May 26, 2026

In this week’s issue:

• Pre-Departure – You Can’t Sit With Us. Behind the membership club play creeping into luxury hotels

• The Room Report – Swanning About At Estelle Manor

• The Lobby Bar – Michelin Pulls Green Star, Raffles Going to Courchevel, Four Seasons Gstaad Coming Back, Conde Nast Wants to Go Shopping With You, AI Not Yet at Check-in, TikTok’s Now Doing Bookings, Will AI Soon Be Booking Your Hotel?

Travelers,

I confess that I was denied admission to the Tuxedo Society last year. My husband was thrilled at the slight. My fragile ego was briefly bruised, but the reason they gave was that I’m too old…at 40. I didn’t worry about it too long because I’m more fabulous at 40 than ever. If you haven’t heard of the Tuxedo Society, they are a membership club of 20- and 30-somethings galavanting about Europe for events/photoshoots in the Old-Money European style. Are they “old money?” TBD. My bank balance and pedigree didn’t matter, but being superannuated did.

So, what’s a girl to do when turned away by such a club? I began researching other options and went down the membership club rabbit hole. As a hotelier, this naturally led me to examine the hospitality industry angle – specifically how luxury hotels are trying their hand at creating such clubs within their (usually) welcoming walls.

This week I’m breaking down the hotel membership club boom and highlighting how Estelle Manor is handling it.

Happy travels! Anne Marie

Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

Check out previous editions of The Upgrade Weekly:

• Why you should travel with your parents

• What’s the Deal with Farm Hotels

• What Luxury Hotels Get Wrong

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🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

You Can’t Sit With Us: The Hotel Membership Club Boom

The unabashed exclusivity of private membership clubs has long been a source of fascination for me. Carson Griffith writes Rich People Shit, a Substack I enjoy that covers cultural capital and the systems that produce it. She wrote about membership clubs in her Hollywood Reporter article of May 13, 2026, titled “Has New York Hit Peak Members Club?”

Carson Griffith is a journalist, editor, and ghostwriter whose bylines appear in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and across the top titles at Hearst and Condé Nast, where she held senior editorial roles. She has ghostwritten five books, two coffee table volumes, and speeches for political figures, Fortune 500 executives, and celebrities. Her reporting is grounded in close observation and primary sourcing — she writes from direct experience of the financial and cultural realities she covers, including the economics of taste, the mechanics of modern wealth, and the private economies that rarely make the news.

Griffith notes that private members clubs are not a new idea in New York. The Union Club, the Metropolitan Club, the Colony Club — these Gilded Age institutions date back more than a century, with application processes that took years and dining rooms that functioned more like urban country clubs. Soho House changed the pace when it landed in the Meatpacking District in 2003, which I will get into later.

Post-pandemic, the floodgates opened: Zero Bond, Casa Cipriani, Aman Club, ZZ’s, Colette, San Vicente, Maxime’s, each one staking out a slightly different corner of the market. London, the city New York largely borrowed the model from, has more than 130 members clubs according to a 2025 report in The Hollywood Reporter. ¹

Now more than ever, we are a society craving community — but a curated, rarified type of community. The club founders Griffith interviews nod to the collapse of third places and a loneliness that social media made worse rather than better.

On a recent podcast episode of On with Kara Swisher, Jeff Klein, the founder behind San Vicente Bungalows and a handful of other highly coveted private clubs, stated that the product is not food, drinks, or hotel rooms. Those are “delivery systems” for the real product, which is a sense of belonging and psychological safety. He posits that membership clubs create an environment built for interesting, socially additive people who value discretion, curiosity, and creativity. The clubs he builds enforce a strict no-photos, no-phone-calls policy. In a world where the new status signal is the luxury of being offline and unreachable, membership clubs with strict no-cellphone policies are the peak symbol of sophistication.

