THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
MAXIM Australia|May 2020
What true ultra-luxury bespoke adventure travel means now...
JARED PAUL STERN
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
Want to hop on a private jet, fly to an exotic destination and have an over-the-top vacation? All it takes these days is a decent credit limit. Thanks to a sort of dumbing down of luxury travel in recent years, what was once reserved for the elite traveller is now accessible to almost anyone, as brands try to appeal to a larger audience and, as a result, end up alienating top -tier clients.

“Luxury brands often miss the opportunities to reach the highest echelon of travellers by serving downmarket experiences,” as WealthX, a data company that curates intelligence on wealthy individuals from around the world, notes. “It’s the result of a troubling trend of mass market luxury, standardised luxury travel marketing [that] appeals to both high net worth [HNW] and ultra-high net worth [UHNW] individuals, and the homogenisation of luxury goods and services across these tiers of wealth.” The distinction is an important one as the HNW category includes those with a net worth of US$1 million to more than US$29 million while to qualify for UHNW status you must have US$30 million or more to your name.

Take for example a recent article in National Geographic UK that gushed that “Luxury travel operators are increasingly going to the ends of the earth to curate completely personalised trips to inaccessible destinations…. Travel agents have been elevated to travel designers who can arrange access to places that would be out of bounds to most of us.” We picture said “travel designers” with sleek offices dotted with lots of Italian leather chairs but little in the way of true bespoke offerings.

This story is from the May 2020 edition of MAXIM Australia.

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This story is from the May 2020 edition of MAXIM Australia.

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