Is there such a thing as too much luxury? Well, there might be when it comes to travel. Even though the world is a diverse place and dreams are subjective, catalyzing global principles apply, which make such a self-indulgent (and incredibly costly) stay often seem so speculative. At an age when less is more, let’s focus on beautiful places in the world that are overtly earning piano revenue, becoming shockingly expensive to visit. At a time when the outrage of the world is snapping at the runaway buys of the nouveau riche, traveling as if you were so rich you’d have missed out the money that was gone is, to say the least, ill-advised. Yet, the transformation of foreign countries into luxury hotels for the delight of only a very few moneyed moguls has taken hold. Indeed, this worldwide show of unassailable wealth is a shield or, indeed, a loudspeaker, building specific icons of thymic power to be worshipped by less cosmopolitan powers.
Good fortunes of incomprehensible measures have made the world’s richest-of-the-rich so intolerably affluent that they are able to pay huge sums of money to actually render a private asylum out of foreign properties put on open display at any cost. Financial status, courtesy, discretion, and inborn knowledge are the services tourism managers are to come to terms with. Social discrimination in which money is the only criterion is cast at the service staff, as it is indirectly also addressed to any compatriot visitor. Because, however daunting such numbers may be, social satisfaction from above is all about controlling them, worrying about the well-being of expensive travel is just another way for politicians and other aspirants to frown upon the once again objectionable super-rich.
Background and Significance
The wealthiest families in the world have at their disposal an almost unfathomable array of choices when it comes to selecting destinations to visit and holiday in. From ancient castles to stunning resorts, majestic yachts to deluxe private airplanes, these global elite have the funds and often the inclination to frequent whatever combination of destinations that they desire each year. The perception of the super wealthy traveling to the world’s most expensive destinations is a fascinating image. The belief is that high-end travelers have an exacting idea or see themselves visiting the world’s most exclusive settings and once there, desire a certain set of activities, products and services that will satisfy their sophisticated wants and needs and that are exclusive to such destinations.
Discussions being had throughout much of the wealth management industry certainly acknowledge the travel tourism sector’s importance, but not its dominance, in upholding the reputation of many exclusive destinations. The reality that exists behind the super-wealthy travelers of the globe presents evidence that probably many, if not most, of the world’s elite do not frequent these incredibly expensive destinations on a regular basis, if at all. Despite recent reports of rapidly increasing disposable income for some top-earning professionals and heads of family offices, it is the wealthiest of these individuals that visit the world’s most expensive destinations. Historically, the wealthy have been traveling to the same places for generations. While some slight adjustments have been made due to global conflict, natural disasters, or changing travel practices, the primary destination choices remain the same today as they did a millennium ago.
Understanding Luxury Travel
What exactly does “luxury” mean in the travel industry? According to the World Tourism Organization, “luxury tourism is the provision of high-quality, high-value services and products to the discerning traveler who not only wishes to experience luxury but also demands quality and world-class standards.” To clarify, a luxury traveler is not the same as your typical tourist who is not adverse to mass travel and is more concerned with having fun and collecting some souvenirs. Enthralling the luxury traveler is about gift-wrapping unique moments in time and providing service and comfort at the highest possible standards. Luxury also comes with a unique price tag that embodies activities and accommodation that are as unique as the traveler.
So exactly how unique is the market for luxury travel? Market research company, Allied Market Research, estimates that the world’s luxury travel market is projected to generate $1,154 billion by 2022, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 6.4% between 2016 and 2022. The market for luxury travel involves spending on long-haul flights and luxury lodging and destinations. Guests staying at luxury hotels and resorts pay top dollar not only for the right for solitude, but also for extraordinary experiences, an element that is now very important for attracting affluent and influential guests.
Definition and Evolution
Luxury in the context of travel, leisure, and tourism is invariably linked to a sense of exclusivity, extraordinary experiences, and high or deeper service-related human involvement. Luxury is a nuanced term that can be molded to particular desires, but it will always involve a high price, rarity, and distinction. The unique experiences of luxury can only allow a few to participate, a concept that necessarily provides exclusivity in this sphere. However, in an increasingly liberal and open world such as tourism, the privilege of exclusivity and the world associated with it allow for a relaxation of hierarchical values and customs. One person’s luxury destination might be another person’s routine choice.
The enactment of luxury is often related to the nature of real experiences; it is not just what the location or service presumes to offer, or what material or symbolic properties endorse, promote, or propose, but the result of real interactions, activities lived, enjoyed, and the connected ‘spiritual’ or non-material satisfaction. Both anxiety and desire can be deeply connected to the search for luxury. To ensure the results of an activity (or its anticipated benefits in the case of a holiday) would be secured, one can be forced to choose an expert guide or an already proven/traditional experience. However, if the goal is to evade the standard, to break the usual routine, to take an adventure out of the ordinary, the focus is on the surprising, on the uniqueness, and thus on the search for a diverse, uncommon guide, or even a not previously tried modus operandi. When applying the concept of luxury to destinations, the centrality of uniqueness, boundlessness, and irresistible magnetism is evident. The concept arises from the remarkable mixture of tangible and intangible resources, often linked to an event (geological, meteorological, biological, cultural, artistic).
