How The Travel Preferences Of The 0.1% Have Changed In The Last Decade

Luxury travelers are wary of professionally edited photos that gloss over a hotel’s imperfections, and overbearing public relations strategies touting something less than luxurious as the real deal. At least, they should be.

That was the message behind a well-read blog post four years ago written by Jaclyn Sienna India, the founder of ultra-luxury travel and lifestyle concierge company Sienna Charles. Under the headline “Why Luxury Hotels are Dead,” India explained how luxury travel brands bent over backward for social media influencers and devalued personalized, tailored services — the standard by which ultra-wealthy travelers measure excellence. A property’s image came to matter more than the experience it could deliver.

Since then, the pandemic has receded. Partnering with influencers has become standard marketing procedure among even non-luxury brands. Many of the world’s ultra-wealthy travelers decided they would rather spend their time abroad in a private villa or yacht than a pricey hotel room. So, are luxury hotels still dead? Are there any signs of life?

In short, yes and no.

“High-end hospitality services are degrading because there are so many people with money that they no longer have to do their best to compete for a narrow audience,” India explained via email. “Nowadays, luxury travel is accessible not only to the ultra-rich but also to people with up to $30 million net worth, who are considered rich but not ultra-rich. And all of them, multi-millionaires and billionaires, are trying to get into the same restaurants, villas, or hotels seeking the exclusive experience.”

On one hand, this apparent contradiction makes sense: more people can afford travel experiences today compared to years past, so maintaining the standard established for a few ultra-rich clients should only get harder as more people try to access the same experiences. On the other hand, if luxury travel spending is at an all-time high and only continuing to grow, why hasn’t that improved the experience for the average luxury traveler?

“Everything is at 100% occupancy since the pandemic, which is why hospitality providers don’t have to try too hard,” India said. “The travel industry has also become highly transactional. If you have a bad experience at a hotel, you won’t return, but you’ve wasted a ton of time and money when you could have had a better experience.”

The implications for the luxury travel scene are many. Hospitality brands that formerly competed with one another are now competing against what the ultra-rich — the over-$30 million net worth crowd — can easily afford to provide themselves.

India offered some examples:

Luxury Travelers Aren’t Dining Out

Rather than dining out, luxury travelers simply employ private chefs in their destination homes. It’s also become quite common for a chef to travel with the family when going from Point A to Point B. The alternative, India said, is bleak: “I was in London earlier this year and complained to the manager of one of Mayfair’s best restaurants about how poor the service was in the city. And he shared that staff are really hard to find, to the extent that if people mess up or don’t show up to work, they won’t be fired because it’s just too complicated to replace them. The same happens in Paris. You can wait half an hour to be served a drink at one of the Top 7 restaurants in the city.”

Hotels Can’t Meet The Demand Among Luxury Travelers

Hotels are facing similar pressures for which the supply of staff has yet to meet the demand among travelers. “Hotels are running at 99% occupancy and are dealing with short-staffed, ever-changing and untrained teams, not focusing on client experience,” India said. “General managers are in the office creating spreadsheets to provide to their private equity owners instead of greeting guests and training the team about service touchpoints.” She suggests this is turning off experienced travelers who can afford to purchase their own villas and yachts, pick their staff, and train them to meet their own standards and expectations.

So, if quality is hard to find in the hospitality sector, where can someone who can afford good service find it? India believes this is where the membership-based model of private concierge services (like her own) comes in. “It’s a commitment to make service better and better each time,” she said.

Luxury hotels might not be dead, but they have fundamentally changed by definition in the last 10 years — at least for the ultra-wealthy set, if not the nouveau riche. How the hospitality sector responds, and if it can keep up with the growing demand for exclusive services and experiences, will be among the industry trends to watch in the next decade.