What is the luxury you seek on holiday?
Is it where you stay? The food you eat? The time you spend with family and friends?
For our clients, holiday luxury is all of the above. And experiencing something completely new.
The new holiday luxury is defined by authentic, immersive, one-of-a-kind experiences that other people don’t have access to. It’s living something that your friends can’t even imagine.
Our clients are connoisseurs of luxury – design, dining, hospitality, comfort. This article explains how we go beyond the standard definitions of luxury for our clients.
Going There First
Anywhere without cruise ships and 1000-room hotels is being called “off the beaten path”. Anywhere given this adjective has already been discovered.
Truly going off the beaten path is about exploring places that very few people have ever been before.
Like space. Or climbing a previously unclimbed mountain in Antarctica with White Desert. Or a safari expedition in Zambia, where our partners Time+Tide recently opened a camp in the Liuwa Plains.
Some people travel to the world’s most popular destinations and look for an off-the-beaten-path experience or location. Why not travel to destinations that are not yet considered tourist destinations, where local people are your guides? Like the Atlantic Ocean island of Principe. This is what our clients are asking for.
Being Guided by People Who Created History
A guide can be the most qualified and most experienced, but the very best guides are not actually guides. They’re people who helped to create the destination you are exploring.
At Belmond Cipriani you can explore Venice with a celebrated Venetian author, discovering non-touristic places that immortalised the city in print.
In Vietnam you can spend a day with Rehahn, a French photographer who sold the most expensive photo in Asia and spent ten years documenting all 56 of Vietnam’s different tribes.
Writers, artisans, designers, chefs, inventors: luxury is connecting with people who were relevant then, are relevant now, and will be relevant a century from now.
Uncovering the Surprising & Yet to be Told Story of a Destination
Angkor Wat near Siem Reap, Cambodia, is magnificent. You can be guided by the French archaeologist who has been documenting the historic site for the United Nations. That’s a deep insight into a famous story.
Do you know Siem Reap is emerging as one of Asia’s new fashion capitals? So how about a private catwalk show just for you, organised by Eric Raisina? He’s the designer who went to Paris and New York fashion weeks and put Cambodian fashion on the global map.
Upcoming destinations are becoming hotbeds for new trends, especially in art, fashion and design.
So stay at the Silo Hotel in South Africa, then meet artists and designers redefining contemporary art, from a black African perspective. Luxury is meeting these people at the forefront of new trends.
Just imagine being the person who can say I met Karl Lagerfeld or Tom Ford or Vera Wang, before they were globally famous.
Experiences That Will Always be Different For Everyone
Book a standard tour and the guide takes you on a predetermined route to predetermined stops, where your experience is the same as guests who go on the tour tomorrow, or yesterday.
Yet there are some experiences that are always different. An African Safari is the best example. You can do the exact same safari at the same lodge at the same time of year, and every time it will be completely different.
Lions hunting, elephants mating, cheetahs with cubs, a leopard with a fresh kill. All incredible sights. But if you were in the same place one hour later you wouldn’t see the same sight. You would experience something else.
This beautiful unpredictability of the wildlife experience is why we believe African safaris will become ome of the world’s most sought-after and exclusive luxury holidays.
Redefining a Luxury That is No Longer Luxurious
In the not-so-distant past going to the spa was a luxury. Now spas are a standard addition at most four-star hotels. A sauna really isn’t special anymore.
We’re inspired by hotels that have taken the spa experience into nature and connected it with local spirituality and customs.
Chable Yucatan is a restored 19th-century hacienda for a holiday in the Mexican jungle, with a spa located in a natural “cenote” or water-filled sinkhole. The traditional temazcal “steam house” purification ritual is amazing.
We love the Mayan renewal ceremony, a sacred rite based on Mayan medicinal philosophy.
Another example is Miavana in Madagascar, a private Indian Ocean island where their ethos is that everywhere out in nature, can be the spa.
Making it a Tailor-made Journey
Whether it’s bought from the brochure, or booked via a well-known travel app, everyone can fly somewhere and stay in a hotel. Most people can customise their own holiday by adding an airport transfer or tickets to an attraction.
Not many people experience the luxury of a truly tailor-made holiday, a journey that is created specifically, and only, for them.
If it’s easy to book online with a few clicks, then many other people have also booked it today. If it’s a complex holiday created by the skill and expertise of a specialist, it’s a holiday nobody else can copy.
This is what we call travel design. This is what we specialise in at EliteVoyage. Creating a unique luxury holiday for your personality and aspirations.
What Luxury Do You Seek on Holiday?
For us, staying in an amazing suite in an amazing hotel is the starting point. We simply wouldn’t create a holiday that’s uncomfortable.
When we create holidays we’re always asking what comes next? What will you experience?
What will be the moment that will last a lifetime?
So challenge us. How do you want to feel on holiday?
