Luxury Travel Has a Spectacle Problem
We’ve seen the pool.
Actually, we’ve seen the pool from above, from the water, at sunrise, at sunset and in a Reel titled “POV: you finally booked the Maldives.”
We’ve seen the room too. We know what breakfast looks like. We’ve watched somebody open the curtains dramatically enough that we already know exactly what the view is going to look like when we open the curtains.
And, like, I get it. Half the fun of booking a trip is researching it beforehand and seeing all the things. But this immediate and excessive access that is readily available at 2 a.m. when you can’t sleep…. its created an interesting problem for luxury travel: By the time we get there, visually, we’ve kind of already been.
The hotel did not get less beautiful. But we’ve already started consuming part of the experience before we even check-in. It’s basically visual desensitization. And I think that is forcing luxury to work a lot harder for the same wow. Walk with me.
Pretty has less runway now
There was a time when seeing the hotel was part of arriving at the hotel. Back when our internet was dial-up, we heard “you’ve got mail” and panicked when your flip phone “connected” to the internet. I see you, Millenials. Then fast forward a few years and we were still going in semi-blind but we still booked based on a handful of professional photos, maybe read a magazine review, crossed our fingers and showed up.
Now? I can tell you what half of a resort looks like without having ever stepped foot on the property.
And don’t get me wrong, the views are still GIV-ING. Okay. But the problem is there are now approximately 47 gorgeous properties sitting in your saved folder on any given device.
A beautiful lobby, a dramatic staircase, an outdoor shower, the freestanding tub facing the ocean. None of those things suddenly became unimpressive, they just became easier to compare…and easier to compare means harder to differentiate.
That is the part I think matters.
If two hotels are both beautiful, both have the gorgeous pool and both photograph like somebody spent six months designing them specifically for Pinterest, something else has to break the tie. Increasingly, that “something else” is what happens around the room.
Hotels are having to earn the wow somewhere else
Look around luxury hospitality long enough and the same things keep popping up. 1. Better access. 2. More privacy. 3.Programming that actually belongs to the destination. 4.People with real expertise. 5. More control over how you spend your time. 6. A stronger sense that you could only be having this experience here.
That feels much more important now than adding another amenity, that frankly, nobody asked for. Let’s look at each, shall we?
#1 Access
This is one of the biggest ones. After-hours access. Private guides. Difficult reservations. Places you ordinarily could not enter. People you ordinarily would not meet. Also, and importantly, there is a big difference between access that meaningfully changes an experience and access that mostly gives you something impressive to mention at dinner later.
If seeing something privately gives you more time, better context, fewer crowds or an entirely different experience, fantastic. If we’re just being escorted through a different door for the plot, I have questions….
#2 Privacy
Luxury used to love announcing itself. Big lobby. Big entrance. Big everything. Now some of the most interesting products are doing almost the opposite. Fewer rooms. Quieter Spaces. Villas. Buyouts. Separate spaces. Properties where you can spend three days without seeing anybody you did not specifically ask to see.
There is something very luxurious about not having to participate.
#3 Programming
Not “here’s a list of things to do nearby.” **insert some serious eye-rolls** Actual. Programming.
The hotel has relationships, it brings the experience in, it can arrange something specific to where you are instead of dropping you into the same cooking class or wine tasting you could find yourself in twelve minutes online. This is where a property starts becoming part of the destination instead of somewhere you return to after experiencing the destination.
#4 Expertise
Information is free and plentiful online. Interpretation still isn’t. I can Google the history of a cathedral and even get the sparknote version from Gemini in 2.3 seconds flat. But babbyyyyy, that is not the same thing as spending two hours with someone who has studied it for twenty years and knows which tiny detail everyone else walks directly past.
Same goes for a safari guide, a sommelier, a local host, a concierge who actually knows the city and, yes, sometimes a really good butler. Still thinking about you Riccardo!
A human being who really knows what they’re doing can change how you understand a place in a way Google simply can’t.
#5 Control
This one might be less glamorous, but I’d argue it is one of the most useful. We’re talking flexible: arrival, dining, pacing. The option to not structure your entire day around when the hotel says breakfast ends or when the excursion van leaves is… priceless. Time is expensive too.
The more a hotel can give some of it back to you, the more luxurious the experience starts to feel.
#6 Only Here
This is the part that’s harder to name. Some places just feel specific. You could not pick them up, move them somewhere else and have the same stay.
The food makes sense there. The design makes sense there. The people, rituals, landscape and programming all belong to the place. That is probably the hardest part of luxury hospitality to manufacture.
Conveniently, it is also the part Instagram has the hardest time spoiling.
That said, sometimes you just want the room
Before this starts sounding like every vacation needs to become a culturally enriching personal development exercise: no.
Sometimes you want the hotel or the ridiculous room or the breakfast brought to you. You want to sit by the pool for six hours, order something with a tiny umbrella in it and accomplish absolutely nothing.
That is a legitimate use of money.
There are trips where the room is the experience. There are hotels where the reason to spend more is quite literally because it is prettier, more comfortable and you want to be there. Fine by me.
Luxury does not have to justify itself by turning us into better people. But it does help to know what job you are asking the hotel to do. Because two properties can both cost $1,400 a night and deliver two completely different versions of luxury. One might be a spectacular design hotel with an incredible pool, fantastic food and a room you actively want to spend the afternoon in. Another might have the less dramatic room but come with a private boat, extraordinary guides, a chef who will build dinner around what you found at the market that morning and access you could not easily recreate on your own.
Neither hotel is objectively “better” but one can absolutely be wrong for the trip you are trying to have. Thats where things get interesting.
“Luxury” is becoming a less useful filter
This is probably the downstream effect I care about most. Saying “I want a luxury hotel” tells me less than it used to. That’s why you’ll find me asking a decent amount of follow up questions, because regardless of how simple you think travel is. There’s levels to this game.
Do you want the hotel to be the destination? Do you want it to disappear into the background while you explore? Do you want privacy? How about access? Do you want to be taken care of every second? Want somebody to leave you completely alone? Do you want the kind of room where ordering room service and canceling the dinner reservation feels like the right choice? Or do you want somewhere beautiful to sleep because the entire point is what happens outside?
Those can all be luxury trips and they require very different stays.
And when every property already has professional photography, a rooftop bar and a pool somebody has flown a drone over, I think that distinction is only becoming more important.
Ultimately, the aesthetic can get you interested. It may even be enough to get you to book. But once you arrive, something else still has to make the stay worth remembering. That is the spectacle problem: We’ve seen the pool.
What happens after that is the part I’m absolutely keeping my eye on.
