Luxury Institute Survey Finds Wealthy Clients Rate Mandarin Oriental #1 Among Top Luxury Hotels in Customer Experience

NEW YORK, January 5, 2006 – According to the new Luxury Customer Experience Index survey (LCEI) from New York-based Luxury Institute, Mandarin Oriental earned top honors as the luxury hotel brand that delivers “the best customer experience“ as rated and ranked by their own wealthy customers. Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons tied for second; St. Regis was a close third.

Wealthy customers rated 11 of the largest Luxury Hotels brands based on their individual experiences. These included (alphabetically): Fairmont, Four Seasons, Inter-Continental, Leading Hotels, Le Meridien, Loews, Mandarin Oriental, Park Hyatt, Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, and W Hotels.

“Ritz-Carlton had the highest number of wealthy consumers reporting stays in the past 18 months (26.9%), with Four Seasons second (21.6 %). However, Mandarin Oriental, which only had 5.1% reported stays, received the highest Customer Experience Index score of 89, edging out Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons, both at 87,” said Milton Pedraza, CEO, the Luxury Institute.

Mandarin Oriental achieved the highest scores in Brand Effectiveness, Brand Attitude, Brand Environment, Price Worthiness, and in the critically important Customer Retention and Customer Referral Indexes. Four Seasons had a near-perfect score in the Problem-Resolution index, thanks to a very low incidence of problems encountered by wealthy guests.

This new survey, called the Luxury Customer Experience Index (LCEI), creates a set of measures and indices that capture critical drivers for Customer Experience, as rated by each brand’s customers, and goes beyond traditional customer satisfaction measures. The LCEI delivers metrics based on the four “pillars” of a Customer’s Experience, including: Experience Drivers, Price Worthiness, Customer Retention and Customer Referral, for each brand in a category. The Experience Drivers section includes brand effectiveness, brand attitude, brand environment, and the brand’s problem resolution index.

As the “Voice of America’s Wealthy,” the Luxury Institute is the pioneer in developing objective, independent customer-centric performance metrics for the luxury goods and services industry. The new Luxury Customer Experience Index survey (LCEI) complements the Luxury Institute’s reputation survey (Luxury Brand Status Index survey-LBSI). The new LCEI is the result of requests from luxury CEOs for an objective and independent set of consumer satisfaction results with benchmarking data.

“Luxury CEOs have told us that they need to know objectively both how the target market perceives their brand’s reputation and that of their competitors’ brands (LBSI), as well as how customers rate their brand experience and their competitors’ experiences (LCEI),” said Pedraza.

For the LCEI the Luxury Institute surveyed a nationally representative valid and reliable statistical sample of more than 2,100 households with a minimum of $200,000 in gross annual income and minimum net worth of $750,000 (including home equity).

About the Luxury Institute
The Luxury Institute is the uniquely independent and objective research institution that focuses solely on the top 10 percent of America’s wealthy. The Institute provides a portfolio of proprietary publications and research that guide and educate high net-worth individuals and the companies that cater to them on leading edge trends, wealthy consumer rankings and ratings of luxury brands, and best practices. Publications include the monthly Wealth Report, the Luxury Brand Status Index surveys, the Luxury Best Practices surveys and the Luxury Consumer Experience Index surveys. To reach the Luxury institute, please call 646-792-2669 or go to www.luxuryinstitute.com.

Contact: Martin Swanson, Vice President Business Development
The Luxury Institute
(Office) 914-909-6350
(Cell) 914-715-3357
mswanson@luxuryinstitute.com
www.luxuryinstitute.com