Opened to be seen in

The coast season opens this month, and some of the units opening on it were never business decisions.

The decision gets taken in a family group in May, by whoever wants somewhere to be this summer. A cousin has a view on the location. Somebody knows a contractor. By the time anyone builds a model, the model is not deciding anything. It is being drafted to fit a decision the household has already taken, which is why the occupancy assumption is generous, the season runs fourteen weeks instead of nine, and the fit-out becomes an investment rather than a cost.

I have been handed the plan for one of these more than once, and the brief always has the same quality. No customer in it. No job the place is hired to do. A great deal of interest in the opening night.

None of that is stupid. A family buying itself a summer address is a real purchase with a real return, and the return is paid in something other than covers. What makes it expensive is that the price is never written down. Writing it down would mean a line that says this is worth a certain amount to us as a place to be seen, and everything above that figure has to come out of the trading.

So the number stays unsaid, the accounts are built to protect it, and the marketing budget inherits the gap. That is the brief nobody can answer: make a status purchase read as a business, using covers.

Naming what the place is for would cost one uncomfortable conversation in May. Not naming it costs the season.