The price of typical luxury hotels and resorts is reaching eye-watering heights. Travel agency group Internova reports that the average hotel rate its clients are paying across Italy is $1,936 per night. That’s a bargain compared to Turks & Caicos, which is $4,838.
Matthew Upchurch, CEO of Virtuoso, a consortium of luxury-focused travel agencies that expects to report over $35 billion in sales for 2024, says the trend line is strong. Travel advisors from the group report that the number of trips booked for the next two years, costing at least $50,000, is up by 42%.
Still, that’s just scratching the surface of what the super-rich are willing to spend as they seek to combine luxury and privacy.
So, how much will UHNWs pay for the top luxury experiences and privacy together? It seems the sky’s the limit. Think seven-digits!
To answer the call and lighten the bank accounts of the world’s wealthiest families, travel industry executives attending the International Luxury Travel Market, which concluded last week in Cannes, France, were talking up a host of new options from a private hotel in the middle of Paris to your own cruise ship and railway car. The target audience was the travel advisors that billionaires and centi-millionaires use to figure things out.
Maison Barrière Vendôme, from the family-owned Barrière Group, is located between Place Vendôme and the Tuileries Garden. It will open next month with just 26 rooms, suites, and apartments, a restaurant, and a spa.
Nathaniel Most, the company’s vice president of sales, says it was designed for what the industry calls full takeovers, in this case, privatizing all the facilities, including the restaurant, bar and spa, for one customer and their guests. He declined to provide a specific price.
Likewise, Mandarin Oriental is targeting UHNWs who want privacy and luxury accommodations, as well as the highly trained staff who provide the attention to detail one receives in the best five-star hotels.
For clients where the Presidential Suite or even blocking an entire hotel floor isn’t enough, Senior Vice President Alex Schellenberger says the group recently assumed full ownership of its branded residential rental business, relaunching it as Mandarin Oriental Exceptional Homes.
While the residences range from $10,000 per night to price on request, the luxury hotel group will now employ and train staff, including housekeeping, with hotel chefs and spa therapists on call.
Schellenberger says plans call for growing inventory from 25 residences to over 100.
LVMH, which dropped $3.2 billion for Belmond in 2018, has been pouring money into the brand’s hotels, river barges, and trains. Now, it is taking its luxury train trips to the next level of customized privacy.
Venice Simplon-Orient-Express will add the L’Observatoire Suite next year, and is, in fact, your own private rail car designed by French photographer and street artist JR.
There’s a free-standing bathtub, a tearoom with a working fireplace, your private dining room, and dedicated attendants. The nightly rate is about $80,000.
Senior Vice President Arnaud Champenois says clients choose from various itineraries and set the number of nights they wish to ride the rails, with their private train car attached to its luxury trains, much like the Gilded Age barons did.
The new heights of private luxury aren’t restricted to land either.
Accor CEO Sebastien Bazin reversed course on plans to sell his Orient Express Silenseas, a 720-foot yacht that will set sail in 2026 cabin-by-cabin like a regular cruise ship.
With just 54 cabins and suites in a space that would typically see 200, the new vessel will be primarily sold for full ship charters.
He says the company will have the leeway to bring the ship to the customer instead of making clients come to a specific port of embarkation.
Like the superyacht charter market, customers will set their own itineraries.
The price tag is $1 million per day with a seven-night minimum, and bookings are already being taken.
Nikheel Advani, Co-founder and COO of Grace Bay Resorts in the aforementioned Turks & Caicos, takes issue that the to the stars pricing is about getting clickbait headlines.
While he has seen million-dollar packages where 95% of the value was in a diamond that came with it, he says, villas that accommodate 10 or 15 guests are going to cost a lot of money.
These hotels, cruise ships, and trains built for a single client speak to the trend that the wealthy often travel with large groups of family, friends, and business associates.
In fact, Belmond’s Champenois says its trains do a brisk business of full buyouts, so the dedicated coach is perhaps icing on the cake.
Returning to the reality of luxury travel for those of us with fewer digits in our bank account balances, Internova Executive Vice President Albert Herrera shares good and bad news.
Bad news first. He says that since 2019, the number of U.S. hotels with an average daily rate of over $1,000 per night has more than doubled.
So, what’s the titanium lining?
Herrera says after several years of double-digit price increases, rates for luxury trips in 2025 are only edging up by 1-to-2%.
This story was originally published on forbes.com.
