A London-based online marketplace dubbed “Amazon for millionaires” has launched, offering the world’s super-rich the chance to buy the finest luxury items across all categories, all on a single website.
The site offers fine art, jewelry, watches, property and even yachts, all delivered to your door (or mooring) direct from the seller.
With a catalog of more than 200,000 luxury goods from all around the world, brought together in hand curated collections and categories, HushHush.com launches as the largest collection of luxury goods and services, all available in one trusted and secure place.
“We wanted to create the leading destination for millionaires and billionaires to buy the finest things in life, all conveniently on one website,” says founder and CEO Aaron Harpin.
A list of the most expensive items appearing on the site includes a £2 million jewel-encrusted Rubik’s Cube, a range of luxury superyachts, a selection of the most sought after hypercars, some of the world’s finest watches, fine art and more.
The most expensive item currently on sale on the marketplace is a £41.3 million Admiral Explorer yacht, but with a regularly updating catalogue of items, this is likely to change.
Offering the most exclusive luxury marketplaces and VIP concierge services to affluent buyers, HushHush.com helps customers from around the world access all the luxury products and services they want, all on one site.
HushHush.com aims to collate the best of the best available around the world and partners with sellers to reach their audience. With a VIP personal shopping concierge service, the discerning team promises to find anything for its buyers, at any hour of the day.
With a focus on customer service and delivering the best possible buyer experience, the site is targeting the world’s wealthiest consumers. HushHush claims the internet’s largest collection of luxury products and experiences, delivered with first class service and support, all in one place.
Photos courtesy of HushHush.
Residents at Jackson Park, high-rise luxury rental towers in Long Island City, can now control their lights, television and thermostat from anywhere in the home using Amazon’s Echo Show.
Tishman Speyer, one of the world’s leading developers, owners, operators and asset managers of first-class real estate, has announced an innovative collaboration with Amazon in which the first residents of all 1,871 apartments at Jackson Park, its trio of high-rise luxury rental towers in Long Island City, will receive an Amazon Echo Show complimentary upon move-in.
In addition to receiving a new Echo Show, all Jackson Park residents will also receive a complimentary smart outlet that can link to the Amazon Show device to highlight some of the endless possibilities associated with smart home and voice-activated technology. Tishman Speyer will also equip each of its 120 premium penthouse residences with a full suite of smart home devices certified to work with Amazon Alexa, including electrical outlets, light switches, and thermostats, enabling new residents to control their home simply by asking Alexa.
“With Jackson Park, Tishman Speyer is setting new standards for Long Island City luxury living and amenities,” said Rob Speyer, president and CEO of Tishman Speyer. “We are thrilled to be working with Amazon, the undisputed leader in advanced smart home technology. We are striving for the best possible experience for our residents and this collaboration completes the amenity package at Jackson Park.”
“From making a living space more comfortable to offering entertainment and information, Alexa and Echo devices can improve the experiences we have in our homes,” said Charlie Kindel, the director of Amazon Smart Home. “Smart home control is one of the most popular Alexa features today, and we think Long Island City residents will love using their voice to make life at home easier.”
The Amazon Echo Show features a 7-inch touchscreen and 5-megapixel camera and is powered by Alexa, the cloud-based voice service that can help residents with tasks, entertainment, general information and more. The Echo Show will offer residents voice responses from Alexa that are now enhanced with visuals and optimized for visibility across the room. Residents can call or message their family and friends, get the news with a video flash briefing, see their Prime Photos, shop with their voice, see lyrics with Amazon Music and more.
Once connected to smart devices in the home, Echo Show will also allow residents to control their lights, television, and thermostat from anywhere in the home by linking with any smart home products in the Works with Amazon Alexa program, other Amazon Echo devices and more. Speakers can be grouped as well, creating a multi-room entertainment system seamlessly controlled by voice.
The concept to develop smart-home enabled apartments originated out of Tishman Speyer’s global internal innovation competition known as the Idea Olympics. Launched in 2016, the Idea Olympics challenged junior executives at Tishman Speyer to form teams and develop a concept for an original residential amenity that would revolutionize the way people live. Teams competed through two rounds of competition and the winner of 2016’s competition developed the concept to offer apartments equipped with smart home technology, to be implemented in Jackson Park. Tishman Speyer has taken that idea from this internal competition to market in just one year.
Jackson Park renderings
courtesy of Tishman Speyer.
Photo courtesy of Amazon.
The current trend of voice-control technology has inflicted immense change on the real estate industry, creating another set of expectations for high-end homes or spaces to exceed.
This trend has found a new home in hotel rooms and is enhancing the way resorts cater to the needs of guests.
Wynn Las Vegas and Amazon recently announced plans to equip all 4,748 hotel rooms at Wynn Las Vegas with Echo, Amazon’s hands-free voice-controlled speaker. The introduction of this technology into every guest room, beginning this month with installation in suites, will be an industry-first in the world, allowing every guest of Wynn Las Vegas to control various hotel room features with a series of voice commands via Alexa, the brain behind Echo.
“As we have moved through the years, technology has always played an important part in our resorts,” says Steve Wynn, chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts. “The thing that Amazon has done with Alexa is quite perfect. If I have ever seen anything in my 49 years of developing resorts that has made our job of delivering a perfect experience to our guests easier and help us get to another level, it is Alexa.
“The ability to talk to your room is effortlessly convenient. In partnership with Amazon, becoming the first resort in the world in which guests can verbally control every aspect of lighting, temperature and the audio-visual components of a hotel room is yet another example of our leadership in the world of technology for the benefit of all of our guests,” says Wynn.
Alexa will be fully operational in all guest rooms by summer 2017, and will initially control guest room lights, room temperature, drapery and the television. As the project evolves, future features such as personal assistant functions will be introduced.
“Millions of people already enjoy interacting with Alexa at home via their Echo devices, and now they will be able to experience the same convenience while traveling,” says Steve Rabuchin, vice president of Amazon Alexa. “Wynn Las Vegas is known for its comfort and luxury, and we are excited to work with the resort to enhance its guest experience with Alexa.”
Alexa is a the brain behind Amazon Echo and other Alexa-enabled devices — just ask and she’ll answer questions, read the news, set timers and alarms, recite calendars, check sports scores, control smart devices in-home, and more. Since Alexa runs in the cloud, she is always getting smarter — plus it is simple and free for developers to build Alexa skills and integrate Alexa into their own products. In the U.S., there are already more than 6,000 skills available for Alexa.
Wynn Las Vegas was not the first hotel to install voice-control technology in their hotel rooms, however. In August 2016 Aloft Hotels implemented the “Project Jetson” initiative in several of their hotel locations, which moved to enable control temperature, light and other room settings. Guests could control these settings through a custom Aloft app on iPads included in their rooms.
With people’s increasing desire to have control over their experiences, who knows where advances in technology will lead resort owners in the future.