmut Schramm, head of the Vienna Economic Chamber’s fashion division.
The growing number of high-spending tourists from Russia, Asia and the Gulf — including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar — certainly contributed to this trend.
“For them, it’s very much about prestige, about brands. So we’re working in that direction,” Vienna Tourist Board director Norbert Kettner said.
Those most often seen toting large Chanel or Gucci shopping bags around the city center are Asian couples or Arab families. Chinese tourists are the second-biggest spenders, dropping an average 623 euros (US$833) per day, just behind Thai visitors, according to Tourist Board figures.
However, locals are also rejoicing in the opportunity to buy the latest designs from Milan or Paris right at home.
“Salespeople in the shops say they have the feeling Austrians were only waiting for the chance to buy colorful fashion,” said Daniela Steurer from Signa Holding, the group behind the Golden Quarter luxury bloc.
With about 77,600 millionaires, according to Liechtenstein-based investment firm Valluga, Austria has plenty of wealthy locals able to splurge.
The timing of this luxury drive may seem odd, so soon after the financial crisis and amid continuing austerity.
“The super-rich are totally unfazed by the global crisis,” Kettner said.
If anything, the surprising thing is that a luxury boom did not occur sooner in a city decked out with grand palaces and elegant cafes, where waltzing at a ball is still a popular pastime.
“Vienna was always a bit of a Sleeping Beauty,” said Paul Dutschmann, marketing chief at the recently opened Palais Hansen Kempinski, which boasts the city’s most expensive suite at 15,000 euros per night.
“Vienna really only started growing in the last 10-20 years,” Kettner said, thanks in part to the opening up of the former Soviet bloc and a boom in Asian travel.
Even with the latest offerings, the Austrian capital pales in comparison with other European cities, with just 19 five-star hotels. Prague, a smaller city, has 42 and Barcelona 24.
“For a city of this size ... there is still room [for growth],” he said.
With new five-star hotels offering iPads in every room, personal trainers and even the use of a rented Jaguar, classic establishments like the Hotel Sacher have also launched massive refurbishments to keep up. Rather than crowding the market, the arrival of so many big names “is revitalizing the sector: There’s something for everyone,” Dutschmann said.
Last year, Vienna had twice as many five-star hotel guests as in 2002. After Germans and Italians, Russians were the third-largest group of foreign tourists. Overnight stays jumped 63 percent from 2011 for guests from Saudi Arabia, 40 percent for China and 39 percent for Brazil.
“People won’t come here for luxury alone, but it’s a plus, to satisfy a class of people who would come to Vienna anyway, but not necessarily for shopping,” Steurer said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to