Inspiration for You: Luxury Travel Experiences

Luxury travelers can buy anything they want. The one thing they can’t buy for themselves? An experience. And from what we know about luxury or affluent travelers , they’re always looking for an experience – something special that they can’t get anywhere else.

Premium dining experiences

Do you have foodie clients? Or clients who just enjoy fine dining? Point them in the direction of a Michelin-starred restaurant if they’re vacationing in Chicago, New York City, San Francisco or Washington, D.C., as those are the only U.S. cities with Michelin-starred restaurants. If they’re going international, they’ll have more choices, since 22 countries in Europe, 2 cities in South America and six cities and one country in Asia have restaurants with this special honor.

Private excursions

Nothing feels more exclusive than a private experience, booked only for you and your traveling companions. Guided tour companies know this and offer private excursions for only the travelers invited – no strangers allowed! But they obviously come with a higher price tag, making it more accessible to affluent travelers. ShoreTrips has many private tour options. Their private charter tour of to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and Akaka Falls looks especially intriguing (but they have plenty more private Hawaii tour options).

Abercrombie & Kent offers private tours, too. Their private tour of national parks from Arizona to Utah is interesting, exclusive AND educational. For an international experience, a nine-day immersion in Japan takes travelers on a lightning-fast bullet train and gives them a rare opportunity to stay in a ryokan, or traditional Japanese inn.

Once-in-a-lifetime cruises

Looking for the ultimate cruise experience for your clients? How about a 128-day journey of a lifetime that visits 21 countries on five continents? Viking Ocean Cruises’ 2019 Viking World Cruise is the ticket. This cruise really has it all and is something cruisers lucky enough to book it will remember for the rest of their lives.

Princess Cruises is also keyed into the world cruise with a few itinerary options, plus the option for cruisers to choose to travel specific legs of the cruise. They visit some amazing, lesser-known ports but also make it to many major international cities.

Space travel

Before you laugh – this is real. Of course it sounds silly, but there are big names and even start-ups getting into the development of space travel. Virgin Galactic, founded by Sir Richard Branson, is the world’s first commercial spaceline and operates with the purpose of making space more accessible to the public. There’s already a long list of travelers who have reserved their spot on SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity, the world’s first passenger-carrying spaceship.

SpaceX, a space technology company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, has set the ultimate goal of enabling humans to live on other planets. That’s obviously going to take time to accomplish, so in the meantime, SpaceX is working with companies to launch commercial satellites and also completing missions for the U.S. government (including NASA). We could see leisure space travel from SpaceX very soon.