The Bicester Collection, a family of 11 distinctive luxury shopping destinations in Europe and China, is introducing a new virtual retail experience, bringing its Village environment to audiences worldwide, and showcasing its curation of the world’s leading luxury fashion and lifestyle brands, enhanced by five-star hospitality and services. This new offering is powered by Emperia, an immersive virtual retail platform. Emperia’s platform allows retailers to both build and maintain cutting-edge shoppable, virtual experiences, while leveraging data monitoring to optimise in-store virtual user experience, brand engagement and conversions.

Designed to represent each of the Villages’ exquisite physical environments, the new virtual experience brings together Bicester Village (UK), La Roca Village (Spain), La Vallée Village (France) and Fidenza Village (Italy), maintaining the Villages’ visual integrity and real-life shopping experience. Guests around the world can wander and navigate freely around each virtual Village, discovering the Collection and its commitment to extraordinary experiences through its experiential offers, hospitality and services and portfolio of luxury retailers.

A feature of each of the real-life Villages is The Apartment, a dedicated private space that welcomes the Village’s private clients during their visits. While the physical Apartments are invitation-only, this experience invites all guests to explore the luxurious Apartments virtually.

In addition to discovering the private spaces, guests can also access the Collection’s signature hospitality offering by pre-booking physical, in-Village services like Hands-free Shopping, joining its membership programme, and booking live, virtual personal shopping appointments. Outside The Apartment, in the virtual Village itself, The Bicester Collection leverages the intrigue and enticement of real-life window shopping, inviting users to discover a selection of virtual boutiques, with each click on a display window bringing up a curated list of the Village’s luxury brand offering in different categories. These experiential virtual offerings allow The Bicester Collection to tailor the shopping experience to each guest’s needs before, during and after their visit to one of the physical Villages.

Highlighting the global reach of The Bicester Collection, a map introduces guests to the locations of the Villages around the world, allowing users to move seamlessly from one Village to another. Guests who explore all four Virtual Villages will receive a gift voucher, redeemable at all Villages throughout Europe and China.

“The Bicester Collection’s new virtual experience extends our reach to international audiences, beyond our Villages’ physical locations, while emphasising our dedication to an unparalleled physical shopping experience,” said Sylvie Freund-Pickavance, Global Strategy and Business Development Director at The Bicester Collection. “We continue to offer seamless hospitality and exquisite environments for our guests to discover as they begin their journey virtually before enjoying the physical Village experience. While each Village presents a uniquely curated local brand mix, our guests can expect a consistent emphasis on impeccable hospitality across our Villages, including membership and personal shopping, making The Bicester Collection an ideal destination for frequent travellers.”