Redefining Luxury Travel

When it comes to luxury travel, the gloves are off – white gloves that is.

While luxury often gets associated with white glove service and champagne upon arrival, Jason Merrithew, president of Merit Travel, says these days it’s all about experiences, reports assistant editor, Ann Ruppenstein in this week’s digital edition of Travel Courier.

“Luxury is becoming more about how people are actually consuming and living in these cultures that they’re visiting. It’s also about the time of the traveller,” he says. “They’re focused a lot more on the actual experience they’re having and the authenticity of that experience, and how true that experience is to the destination that they’re in. Luxury in a lot of ways is the ability to experience your destination, the culture, on your own time, at your own pace and to be able to maximize that type of relationship with the experience, the tour or whatever it is.”

Although luxury travellers still take in the sights and tourist attractions when they visit a destination, they do so on their own time.

“What they’re not going to do is get on and off a bus with a group and wait to do this, or say 15 minutes and we meet back here, they’re not going to do that,” he says. “They’re going to get a private guide, they’re not going to wait in lines, they’re going to spend exactly as long as they need to at this place to get the feel of it, they’re going to have one to one conversations with their tour guide, and they’re going to move onto the next thing. And in one day they’re going to see and experience more of the location than a guided tour or a larger bus tour might.”

For the full story, check out this week’s digital edition of Travel Courier.