Hotels, despite being a glacially slow industry to adapt to new technology, are masters at designing a “sense of place” and a “feeling of belonging.” Hotels are a place to see and be seen by the right people, and so are clubs. In the past few years, hotels are jumping into the club membership arena, with all its velvet chairs, moody lighting, crisp caviar martinis, and exclusive clientele.

Why Hotels Are Getting Into the Club Business

There isn’t much data tied to hotel-aligned membership clubs just yet. However, when examining the total membership club market, we find that the global private members’ club market reached $31.7 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at 7.2% annually through 2033, reaching nearly $59 billion. It’s important to take these statistics with a grain of salt, because so many clubs are private and don’t report revenues publicly, so that $31.7 billion figure likely undercounts the actual market size. ²

For context, the broader luxury hospitality market was valued at $154 billion in 2024 and is expected to surpass $218 billion by 2029. If those membership club growth estimates are correct, it makes sense that hotels would want a piece of the action. ³

Just like the farm hotels I profiled in my previous edition of The Upgrade, membership clubs are a TRevPAR (Total Revenue Per Available Room) play, aimed at boosting ancillary revenue past heads in beds. If you can sell spa memberships, social memberships, and golf memberships to locals who never sleep in your beds, you’re generating revenue independent of occupancy. Post-pandemic, after two years of watching geopolitical instability wreck forward bookings, building a local revenue base is a smart move for the luxury hotel set.

The generations driving this boom are primarily Millennials and Gen X. We are also seeing an increase in corporate spending for business networking, as return-to-office mandates again push executives to conduct business away from home. Who wants to attend a meeting under fluorescent lights in a conference room? Take me to lunch at your private hotel members’ club, and maybe I’ll consider that LP investment in your new hotel concept.

Demand signals are hard to ignore

Hotels are jumping into membership clubs because demand points full steam ahead. About 63% of clubs boosted their membership counts in 2022, and 62% had a waiting list for prospective members at the end of 2022 and into early 2023. ⁴

The Soho House waitlist currently exceeds 100,000 applicants, meaning a prospective member can expect to wait four to five years. Annabel’s in Mayfair maintains a waitlist where six years is considered normal. ⁵

Soho House as Both Industry Darling and Cautionary Tale

Soho House has been the one to watch. Their Americas segment is the company’s largest revenue generator, encompassing US Houses, stand-alone restaurants, and management fees. Soho House New York, a 45,000-square-foot property, offers hotel bedrooms alongside its club spaces and restaurants. Membership starts from $950 quarterly, so we are not talking huge dollars here. In contrast, Exclusive Resorts, the luxury travel club I worked for previously, required a deposit of $100,000 to $500,000 on top of annual dues ranging from $20,000 to north of $60,000.

Soho House grew from 30 properties in July 2021 to 41 in July 2023, while membership jumped from under 112,000 to over 176,000 in that same two-year window. By 2024, they reported a 7% increase in total revenues and a 14% rise in adjusted EBITDA, with over 193,900 members. ⁶

Are they profitable? It’s complicated. Despite generating $1.2 billion in total revenue for fiscal year 2024, the company posted a full-year net loss of $163 million. Full-year adjusted EBITDA was $131.9 million.⁷

The question is whether a hotel-cum-membership-club model can scale without losing cachet. Jeff Klein’s view is that scale and soul are inherently in tension with one another, and that many new clubs entering the market will fail because they are social scenes or real estate products dressed up as communities.

Moreover, running a hotel and a members’ club under the same roof creates friction. Members expect exclusivity, hotel guests expect access. Both groups fight for restaurant reservations, spa appointments, pool loungers in the shade. At scale, that tension is tough to manage and often falls on the shoulders of the GM.

Two Models Worth Knowing

There are essentially two versions of this playing out in hotels right now:

1) The wellness and fitness club attached to a hotel. The membership value is gym, spa, and pool access. The Lanesborough’s Club & Spa in London starts from £6,000 a year. Chewton Glen in Hampshire runs a country club model with over 60 classes per week. Beaverbrook in Surrey splits its golf club and spa into two separate membership products entirely. Membership clubs like these have existed for decades – they are high-end health clubs that happen to sit inside famous hotels.

