Luxury Travel Agents See Demand for Vacations Based on Specific Themes

The Skift New Luxury newsletter is our weekly newsletter focused on the business of selling luxury travel, the people and companies creating and selling experiences, emerging trends, and the changing consumer habits around the sector.

Luxury travel isn’t immune to the changes that are shaping the wider industry.

Of course, there is a significant proportion of tourists who are still intent on getting away from it all, but an increasing number of people want to get a better understanding of the place or places they are visiting by digging deeper.

In luxury travel, the amount of money involved only amplifies this trend. The travel advisors we spoke to said their high-end clients wanted to go to certain places for very specific reasons. “They are pushing boundaries in terms of exploring new regions via the lens of subject areas like architecture, design and fashion,” said one.

Flying to the Maldives or Dubai might still be a popular choice but that’s what everyone else does.

— Patrick Whyte, Europe Editor

5 Looks at Luxury

Luxury Travel Is Becoming Even More Specialized: Here’s a concept you are likely to hear more about soon: silo travel. It’s all about going to a place for a very specific reason, and luxury travelers are all over it.

The Big Deals Hotel CEOs Are Chasing in 2018: For the hotel industry, shopping for new brands and other companies to buy up is always in season.

Mandarin Oriental’s New Loyalty Program Has Tons of Perks But No Free Nights: While Mandarin Oriental’s loyalty program doesn’t offer the same lucrative points that many competing programs have, it does have some valuable perks. Best of all, the program is free and accessible to everyone.

Hyatt Extends Loyalty Program to Include Its Luxury Oasis Rentals: When will the other big hotel companies like Marriott and Hilton begin to take the sharing economy more seriously?

Hilton Claims Anbang Financial Woes Won’t Impact Management of Waldorf Astoria: While Hilton has emphasized that Anbang’s financial woes won’t impact its long-term management contract at the original Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, we can only imagine the sighs of relief Starwood employees must be issuing, knowing Anbang could have been their new owner instead of Marriott.

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Skift Europe Editor Patrick Whyte [pw@skift.com] curates the New Luxury newsletter. Skift emails the newsletter every Tuesday.

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