Even as travel demand has softened, one group is spending their way through the economic uncertainty: the wealthy.
Rich Americans have continued to spend on travel and other products even as others are cutting back, with airlines such as United and Delta reporting strong demand for premium bookings despite a broader slowdown in domestic travel demand. Major hotel brands like Hilton and Hyatt have also reported resilience in the luxury sector.
For the wealthy travelers who are still spending, there are four specific kinds of trips that are trending, according to Tom Marchant, the co-founder of the luxury travel company Black Tomato.
The average price of a trip organized by Black Tomato, which plans bespoke travel around the world, is about $40,000, Marchant said, adding the trips can range from $10,000 to hundreds of thousands.
Marchant told Business Insider that the company’s clients often say, “I’m pretty agnostic on where I want to go, but this is how I’m looking to feel.”
Rather than focus on specific destinations, he said there are certain emotions or experiences that luxury travelers are seeking. Earlier this year the company launched a “Feelings Engine” that incorporates AI to help users plan a trip around a feeling, whether they want to feel relaxed, challenged, free, motivated, or many other emotions.
Here are the four kinds of trips that Marchant said are trending right now.
1. The earned experience
Black Tomato has seen a rise in travelers seeking out challenging experiences that are “earned” through more than just how much they pay for them.
“There’s this desire to challenge yourself, whether it’s through a trek or a long journey or going to a part of the world where you’re going to be overwhelmed by cultural stimuli,” Marchant said.
These kinds of trips are often viewed by travelers as an antidote to the realities of day-to-day life, when just about everything is available at the click of a button, he said, adding that this type of trip is trending for solo travelers as well as couple and families who want to get out of their comfort zone.
For instance, the company organizes “Get Lost” trips in which the client is dropped off in a remote destination and left with supplies to navigate themselves back to civilization over the course of several days. Esther Spengler, a Black Tomato client, previously told BI her $13,000 “Get Lost” experience in Morocco was more of an “adventure” than a vacation.
Other earned experiences the company plans are river rafting in Papua New Guinea, mountain treks in Japan, or quad biking across the salt pans of Botswana.
2. In search of silence
For many wealthy travelers, the goal of a vacation is to get away from the noise of everyday life, Marchant said. While these travelers don’t necessarily want to be off-grid, they want to be somewhere with minimal background noise or noise pollution.
“We’ve seen more and more people looking for places where there is genuine quiet — where they can go and reflect or just feel,” he said.
There’s been a growing trend of quiet-place conservation and travelers seeking out “quiet parks,” places that provide opportunities to experience relative silence, or nothing but noises from the natural world.
In 2019, the non-profit group Quiet Parks International awarded Zabalo River in Ecuador as the first wilderness quiet park. Glacier National Park in Montana was the first US national park to receive the status.
Marchant said one aspect of this trend is “reading weeks,” in which the traveler says they want to go somewhere quiet primarily so they can read and reflect without any distractions. He said reading trips are especially popular with business leaders who feel they rarely have time in their day-to-day life to enjoy books without getting pulled into work.
3. Bare witness
Traveling for natural phenomena is another trend among Black Tomato clients, with the company increasingly planning trips around natural events that could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see.
Several years ago the company built bespoke camps in the mountains of Patagonia so its clients could witness the total solar eclipse in luxury.
Traveling to witness natural phenomena like eclipses, the northern lights, or animal migrations could be especially appealing to the wealthy because it’s likely to be very different from their daily life, Marchant said.
He noted that a lot of their clients live in LA, so traveling somewhere with a gorgeous villa, fancy pool, and nice weather is less likely to be appealing to them since it’s what they already have at home.
4. Travel as therapy
The last major trend in luxury travel Marchant said he’s seeing is “using travel as a kind of answer for some of life’s challenges.”
Increasingly, travelers are viewing their trips as a way to step back and reevaluate aspects of their life, whether that’s work, family, romantic relationships, or their health.
“When you get taken out of the day-to-day, where you’re immersed in everything, it gives you time to think on things and get perspective,” he said.
Those types of trips might bring the client to a place where they can immerse in a community that has a different or interesting perspective on the building blocks of life.
One example would be travel to Blue Zones, locations where the local population tends to live longer, which have seen an increase in tourism since the concept was popularized.
The travel as therapy trend also aligns with the increase in self-improvement retreats or psychedelic retreats that have grown in popularity, especially with business leaders.
Marchant said he thinks the resources available to wealthy clients and how connected the world is makes them yearn for disconnection even more. He also said it makes them want to visit places that few other people have, adding, “There is still so many vast tracks in the world that you can do that in.”
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