Skift Take
In the luxury travel space, at a macro level, demand is growing for the accumulation of travel memories drawn from transformative moments that resonate deeply with the individual traveler’s ideal of personal fulfillment, and his or her best aspirational version of themselves.
During Virtuoso Travel Week — a luxury travel trade show held this month at Bellagio Las Vegas — two overused cliches kept inflecting every conversation.
One, luxury travel has shifted from expensive things to exclusive experiences. Can we stick a fork in that? The luxury consumer industry has been saying the exact same thing for the last decade, at least. Two, in this era of constant disruption and muddying generational proclivities, the definition of luxury now means many different things to many different people. We've been repeating that for the last five years, since the end of the recession's darkest days.
So how can the luxury travel sector evolve?
Many of the trends today in the luxury market are pointing toward one overarching theme: personalized fulfillment. At a macro level, demand is growing for the accumulation of travel memories drawn from transformative moments that resonate deeply with the individual traveler’s ideal of personal fulfillment, and his or her best aspirational version of themselves.
Time, then, is not the ultimate luxury. That's too vague and overused, and it was overused at Virtuoso with abandon. Same with the concepts of success, satisfaction, happiness, and contentment. Fulfillment, though, speaks to our innermost motivations, and our awareness and alignment of our inner and exterior contexts. It speaks to who we are, or more accurately, who we want to be.
As an analogy, the luxury needle is moving from Maslow’s second hierarchical need, “Esteem,” where consumer luxury has traditionally lived, to the top spot: “Self-determination,” based on realizing one's full potential. Also, the commoditization of experiential luxury travel, and the fatigue that engenders when everything is an experience these days, is driving more nuanced discussion around what luxury travelers really want, as individuals.
Delivering on that is easier said than done.
“What I see most is the changing nature of the bucket list, focusing more on personal goals and immersive experiences that people really want, instead of a specific destination,” says Jack Ezon, president of Ovation Vacations in New York. “So, within the travel advisor trade community, we need desperately to work on our service and the way we provide personalization. Uber-personalized experiences are what we’re trading on, and we’re not always doing that great of a job at it.”
Ezon is adamant that technology will never replace travel ad
