Starboard Group Expands to Land With New Las Vegas Boutiques

Starboard Group, which is known for bringing the retail experience to cruise ships, has turned for the first time to opening boutiques on land.

Three shops — Luxe by Starboard, The Edit by Starboard and Baubles by Starboard — officially open on Wednesday in the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino, located at 3000 Paradise Road. A fourth Starboard shop on land is scheduled to open in May at Westgate Vacation Villas Resort in Orlando, Fla.

The shops are being launched and operated by Starboard Resort, the new land-based vacation retail division of the Starboard Group. They’re just the first of many land-based shops Starboard sees opening in the future, according to company executives.

“We’re jumping in with both feet. There is no shortage of opportunity,” Lisa Bauer, president and chief executive officer of Starboard Group, told WWD in an exclusive interview last week.

Beyond the shops opening in Las Vegas and Orlando, “There are two other cities I can’t talk about yet that I’m just about to sign,” said Bauer. “So the growth is definitely there. And you know, it’s such a natural for us because we have the infrastructure to do it.”

Starboard was purchased by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton in 2000, and in 2023, Starboard became part of Global Travel Retail Holdings, a joint venture with LVMH and four investors, one of whom is Jim Gissy, CEO of Westgate. The Miami-based Starboard Group includes the Starboard Cruise, Starboard Luxury and Starboard Resort units.

The incursion onto land “stems from the core of what we do — vacation retail,” said Stacy Shaw, senior vice president, Luxury and Resorts, Starboard Group. “There’s an entirely untapped channel of resorts that we can potentially partner with. There is such tremendous potential in the United States and around the world.” Luxury, family, spa, ski, beach and other resorts and vacation properties are being considered.

“It’s really exciting to take what we have learned and done, and take the expertise we’ve gathered over 65 years curating for vacationers at sea, and translate that onto land,” Shaw added. “So there’s a lot of familiarity, but also a lot of unknowns, and many things that are different.”

Starboard, founded 65 years ago, partners with more than 750 brands for its shops situated on more than 90 cruise ships from 15 cruise lines, among them The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, Silverseas Cruises, Crystal, Royal Carribean Group and its Celebrity Cruises subsidiary and Carnival Cruise Line.

At the Westgate Las Vegas, the shops each have their own flavor.

• Luxe by Starboard, a 300-square-foot shop will sell fine jewelry, natural and lab-grown diamonds, certified pre-owned Swiss timepieces, pre-owned and vintage designer bags and small leather goods from luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Prada. Luxe by Starboard is by the front and impossible to miss entering the resort, sitting next to the casino, and further stands out with its glass exterior on three sides.

• The Edit by Starboard, is a 1,250-square-foot shop selling trendy and edgy fashion and special occasion apparel for women and men, along with handbags, Westgate Resorts branded apparel, a bridal capsule, candles, fragrances and souvenirs. There’s eveningwear, daywear and resortwear by Venus, apparel from Lamarque; vintage-inspired graphic Ts from Recycled Karma, and fashion, accessory and fashion jewelry from Mary Frances, Shiraleah and America & Beyond. Men’s offerings include apparel from Psycho Bunny, 7Diamonds, and Rock Roll n Soul, while accessories include sunglasses from Ray-Ban, Gucci, Prada and NYS and tech from Skullcandy.

• Baubles by Starboard, is a 250-square-foot shop offering fashion jewelry, permanent jewelry and customization options, such as on-site engraving providing guests with “wearable memory” options that connect them back to their vacation experience; charms and accessories that celebrate wanderlust and Las Vegas, and the first brick-and-mortar location for Taudrey Jewelry.

“During the pandemic, we redid our North Star,” Bauer explained. “We were very purposeful about saying that we wanted to be a leisure-travel retailer, and we weren’t specific to say the vision was only cruise.” At that time, the cruise business came to a standstill.

“The cruise industry is so resilient,” said Bauer. “Look how well cruise lines are performing now. There are all these new ships coming in.…Cruise is clearly our core, but that same customer that is picking a destination, that has a vacation mindset, that’s going to celebrate something, the same guest going on a cruise is going to a resort. And so we thought, why don’t we take our retail expertise to resorts.

