Last week, Prince Harry was in New York for a few days. The trip was not announced ahead of time, and after Harry had been seen at Lotte New York Palace Hotel, his team confirmed the NYC visit and said that he had some “business meetings” in the city. Harry and his team have promised some big new business venture, possibly involving veterans, for months now, but nothing has been announced or confirmed. Well, the Royalist Substack dared to ask: what if Harry’s “business” was some kind of influencer deal with the hotel?

If you blinked, you might’ve missed it: Prince Harry took a secret trip back to America last week. And curiously, the only part that’s been publicized was a stop at a luxury hotel bar. The unusual story was buried in the virtual pages of People on Nov. 5. Prince Harry was spotted at the “glamorous” Lotte New York Palace Hotel three days prior, the headline blared. He used the “luxurious” locale’s “opulent” and “lavish” Gold Room to take meetings. Harry’s camp confirmed he’d been there and even tossed in some quotes.

Why would privacy-obsessed Harry want his whereabouts on an otherwise secret trip to be confirmed? What’s in it for him? And why wasn’t he at the Royal Family’s unofficial New York home away from home, The Carlyle?

It all smells suspiciously like an influencer deal: you get spotted at our hotel, we’ll comp you a room or at least a hefty hospitality check. Of course, we’ll probably never know if any freebies did, in fact, change hands. But Harry’s spokesperson confirmed the visit and clarified to People that Harry was holding meetings “focused on new business opportunities and partnerships” at the hotel, the nature of which they threaten to reveal soon.

“It could easily be a deal,” Ronn Torossian, founder and chairman of 5W Public Relations, told The Royalist. “A few nights at a luxury hotel in exchange for an appearance is a win-win. The hotel gets a headline money can’t buy, and the guest gets a stay worth thousands of dollars a night.”

A name at Harry’s level could charge $100,000 or more for this, Torossian said, but a bespoke arrangement like a donation or access could also be made. Torossian’s firm has a celebrity influencer-marketing operation, and he confirmed more and more rich people are wheeling and dealing for freebies these days.

“Free stays, free products and free access have always been part of it,” he said. “The key is authenticity and disclosure. If it feels real, everyone wins. If it feels staged, the audience notices.”

If any of the “business opportunities” Harry’s spokesperson mentioned involve free hotel rooms, you could do worse than the Lotte New York Palace. It isn’t a household name like The Carlyle or The Waldorf-Astoria, but its rooms will still run you $1,000 per night on a weekday in November. That’s about half the price of those luxury titans.

[From The Royalist]

I’ll admit that the coverage of Harry’s New York visit was odd, and yes, I clocked the fact that Harry was staying at a different hotel for this visit too. Harry has never been associated with Lotte New York Palace Hotel before now. And usually, when Harry and/or Meghan visit New York in particular, they keep their hotel details locked down for the most part, although we learned via Meghan’s Harper’s Bazaar interview last year that she usually stays at a friend’s townhouse (where the staffers use her title). Does it follow that Harry was being paid to turn up at this particular hotel? Eh. If anything, the more likely conspiracy is that Harry genuinely had business meetings at Lotte New York Palace Hotel and the HOTEL leaked it and ensured that they got top-line mentions in Page Six and People Mag. Think about it – that makes more sense than “Harry got paid $100K to stay at a hotel.”

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.