Tourists, Locals and Wanting What We Don’t Have
So what does HYPER-LOCAL really mean? Well, different things to different people. I just returned from a fascinating two weeks in Seoul, and as always, travel offers me fresh insights on the work I do here. To wit: my wife and I were traipsing around Hongdae’s hip Yeonnam-dong section, looking for some lip-smacking Korean BBQ – because, you know, we went to Korea to eat Korean food – when I realized that, just as proto- and neo-hipsters in this country seek alternatives to the mass, the ones in Seoul covet what is not already ubiquitous. Which explains why, rather than Korean BBQ, the local cult favorite in Yeonnam-dong right now is none other than… Randy’s Donuts, of L.A. fame (see link below). It reminded me of an eye-opening moment many years ago when I chatted with a group of tourists on a Manhattan bus who were most excited about the prospect of visiting an Abercrombie & Fitch during their time in the Big Apple – because, where they were from, there was no A&F for hundreds of miles. The well-travelled urbanites who dominate the place-management industry tend to valorize cool indie businesses and assume that others are the same. Countless clients have pronounced to me that tourists want to be “where the locals are”, so “let’s build it for the latter and the former will come.” But most tourists live in parts of the world where there is not a Sephora or a Cheesecake Factory on every corner – for them, that sort of thing IS novel, it IS cool, it IS part of the destination. I recall the dismissiveness with which stakeholders in Downtown San Antonio regarded the chain-filled RiverCenter Mall within a stone’s throw of the Alamo and the Riverwalk – I had to point out to them that the center’s sales-per-sq-ft figures at the time qualified it as a “Class A” mall. Today I’m keeping this in mind as I work in Hollywood, where the stores in the “Ovation” complex (fka Hollywood & Highland) serve a similar function. In the end, retail preferences and aspirations are highly subjective, rooted in frame-of-reference; one’s judgements should be left at the door.