Can Luxury and Green Travel Comfortably Coexist?
Photo Credit: The entrance to ILTM 2019 in Cannes, France. Skift / Rosie Spinks
Skift Take
As conferences like ILTM get larger — and concepts like luxury and sustainability infiltrate more sectors and price points of the travel industry — it can start to feel like the overuse of these terms is a red flag of sorts.
What is luxury? It’s a question that, in 2019, sounds passé, and certainly one pondered by Skift before.
That’s why at the International Luxury Travel Market (ITLM) at Cannes this week — the industry’s largest trade show for luxury travel — it started to feel like a new question was needed: What isn’t luxury?
Indeed, words like "luxury," "lifestyle," and "sustainability" flow around Cannes as freely as complimentary flutes of Veuve Clicquot. But as the likes of ILTM get larger — and these words and concepts infiltrate more sectors and price points of the travel industry — it can start to feel like the aggressive overuse of these terms is a red flag of sorts. If a company is saying these things (shouting them, even) should consumers be sure it's actually doing them? Luxury Means Different Things to Different Folks The truth is, beyond loyalty hounds or travel geeks, most consumers do not have an intimate awareness of how a luxury
