The ultrarich are spending a fortune to live in extreme privacy

When developers Masoud and Stephanie Shojaee dined out recently, they headed to the members-only section of MILA restaurant in Miami Beach, Fla., where they were whisked to a table already bearing their favorite cocktails and chopsticks engraved with their names.

- Arian Campo-Flores

Centner Wellness, a high-end holistic center in Miami using the latest tech, can be booked by the wealthy for tailored experience.

On a business trip to Dubai last month, the Shojaees exited their Bombardier Global jet and later stepped into a waiting Maybach that zipped them to a lavish hotel. They went through a private entrance that bypassed the lobby and took an elevator straight up to the Royal Suite, where a staffer checked them in and presented their butler.

“For me, luxury in this era is defined as time-saving and efficiency and service,” said Masoud Shojaee, the 65-year-old chief executive of Shoma Group, a residential and commercial developer.

The ultrawealthy are wielding their growing fortunes to glide through a rarefied realm unencumbered by the inconveniences of ordinary life. They don’t wait in lines. They don’t jostle with airport crowds or idle unnecessarily in traffic.

Instead, an ecosystem of exclusive restaurants, clubs, resorts and other service providers delivers them customized and exquisite experiences as fast as possible. The spaces they inhabit are often private, carefully curated and populated by like-minded and similarly well-heeled peers.

The acquisitive power of the very rich is soaring. The net worth held by the top 0.1% of households in the U.S. reached $23.3 trillion in the second quarter this year, from $10.7 trillion a decade earlier, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The amount held by the bottom 50% increased to $4.2 trillion from $900 billion over that period.

The Miami area provides a window into this world. Long a destination for wealthy elites from the Northeast, Europe and Latin America, it has become an even stronger magnet for the affluent in recent years, fostered by pandemic-era migration and the region’s emergence as a technology and finance hub.