A TCF POST Special Report prepared with insight from Glion Institute of Higher Education, the Switzerland- and UK-based hospitality and luxury management school
The luxury sector has spent the past several years quietly overhauling how it wins and keeps customers — and the shift goes far beyond flashier storefronts or slicker advertising. That is the picture painted by Marcello Lombardi, Global Events Director at Louis Vuitton, who recently addressed participants of Glion Institute of Higher Education’s Executive Master’s in Luxury Management and Guest Experience as part of the program’s “Impactful Architecture & Design” module, led by visiting lecturer Sharòn Cohen Moore.
Lombardi, who has spent more than 25 years moving between architecture, retail design and luxury communications — including a stint as Head of Fashion Shows and Image Events at Prada and Miu Miu, and design work on the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Village — used the session to trace how the pandemic became an inflection point for an industry not typically associated with rapid change.
The single biggest shift: from selling products to selling belonging
If there is one idea Lombardi returned to repeatedly, it is this: luxury houses have stopped competing primarily on merchandise and started competing on the entire experience surrounding it — a change he described as more dream-like, more controlled down to the smallest detail, and built around a sense of community rather than a transaction.
That reframing, according to Lombardi, is what makes this moment genuinely distinct from previous eras of luxury marketing. During earlier downturns or disruptions, brands might have simply discounted or scaled back. This time, he explained, spending never really stopped — but it consolidated around items customers viewed as durable and almost artistic rather than disposable. Louis Vuitton’s monogrammed Speedy and Keepall bags, and Hermès’s Birkin and Kelly, were cited as examples of “icon” pieces that thrived even as broader consumption patterns wobbled. In response, houses doubled down on reinforcing their own heritage and values rather than chasing trends.
Video before the room
A second structural change Lombardi pointed to: the primacy of digital reach over the physical room. Brands that had always treated architecture and live spectacle as central to their identity — Prada among them — began investing heavily in video and social content, recognizing that footage of an event could now travel to a far larger audience, far faster, than the event itself. Louis Vuitton’s own runway show on Paris’s Pont Neuf, he noted, generated roughly a billion digital impressions — the equivalent of reaching an eighth of the planet’s population.
Selling an ecosystem, not a showroom
Perhaps the clearest illustration of where the industry is heading is Louis Vuitton’s “Mega Trio” concept, a retail format blending shopping, dining and cultural programming under one roof — visible in the brand’s expanding café network and its partnership with pastry chef Maxime Frédéric. The strategy sits alongside a deliberate push into sports and hospitality partnerships: a decade-long Formula 1 tie-up complete with a trackside clients’ lounge, a prior collaboration with the America’s Cup in Barcelona, sponsorship of Real Madrid, and superyacht hosting during the Monaco Grand Prix.
Lombardi was careful to frame these moves as a continuation of, rather than a break from, the house’s history — Louis Vuitton sponsored Pelé and Muhammad Ali decades ago — while also stressing that the current scale and intent are new. Customers who can “buy whatever they want,” he suggested, are instead being offered access: a seat inside a select community built around a brand’s worldview, whether or not they follow the sport or event attached to it.
Not every house plays the same game
Lombardi was equally clear that there is no single template. Prada, he said, trades on coolness and insider status, building communities such as the Miu Miu Club around artists and ideas rather than product. Louis Vuitton, with a 200-year history and a broader audience, takes a bolder, more direct approach — investing most heavily in bespoke, one-to-one presentations for select clients alongside its large-scale spectacles.
What it means for the sector
For an industry once defined by exclusivity through scarcity, the throughline in Lombardi’s account is exclusivity through belonging — brands positioning themselves less as sellers of objects and more as gatekeepers of curated worlds, from the racetrack to the dinner table. As luxury houses continue diversifying into hospitality, sport and culture, Glion’s session suggests the winners will be those that can make that sense of community feel authentic rather than manufactured.
*This report draws on remarks delivered to students of Glion Institute of Higher Education’s Executive Master’s in Luxury Management and Guest Experience.
