California Hotel and Hospitality Union Faces Strong Opposition, Referendum Rejected
LVMH: "We Don't Care About Areas That Don't Want Us"
The plan by the French luxury group Mo?t Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) to build a hotel in Beverly Hills, California, USA, has been canceled. This is because it was rejected in a Beverly Hills residents' vote.
Foreign media such as The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the Financial Times (FT) reported on the 27th (local time) that "LVMH's ultra-luxury hotel establishment plan was narrowly rejected."
The Cheval Blanc hotel under LVMH planned to establish a hotel on Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills' upscale shopping street, and received approval from the city hall last year. It was to be a top-tier membership hotel with 115 rooms, targeting 500 members.
LVMH Chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault opened the first Cheval Blanc hotel in Courchevel, a ski resort in France, in 2006, and then expanded branches to Paris, the Maldives, Moscow, and others. LVMH currently operates ultra-luxury hotel and travel businesses such as Cheval Blanc and Bulgari Hotels & Resorts. LVMH's hospitality sector recorded a record high revenue of 79 billion euros (about 112 trillion KRW) last year.
LVMH argued that the hotel would bring approximately $780 million (about 1.03 trillion KRW) in tax revenue to Beverly Hills over the next 30 years. Additionally, they pledged to donate $26 million to the city and invest $2 million in cultural and artistic projects.
Rodeo Drive, a luxury shopping street in Beverly Hills, a representative affluent area in the United States. [Photo by Pixabay] [Image source=Pixabay]
However, the Beverly Hills hotel construction, which LVMH had been preparing for over three years, faced strong opposition from local labor unions. The union, consisting of 32,000 hotel and hospitality workers in Southern California, launched an active opposition campaign and ultimately succeeded in securing signatures from 10% of voters, a condition for holding a referendum.
The union argued, "The LVMH hotel does not include specific plans related to housing for employees in the construction plan," and stated, "Without company-provided housing, employees cannot live in this ultra-luxury neighborhood, so the hotel construction plan must be rejected."
Beverly Hills, a city within Los Angeles County, is one of the representative wealthy neighborhoods in the United States. It has a population of about 32,000, and the median household income exceeds $100,000 (about 133 million KRW) annually. Therefore, there is no suitable housing for workers coming from outside.
Some residents also opposed the hotel establishment. In leaflets distributed under the name of "Residents Against Overdevelopment," they expressed skepticism, saying, "The LVMH hotel building is too large and tall, does not blend with the surroundings, and will worsen traffic congestion."
Meanwhile, Anish Melwani, LVMH's North America Chairman and CEO, commented on the referendum, saying, "If the residents do not approve the project, the company does not plan to go through the strict procedures it has already undergone over several years again."
He added, quoting the Latin phrase "Vox populi, vox Dei" (The voice of the people is the voice of God), "We are not interested in building a hotel in a community that does not want us there."
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