Factors Influencing Destination Pricing
There are a great many factors that play a part in affecting the price of a destination. Interesting factors of relevance include not only immediate or proximate economic and non-economic factors, but those that relate to the impacts of the value chain and coffee chain on both prices and costs within the travel and tourism sector. These factors include, but are not limited to: The Goods and Services tax (GST) rating for hotels where destinations are located. Quality and number of local tourist attractions and retail outlets.
Economic factors that are located within the destination and offer the potential to affect its development price policy include. The cost of labour forms a vital component of the budget for travel and tourism and there are many countries in the world that have very low-cost labour, meaning that prices in such countries are relatively low as a result. High disbursement costs, followed by demand satisfaction and then especially when the task done is unpredictable can justify a temporary pricing increase in relative terms. Packaged items enhanced with significant added values find their proper application in a communicative approach, while providing satisfaction to the tourist. Lowered barter scenarios at the destination have been reported which warrants analysis of the destination-guest contract and better employment of e-commerce tools in forecasting tourist demand in destination perspective with the associated benefits. High performing destinations news, either as a result of increased customers or more up to date information are capable of keeping the tourists at the chosen destination for longer, thus increasing income and margin opportunity success. It is now essential for European countries, since the United States has started to bootstrap outsourcing activities and tour center quality the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry.
Inbound travel and tourism can indeed lead to gaining and having more income opportunity, since visitors often spend more than local people in some service environments in relative terms. Opportunity costs must be embraced with a broader understanding, since the facilitation of ICT in travel and tourism may, in some cases, produce negative outcomes not having any warranty on clients’ needs satisfaction and not considering, for instance, that much more time may be spent for air travel than for boat journey. Small-sized economy at large development costs related to the growth of low-cost mobility opportunities are now apparent even when information is well master through different tools lavishly deployed in the destinations, i.e. scarcer benefits derived through the higher level of services related to a customer-oriented philosophy. Consider also adaptive hypermedia systems, supporting intermediate classifications in providing experiences that do not fulfil all the expectations asked, in anticipation of increased items for accepting the product later on, as well as in the exploration process with the purpose of examining its structure, combined with hyper-search approaches.
Some of these can be identified as customers reporting a negative service quality in reception facilities complaining about cost priority other factors than value, as those factors explaining service use request, generalizing satisfaction in the broader context of one’s sojourn, not distinguishing an anchor choice from a margin satisfaction experience.
Economic Factors
Many people are simply under the impression that World Heritage inclusion builds some sort of enforced preservation, reserved only for the most significant sites. This is utterly untrue. The thing is, though, that World Heritage Sites must not only endure all the same problems any other world-renowned location that is also a tourist destination endures. They actually have to contend with many more, because a big part of World Heritage’s middleman function is promoting them to the visitor. The end result is often that what was considered highly conserved and authentic turns into a tourism wonderland based around that authenticity, but suffering from severe aloofness. In addition, many of these destinations become hyper-touristified and overpriced with the help from the private interest and media sector as a result of the increased attention and visitation these sites receive, adding another difficult dimension.
In order to understand why a destination is becoming more and more expensive, inflation is often used as an excuse, but often too aggressive tourism policy is the reason. Areas of mass tourism are the most expensive to visit in terms of value for money, with the following areas of high culture and cultural quality always following closely. The most expensive phenomenon though is the individual interest private group who seek out untouched tourist destinations precisely because they have not yet been offered up worldwide, successful but empty oases surrounded by overpriced dive destinations that come as part of popular cruise itineraries. So as more and more head here, these beaches and rivers suffer from unplanned camping because the local authorities neglected to build proper facilities which after all, masked by preening media coverage, were so needed shortly after the respective site’s inclusion.
Geopolitical Factors
Travel costs that are the highest in the world are largely affected by a number of significant cheaper regional travel destinations. Several geopolitical factors result in both the inequality between the maximum and minimum travel cost as well as unequal travel costs internationally. Can there be a relation between travel cost variations and the performances of nations in the travel and tourism performance index? The question is put forth to establish a close relation based on previous years’ performance, but the limited mutual interaction exemplifies that each characteristic may stand apart from the other.
High travel costs are largely affected by significant cheaper regional travel destinations. Disparities in travel cost arise due to a variety of supply and demand factors. However, there is an exploitative element in these differentials. Large disparities often reflect the value that tourists represent for their host destinations. These countries are perceived as uncompetitive because tourists are overcharged for travel services and the exploitative nature of travel industries. This art of extracting the maximum from discretionary travelers is financially rewarding only for a relatively small number of destinations such as the equatorial zone and some island micro-states.
