THE NEW YORK TIMES: Inside the arms race to satisfy travelers for whom exclusivity is everything and money is no object.
Today’s super-rich travelers want luxury. They want personalized attention. They want non-cookie-cutter hotels with impeccable service and private villas with personal butlers. They want to never, ever, have to wait, stand in line or be herded around with other people.
Most of all, said Carlo Nocella, head of global sales at Vavius Club, the loyalty program for a destination management company in Italy, they want “to feel that they have something that other people cannot achieve.”
What that looks like is the preoccupation of an ever expanding, ever more elaborate travel infrastructure — travel advisers, concierge services and members’ clubs — catering to the extravagant needs and money-is-no-object whims of ultra-high-net-worth clients.
Roughly defined as people who have investable assets of at least $30 million and are prepared to pay, say, thousands of dollars a night for a hotel room or tens of thousands of dollars for a villa, these clients are in turn fueling an arms race in the world of high-end leisure. The goal is to offer the most fabulous, the most opulent, the most individualized and the most singular properties, experiences and services imaginable. » | Sarah Lyall | Wednesday, February 11, 2026
