Nice little Emirates Airlines tie up with Tablet Hotels, trying to increase hotel and flight yields without sacrificing the glitzy, opulent 7-star image:

As the recession spirit grips hoteliers all around the world, with cheap chic and rough luxe becoming watchwords in Paris and London and New York, the die-hard luxury hound in search of a hit of the pure stuff is left with fewer and fewer options. Fortunately they’ll always have Dubai, the one city where the gilt edge has yet to wear off.

Dubai’s comparative advantage is in the area of five-, six-, and seven-star opulence, and in these tough times their hoteliers are sticking to their strengths. Our friends at Emirates Airlines have chosen the very best: they’ve put together a selection of hotels in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Amman, Jordan that run the gamut from plush desert oases to urban-luxe palaces to the daddy of them all, the towering Burj Al Arab. And they’ve provided their own Tablet Guide to the Middle East as well, featuring recommendations from Amman’s legendary Citadel Hill to the highest of high-end Dubai dining.

Peter Manice and Drew Patterson founders of Jetsetter.com, Gilt Group’s entry into the travel market, were at Columbia a few weeks explaining how their membership model addresses one of the luxury travel industry’s main problems: optimizing revenue without damaging brands through discounting. Gilt have got off to a good start in the same space for luxury fashion (they have a kick-ass iPhone app btw). It will be interesting to see how Jetsetter does and how both models scale up while maintaining the cachet necessary for the luxury brands to use them as a channel.

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