JOIN USJames Barber yearned to travel to exotic places when he was a boy reading National Geographic. Now 71 and a successful business owner, he is able to indulge that love in far-flung destinations during trips created exclusively for him and his family.
There was the trip to Egypt, Jordan and Italy in the months before the Arab Spring in 2010 that included private cooking classes in Jordan, gladiator school for his grandchildren in Rome and an armed guard in Egypt to keep everyone safe.
He loved the one to Thailand where his grandchildren got to hold tiger cubs in their laps and he leash-walked a full-grown tiger, raised from birth by monks.
“We were out in the woods and we saw an antelope,” Barber said. “The tiger got stiff and followed him with his eyes. Then he relaxed and went on walking. The monk turned to me and said, ‘Man is the only animal that kills for sport; the tiger’s belly is full.’ ”
While such experiences might cost the equivalent of several years of mortgage payments for an average family, Mr. Barber says it is worth the price for a couple of weeks away.
“It is expensive, but I love the flexibility,” he said. “If I organised the trip on my own, I’d miss a lot of things.”
These are trips that only money can buy. Like other areas of life, from education to housing to retirement savings, travel is something where the truly wealthy are pulling away not just from average Americans but also from the merely rich. And they are driving demand for the most exclusive trips.
According to data collected by Virtuoso, a network of 8,900 top travel agents who serve two million customers, travelers who spend at least $100,000 a year on trips have increased their annual spending at two to three times the rate of the regular traveler over the past seven years. (Those regular travelers, in the company’s parlance, still spend $10,000 a year on a vacation.)
Last year, National Geographic Expeditions, known for its trips to places like Antarctica, the Galápagos and the Kalahari with archaeologists in tow, organized two around-the-world trips by private jet.
The cost was $77,000 per person for 24 days and both trips, carrying 78 people each, sold out. By comparison, it costs $23,000 to be one of 148 on a 25-day trip to Antarctica.
“One of the common links among our travellers is they’re curious, passionate and they’re looking for unique and authentic experiences,” said Lynn Cutter, executive vice president for travel and licensing at National Geographic Society.
For those more interested in being pampered than talking archaeology in Bhutan, the Four Seasons now has its own private jet that transports travellers among its resorts.
A 24-day around-the-world trip next February makes 10 stops, including Bora Bora, Bali and Istanbul, and costs $119,000 per person.
“You can expect to see a lot more of these jet trips coming,” said David Kolner, senior vice president for the consumer division at Virtuoso.
“They’re selling out. You have to book in advance.” Kolner said his firm was seeing strong sales of seats on Virgin Galactic — where $250,000 buys a 20-minute spaceflight.
He estimated that 700 seats had already been sold — and Virgin Galactic has yet to take a customer to space.
This interest in such unusual trips is a combination of wealth, impatience and being overwhelmed by all that is out there.
“My overall observation after 20 years working in the high-end travel business is high-end travellers become more self-centered or self-focused every single year,” said Charlie Scott, founder of Ditoui, a travel consultancy.
“They want what they want and they’ll pay for what they want and they just want someone to figure it out.”
He said when he started in the business, travellers were more accepting of someone else’s idea, or just tagging along with a group on safari.
Jason Clampet, a founder of Skift, a website for the travel industry, said that the increase in bespoke — or custom — travel closely mirrors developments with luxury brands in general.
“You can get luxury at a mall — anyone can buy a Louis Vuitton bag,” he said. “A truly customized trip is something unique.”
For Gary Rolle, an investment manager in Los Angeles, paying a premium for a trip with his family and knowing that it will be well organized is worth the expense.
His next trip with six family members, including his two grandchildren, will be to Australia. The 17-day trip is packed with visits to wildlife sanctuaries and parks filled with koalas, kangaroos and other animals that will delight his young grandchildren, yet at night the family will stay in luxury hotels. “I’m trying to create a high point in our lives,” he said.
“I’m willing to pay enough to make it a wonderful trip.”
A budget for extravagance
Rebecca Wright, director of sales at R Crusoe & Son, which organized Barber’s and Rolle’s trips, said the company’s typical traveller spent 10 days and $25,000, not including airfare, on a trip.
It once organized a 90-day trip focused on studying the world’s religions that cost $250,000, and a three-year family journey from Australia to Geneva over land that stretched into the millions of dollars.
“In Paris, the Eiffel Tower is a given but what else can make it special?” she said. “Can they go into the Louvre before hours and be there alone? Or is it just going into the Louvre with one of our specialist guides? The budget defines it.”
Greg Sacks, a founder of Trufflepig, a travel company that also publishes a lifestyle magazine, said his firm created its first $1 million trip last year, a seven-day excursion to Antarctica for six friends.
The company outfitted a full safari camp on the ice, arranged for planes to take the friends to the polar cap to do kite skiing and guides to take them to see a colony of penguins that only scientists normally glimpse.
It is often the less-expensive features, like not staying in only the best hotels in India, that make these trips special for someone who wants to get a feel for the country.
“You’re trying to understand someone and help them find the things that are the fit for their sensibility and not just their pocketbook,” Scott, the travel consultant, said.
“Otherwise you’re going to get the run-of-the-mill high end with no sense of authenticity or true luxury.”
Barber said he became interested in bespoke trips more than a decade ago.
“I got tired of being stuck on the bus and waiting for someone else,” he said. But he still plans simpler vacations to places he knows. He and his wife are soon headed to Hawaii for his 45th and her 47th visit to the island. “It’s my favourite place and we stay at the hotel where we always stay,” he said.
But he has no expectations that the trip will match memories like one a few years ago in Borneo, where a female orangutan dropped from a tree in front of him.
“She took my hand and started walking with me,” he said, “right there in front of my wife.”