Luxury Travel Industry Evolves To Accommodate More Exotic Tastes

A new report on luxury travel finds that younger, more affluent travelers are rapidly changing an industry that has long been geared toward the tastes of aging babyboomers.The “Direction of Luxury” study, published yesterday by a marketing association of several hotel and cruise ship companies known as the Luxury Alliance, states that the next hotspots for the well-heeled traveler include Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Peru, Vietnam, and the areas around the Indian Ocean and the Baltic Sea.“These places are considered the last frontiers. They are places you know your neighbor has never been,” a member of the Luxury Alliance, the chief executive officer of Relais & Chateaux, Jacques-Olivier Chauvin, said during a press conference yesterday.“Gen-Xers make their travel both international and extreme. They’re fearless about spending and not intimidated by luxury,” the vice president of Orient-Express Travel, Alistair Ballantine, said.An economic rebound in Japan and the affluence of the Russian elite is seeing an influx of new kinds of travelers, according to Mr. Chauvin. “Wealthy travelers from the emerging markets are looking for more than just ‘show-off’ resort destinations,” he said.And if your neighbor has been on safari in Botswana, there’s a new way of keeping up with the Joneses: The report recommends incorporating land-based treks like safaris with exotic sea excursions, like a cruise from Cape Town to Dubai, to form the ultimate “multi-component” vacation.The high-end hospitality industry has reason to focus on the changing demographics of the jetset: According to the Forrester Research firm, the number of people with $1 million in liquid assets is approaching nine million in America alone, about 3% of the country’s population. Plus, the average rich tourist spent $6,223 on leisure travel last year, 2.7 times more than the mass-market traveler, who spent $2,341.Savvy hotel and travel firms are finding that it pays to cater to the flourishing health and wellness vacation trend sweeping the luxury market. According to Mr. Ballantine, the Relais & Chateaux resort company opened 30 new spas last year alone. “Spa travelers stay 32% longer than regular guests, and they spend 25% more a day,” he said.A curious extension of the surge in popularity of the spa vacation is the surgery-and-post-op-recovery vacation. The Internet has been a boon to prominent doctors (especially plastic surgeons) advertising their ability to perform medical procedures in exotic locations. The time spent recovering from the operation is essentially a spa vacation, according to the report.The booming travel industry is not without new challenges. A fresh influx of private equity and hedge fund cash has fueled a “flip and run” acquisition binge that stands to compromise some of the world’s finest hotel brands. The report warns that “a stampede of maverick financiers” poses a serious threat to high-end hotels around the world because of the increasing trend on Wall Street of buying and flipping notable resort properties.“Take the legendary Savoy in London. It’s had something like seven owners during the past five years,” the senior vice president of marketing for the Leading Hotels in the World Ltd., Marshall Calder, said. “How do you maintain the integrity of your brand when bankers are simply out to turn fast profits?”Another factor facing the luxury travel industry is the dearth of talented people entering the hospitality workforce, according to the report. “A distressingly high percentage of new [hotel school] graduates are lured away by other industries, discouraged by a poor perception of what the future holds in the hospitality business, and attracted to avenues with more visible promise of success,” states the Luxury Alliance report.

Luxury Travel Industry Evolves To Accommodate More Exotic Tastes

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