Reflections: On Luxury
Luxury is a convoluted and often misunderstood term, with many people associating it with different meanings. Is it price tag? Is it service? Is it location? Is it something else? This classic debate typically opens a pandora’s box, dependent on a perception of value for the expenditure of precious time and money. Ultimately, it’s all about taste (something we’ve talked about in the past), and taste is very personal.
“Five Star” luxury has traditionally implied being baroque, ornate, expensive, formal, and opulent, made more confusing with various countries imposing conflicting tourism standards like “five star hotels must have a tv” or a “telephone by the toilet.” (In our vision of luxury, televisions are absent.) Dubai-inspired marketing schemes one-upped everything with a proclamation of “7 stars” to add to the confusion, so that when you ultimately arrive somewhere, you’re not quite sure what version of luxury you’re actually going to get. It might be a lot of nice decor, a dash of service, a smidge of good food, a whiff of personalization, or just too much gilt…but the mix may or may not be up to your own personal standard.
In more recent years, luxury has meant providing all the creature comforts of home, and then some. It can connote space, freedom, privacy, quality, exclusivity, preciousness, and top-notch service.
There is certainly a cost to luxury. Yes, most of these places we are showcasing are very expensive (it costs a lot to maintain a high staff to guest ratio), but sometimes, luxury is made precious by the time it costs to reach a remote place, or the limited availability of a reservation. In this edition, our luxuries are boutique in size, some a long and arduous journey away, all with exceptional service and attention to detail. Our journey to Zanzibar features Mnemba Island, which has no TVs, no air conditioning, and really, no walls at all. But it is one of the most luxurious escapes I have ever been to. Others are just as remote. Some are less known by influencers who strip a place’s privacy, and ultimately, its luxury, by making it broadly known and popular. We are all victims of this ‘White Lotus’ fever, and while we do highlight the cliffside village of Taormina in Sicily from the second season’s location, we actually showcase other more timeless properties rather than the now over-hyped property in which the show was shot.
Not all of us are privy to expensive luxuries for all of our travels, so we are also sharing a few tips on how to make flying in coach just a bit more tolerable, and how to enjoy a luxury hotel’s amenities without actually sleeping there. Luxury is a big topic, so we are admittedly only skimming the tip of a monstrous topical iceberg. Nonetheless, we think that these features serve to represent some of our favorite experiences of indulgence, ones that we yearn to revisit again and again.
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Photo Credit: Syllogi
