Trend Watch: What Luxury looks like in 2019

From smart home technology to millennials looking for design and quality over brand heritage, there are some emerging top trends shaping luxury for 2019.

The Luxury Institute, which is the world's most trusted luxury consulting firm, has pointed out that Millennials, Generation-X and even Boomers are no longer concerned with brand heritage when making choices. They're more concerned with the 'now' and what brands have created value for them specifically in the past 24 hours.

In 2019, it's predicted that there will be a move towards networks of devoted brand customers when it comes to luxury goods, selling peer to peer within ethical boundaries rather than 'celebrity' influencers. Consumer-to-consumer will start to emerge more strongly and become a trend.

Another top trend for 2019, which has already begun is the leveraging of technology, data, analytics and Artificial Intelligence to strongly and effectively communicate the brands story and allow consumers to have good dialogue with brands back and forth.

When it comes to travel, luxury brands such as Five Star are still very strongly on the radar and according to the Affluent Traveller Collection, cultural connections, river cruising and sustainable travel are very much on trend and a preference is also emerging again for guided travel.

The Irish are particular fans of luxury brands and when it comes to cars, five years on from the end of the recession, the Irish luxury car market in particular has seen stellar growth levels.

The global luxury car market grew last year by 6pc to reach €489bn. In Ireland, the luxury car market is mirroring this with Irish people purchasing 85,831 new luxury cars over the last five years. These include Porsche, BMW, Audi, Mercedes Benz, Jaguar, Land Rover and Lexus with Tesla now emerging as a popular and growing choice.

The new Bentley Continental GT will probably be the most coveted high end luxury car this year across Ireland and has been already described as "the finest Grand Tourer ever produced". It's available from Ireland's only Bentley dealer, Charles Hurst of Belfast.

Here's to a luxurious 2019!