“There are a lot of people that operate retail in resorts and there are some that outsource it, but there really isn’t anybody that owns that resort space, from a retail perspective.”

“At one time, the Westgate Las Vegas was the largest hotel in the world. So there’s a lot of retail space there. I envision that we will open more than three shops in there at some point,” said Bauer. The resort has 3,000 rooms.

Asked why Starboard decided on creating three boutiques, rather than a single large one, Bauer said, “When you offer beautiful vintage handbags, certified pre-owned Rolex watches, lab-grown diamonds, natural diamonds, those products really sit nicely together. And then when you’ve got fashion jewelry, or apparel for an edgy lifestyle, these are different experiences. We try to lean into (creating) the experience and that’s why we offer the different boutiques.” With Starboard’s merchandising, “Our philosophy is a good, better, best strategy.

“The guest who goes into Baubles and buys a charm bracelet as a gift, that same person might walk into the Luxe boutique and buy themselves a beautiful Hermès handbag,” she said. With the good, better and best pricing structure, “We have something for everybody’s wallet.

“We don’t have a lot for kids just yet, but there’s definitely an opportunity there,” Bauer noted. “We will in Orlando. In Vegas, we leaned into a big capsule for brides. We know there’s a lot of bachelorette parties and a lot of brides,” in Vegas, she said, and some might perform their nuptials in Westgate’s chapel.

The approach to branding is different on land versus seas. “Starboard has not necessarily been a consumer-facing brand,” said Bauer. “On Royal Caribbean, people think it’s a Royal Caribbean shop. You don’t see the name Starboard on any of the cruise ships. So we hired an agency to help us come up with a name, we did consumer research, and at the end of the day, the consumers picked Starboard.”

Operating on land versus the sea gives Starboard, in Las Vegas at least, access to a larger population of potential customers — those staying at the resorts, gamblers at the casino for a day, convention center guests, and country club guests. The Westgate resort has a Loop station in front and is only 0.4 miles from the Las Vegas Strip.

With every cruise line Starboard works with, “we are looking specifically at how many guests are on board, their demographic, the ship’s destinations, and activities and experiences in those destinations,” Bauer said.

With land-based shops, “There’s going to be no formula. We’re going to look at the opportunity, the traffic flow. Who the guests are, and what are the other opportunities?”

Shaw did cite five “buckets” that guide the merchandising of the shops on land: things you forgot to pack or might need if luggage is lost; clothes for an event or special evening; typical vacation garb such as resort wear or workout clothes; “celebratory” purchases/gifts to capture a particulary moment or memory of the vacation, and impulse buys related to the destination. Products at Westgate don’t duplicate what’s sold at other shops there. Depending on the Starboard shops, services offered include product personalization and customizing: ear piercing and personal shopping appointments.

“Orlando couldn’t be more different from Las Vegas, other than it’s also a huge meeting and convention city as well,” said Shaw. “But the Villas at West Gate, is much more of a family destination, and it (requires) a completely different way of curating altogether.”

Asked if Starboard is considering additional locations for stores, Shaw replied, “We’re looking everywhere.…Recently I had a company with a number of hotels in the United States with retail already contacting me but they’re looking to do a big international expansion. They are attracted to us for our expertise in vacation retail and also our experience with global logistics. So there’s really no limit to how many or where these resorts are. I’m leading the business development efforts for starboard resort, and there are quite a few conversations already going on. It would be really productive to find resort partners with multiple properties looking to create some consistency in the offering they have with special touches that relate to the specific destination they’re in, just like with Westgate, which has 22 resorts, but we’re only talking about a handful of them right now.

“At Westgate Las Vegas, we are always looking for innovative ways to enhance our guests’ experience, and our partnership with Starboard Resort marks an exciting new chapter in luxury and experiential retail,” said Cami Christensen, president and general manager, Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino. “These new boutiques bring an elevated shopping experience to our resort, offering curated selections and immersive activations that perfectly complement the energy and sophistication of Las Vegas.”