Today’s Luxury Travelers Seek Experiences, Not Pampering

Not long ago, luxury travel mainly meant first-class transportation, plush accommodations, and dining nightly at five-star restaurants. It was an aspiration that few could ever hope to achieve. But according to the L.E.K. 2017 Luxury Travel Study, that has begun to change.

The survey of 1,972 U.S. travelers aged 17 and older, conducted online during the first quarter, shows that across-the-board pampering is no longer everyone’s ideal, and luxury now has different definitions for different people.

As the definition of luxury continues to evolve, today’s luxury traveler is just as likely to be a millennial in search of an eco-vacation who is willing to sleep in a bunk bed, as it is to be wealthy globetrotter seeking comprehensive amenities and services. The survey shows that a far broader range of people are eager to make trade-offs to fund luxury, splurging on some items while scaling back on others.

Among the survey’s key findings:

• More and more people are luxury travelers. In increasing numbers, people are gaining access to at least some elements of luxury travel. For example, while fewer than 10% of survey respondents consider themselves luxury travelers, nearly 85% say they indulge in travel luxuries at least once in a while.
• They’re spending much more on luxury travel than on other indulgences. Modern luxury travel is the leading category for discretionary spending; across all luxury categories, travel is now the top outlet for indulgence. Nearly half (49%) of U.S. travelers indicate that they are likely to splurge on travel. That’s ahead of dining out (43%) and food and wine at home (36%). Traditional luxury categories like apparel and accessories (30%) and jewelry (20%) trail travel by a considerable margin.
• The definition of luxury has changed—it’s less about product quality and more about experiences. Across the travel spectrum, luxury has traditionally been defined by quality of product. Ratings from the likes of Michelin, Zagat and Conde Nast focused on the physical product and defined what should be viewed as rarified and special. While physical product characteristics are critical and will remain that way, many of the defining characteristics of luxury now center on quality of experience.

How should hotel owners respond? The key to success is getting it just right for Goldilocks, so to speak. To access this much larger market, try to create ways for more mainstream clientele to toggle into luxury elements and aim for the right level of luxury for the individual. That might mean Uber when you need it in place of a town car for the day, and it means embracing the age of the upgrade, overlaying better/best options on top of modest bases. It’s also essential to get to know customers in depth, in order to identify the luxury elements in their offerings that that will appeal to each category of traveler who is willing to splurge selectively.

To learn more about the new luxury travelers—and about how to tailor your product to capture more of them—click here.