When speaking with the many agents who attended this year’s Travel Leaders International Luxury Forum in Opatija, Croatia, one question I asked repeatedly was, Where are the new places your luxury clients are booking these days? Is there a new Maldives somewhere? Is San Marino the new Monaco? I’ve long thought Buenos Aires’ palace hotels are an undervalued resource.
But no. The answer? Spain and Portugal.
(Photo Credit: Bert Archer)
Spain and Portugal? You mean, the Spain and Portugal? The ones we’ve all been going to for decades because they’re such obvious beachy, foodie, cultural hot spots, so much in fact that they border on travel clichés? That Spain and Portugal?
Yes.
And no.
On a similar theme to Italian tourism minister Daniela Santanchè at the World Travel and Tourism Summit earlier this autumn in Rome when she pointed out all the parts of Italy that are, to use her word, “undertouristed,” luxury travel advisors seem to be steering their clients not to off-the-beaten-path destinations in Sub-Saharan Africa or Central Asia, as worthy as those no-doubt future popular destinations may be, but to less visited parts of places their clients are already familiar with and fond of.
“Sotogrande,” says Kyle Oram, CEO of KVI Travel in Vancouver, when asked about new destinations for his HNW clientele. “A lot of the European soccer stars go there. Messi’s got a hotel there. They’re not so public facing. You can have private polo lessons, you can golf in these exclusive places. Luxury shopping, with a private shopper, instead of going to Dior, they’ll come to you.”
When I list a few other spots that seem hot around travel press circles, he stops me on Saudi Arabia, who are famously spending billions on making Dubai’s efforts over the past two decades seem like a side hustle.
Lleida, Spain (Photo Credit: Janeen Christoff)
“My COO is Israeli, Jewish, a woman, a lesbian, four things that would get her shot in a Muslim country, and I’m not going to send my tourist dollars to that kind of place,” he says, in a pleasantly strident Canadian sort of a way.
“The laws of your country still say women aren’t equal and gays should be shot? I know it’s changing, and I want to encourage the change, but it’s a touchy subject. I would rather give my clients to places that treat people equally.”
“Portugal wasn’t up to the level that I think a luxury traveller was looking for,” says Natalie Kloss-Biagini of Travel Abundance in Austin, Texas, “and now they’re coming on par.” She mentions properties in the Douro Valley, like Six Senses, an upcoming BOA wellness resort conversion from the Quinta de Barroca in Armamar, as well as new options in the Algarve- “Lisbon’s got some gorgeous places coming up, and then Porto’s got The Yeatman, in the shape of port bottles, layers and layers of balconies on the [Vila Nova de] Gaia side, with a gorgeous view of Porto. Then there’s the Alentejo area, the southern area, which is like the Hamptons of Portugal.”
Echoing the sentiments of many of her colleagues at the forum, a key selling point for her is the absence of the usual suspects.
“It hasn’t been whitewashed with the brands,” she says, “the big names haven’t come in yet, the Marriotts, the Hiltons.”
Lola Vassiliadis, owner of Cruise Holidays of Oakville, Ontario, namechecks Portugal for their river cruises, especially the ones with a wine focus, and Eva Damato, Travel Leaders’ senior director of luxury lifestyle marketing, agreed, listing both Portugal and Spain as some of the most heavily discussed and sold destinations she’s been seeing since she joined the company in January.
Advisors said the combination of familiarity and well-established tourism infrastructure made these places easier sells than entirely new destinations, and so a good bet as the markets continue to fluctuate and big-spending travellers get, at least for the time being, a little less likely to step into the unknown.
Can France and Italy be far behind?
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