Expensive Destinations
Overview This section presents five contrasting expensively oriented resorts from a range of international locations. Each has a different clientele and management style. They are primarily located in the areas of sunshine and snow, and an additional feature of these destinations is that several are members of the same international chain or attraction group representing the overall strength of such corporate alliances. The case studies were built up from several sources including public documents, interviews, and direct linking with the resorts.
Disneyland
Paris Located just east of France’s capital city via an RER train link, and at the junction of Europe’s main motorways, Marne-la-Vallée welcomed 25 million visitors in less than twenty months. As Disneyland’s third international resort, the climate is obviously more difficult to control than in such sunny vacation-oriented locations as Los Angeles and Orlando. This resort, the pet project of the late French president Francois Mitterand, has suffered via a recession-hit Europe and the appreciation of the United States dollar. But despite the two-day close down which was rumored (and denied) by the parent group management in the USA, theme park attendance has been comparable to Los Angeles based on population levels and far exceeds any other French attraction.
Monaco
Monaco is a microstate and principality located along the French Riviera. It is bordered by France on three sides, with one side sitting on the Mediterranean Sea. Approximately 30% of its population are citizens, making it a true melting pot of nationalities. Monaco is known for glitz and glamour, as well as its monarchy and Grand Prix motor race. The residents are currently the wealthiest in the world, with property being the most expensive anywhere in Europe. The demand for limited land has led to the construction of towering residential blocks and the reclaiming of land from the sea.
The currency is the Euro and it is a mix of nationalities. French is the official language spoken, with English, Italian, and other European languages also in use. Being a microstate, it is connected to France, so visitors must apply for a short-term visa in advance. Due to its location on the French Riviera, it is included in a popular cruise itinerary, with ships being visible on most days in high season. It has excellent road and rail links to other parts of France, making day trips an easy option. The airport is located in France, with a helicopter shuttle service being available for visitors. The Euro is the currency.
The Maldives
The Maldives has become one of the most expensive overwater bungalow destinations. It contains 1,192 coral islands grouped in a double chain of twenty-seven atolls, along the north-south direction, spread over roughly 90,000 square kilometers. The Maldives is known for its natural beauty, including the blue ocean and white beaches accompanied by clean air and pleasant temperatures. The climate is additionally stable and unique, with little annual temperature variations. There is turtle hatching on many of the islands, and manta ray watching is also a sought-after activity, which is another animal watching experience. Figure 7 illustrates the Paradise Island Resort and Spa. It is located in North Malé Atoll and features very close over-water bungalows.
The Significance Test presented in Sec. 3 indicates that the Maldives is the destination whose price per kilometer decreased more on average than other destinations over the years. The outcomes of the Exploratory Data Analysis presented in Sec. 4.1 indicate that visibility is the site’s highest value, with a decrease in average visibility from Malé Atoll’s year average visibility of 49.5 m to the Dhaahru Favour, with visibility of 21.05 m. Despite not having one of the lowest visibility, this destination is also one of the least favored by divers in terms of the ratio between visibility and the average price of a dive.
Future Perspectives
Concluding the discussions, this chapter summarized the enchantment of tourists by the most expensive destinations of the world as interconnected. The enchantment is conceptualized as the incurred enforcement of the tourism market-led place myths over the market timid charms to achieve and maintain competitive advantage and tourist attractions of the tourist destinations. The destinations invest in and reinforce their place myths into enchanting stories starting the enchantment process that ends with the place demons. Enforcement refers to the organization, financial and legal systems created, only to provide for a flawless enchantment. It enables the presence of a professional platform of people that will use these legal and financial systems to create both stories and places that will benefit the customers at different levels. These stories are the goals of the tourist, the place stories, and the phenomenon stories evoked by existing elements under a specific context. We believe that this conceptualization brings noticeable presentation and connections between the concepts discussed and the conclusions stated. The future perspective section formulated ideas for future work and ideas supported with action proposals useful for future research and policy-making outlines.
In this chapter, we aimed to define the way expensiveness is brought to the destinations, to evoke the place myths presented in the previous chapter by an economic mechanism and marketing discipline integration, and place them under the three proposed categories of the mythological subsidence. We used a deductive approach placed over theoretical considerations arguing the possible place myth combined with marketing concepts making the destination costly, to confirm the most listed or cited expensive destinations of the world and identify the used niche myths that frequencies and co-occurrences of used place characteristics promote or prohibit, based on cult of travel or more scientific contributions. We developed conceptual involvement by settings categories that would group these place characteristics explaining the tourist’s high willingness to ante the destinations offer created by the enchanting stories all over the market timid charms disclosed by the price incurred.