Luxury Travel & Lifestyle Trends

Luxury providers constantly need to challenge themselves to find new ways of meeting (even exceeding) their customers expectations. The saavy, wealthy and on-the-go constituents of Generation X and Generation Y expect more capability, flexibility and technology.

This past weekend’s re-opening of the legendary Fontainebleau in Miami Beach invoked nostalgic images of style and glamour. One felt transported to other (better) times, in what I would call a “Great Escape” - a fantasy, which at the end of the day, is part of what travel is all about.

Many PR firms are grappling with social media and the micro-blogosphere, and how they relate to our business and industry. If you’re not familiar with tweets, tweetups or DM’s, you should be.

If you are a vegetarian food manufacturer, distributor, retailer or marketer, or don’t regularly tune into the Vegetarian Channel, you may not know of a growing offshoot of green travel - vegetarian travel.

To stay in the luxury game, it’s just as important to astound guests with a platinum standard of amenities and services, to elicit the “wow factor” among experienced consumers. In Accenture’s “Customer Satisfaction in the Multi-Polar World” survey, more than half of consumers reported their expectations for better service increased over the past five years. One-third said they were higher than a year ago.

The art of French cooking has a new advocate – a group of culinary experts called the French Mission for Food and Heritage Cultures, who are looking to persuade the UN to declare French gastronomy a world treasure. There’s a familiar saying in France: L’Art de la table, an all encompassing phrase which describes a high-end experience in dining, cuisine and culture. It’s this experience they want to preserve. But so far, there is no category at UNESCO for gastronomy.

Divorce has a new face, dare we say, it’s almost trendy. Sad but true, divorces have become an awfully good market - from divorce party planners and invitations to social networks and travel packages, we’re seeing more products, services and networks cropping up targeting divorcees who either want to celebrate or a shoulder to cry on.

The last 45 days have dramatically ushered in a new era where suddenly, anything that smacks of excess comes across as tasteless and unseemly.

What blockbuster did for movie rentals, Time Inc. is doing for magazine sales - it’s turning the magazine world on its head by launching Maghound, a mix and match service for magazines.

We’ve heard of ever-fracturing niches in travel, but we were intrigued to read about an offshoot of eco-tourism - beekeeping tourism! And Slovenia appears to have cornered the market with its new slogan “Slovenia - A Land of Great Beekeepers.”