2) This model is the social members’ club integrated with, or attached to, a hotel. Here, the product is programming, events, community, and identity. Estelle Manor is the best UK example; Gleneagles Townhouse in Edinburgh is another. There’s also the Ned in London, which Soho House took global. At these properties, membership is more in the realm of F&B than of grunting at the gym and having a quick steam before work.

The Hotels With Memberships Currently

Luxury hotel brands that are starting to expand into this arena are Rosewood and Aman. Rosewood added Carlyle & Co. in Hong Kong. Aman launched its Aman Club in New York. Soho House created the Ned hybrid hotel-and-club concept, which now operates as a separate membership program across three properties.

While Soho House is a volume play where revenue depends on scaling membership and in-house spend across a large portfolio, Aman is the inverse. At Soho House, the hotel rooms are a benefit of membership rather than the primary revenue engine. At Aman, the membership club is an ultra-thin layer of permanent access to the hotel sold at a price point that functions more like a real estate transaction than a subscription. The Aman Club charges upwards of $200,000 to join, making it among the most expensive private membership clubs in New York City.

Even smaller cities, like my home haunt of Denver, have started getting their own membership club hotels. The Clayton Club in Cherry Creek is now where most of my out-of-town guests stay, and where I conduct many business meetings.

Maison Estelle, Mayfair

• Estelle Manor, Oxfordshire: Full private club on the estate with the Enshym Baths Roman spa, padel, falconry, events, and social programming. Sister club Maison Estelle operates in Mayfair. You can be a hotel guest without being a member, and the two cohorts exist side by side.

• The Ned NoMad, New York and The Ned London: Hotel guests can stay, but club spaces are members-only.

• The Lanesborough Club & Spa, London: Wellness-focused, starting from £6,000 annually. Hotel guests get complimentary gym access; full membership is a separate commitment.

• Gleneagles, Perthshire: Golf membership on the three championship courses, plus the separate Gleneagles Townhouse in Edinburgh.

• The Club by Bamford at Daylesford, Cotswolds: Child-free, wellness-forward, opened in 2023. Membership from £3,850 per year plus a £1,650 joining fee. Cryotherapy, padel, ice baths, personal training.

• Aman Club, New York: Upwards of $200,000 to join. This is less a subscription and more a real estate transaction masquerading as a membership.

• Rosewood’s Carlyle & Co., Hong Kong: Rosewood’s plunge into the social membership space.

With the proliferation of these membership club hotels, the question has become not why but when. How does the concept of community curation create relevance for a hotel in a city? Will they be able to capitalize on the culture of exclusivity? We will see.

For further reading on membership clubs, check out:

· The House Standard, “The Private Club Boom Has a Blindspot”

· Colin Nagy, “Cracking the Code for a New Wave of Members Clubs”

· Hotels Above Par, “The Hottest Membership Clubs”

· Hotels Above Par, “Have Hotels Cracked the Code on Private Members’ Clubs?”

🗝️ The Room Report — Personal reviews from my own travels

Estelle Manor, Oxfordshire

Estelle Manor, Anne Marie Brown

Last year, I stayed at Estelle Manor for two nights with my girlfriends. I loved it so much that I’m returning this summer with my family to stay in a woodland cottage. We will be doing a falconry walk, the baths experience at their Roman spa, and my children will ride around in “Little Landies” (mini Land Rovers that are endlessly Instagrammable).

There’s a maximalism at Estelle Manor that I love, but it’s not for everyone. Helicopters landed on the lawn, and I have a sneaking suspicion that several of the willowy women floating around the lobby in floor-length gowns were influencers. Estelle Manor is home to both a membership club and a hotel. Consequently, its management team has been working to balance both client classes as they jockey for restaurant reservations and pool chair use.

Sharan Pasricha made his name with the Hoxton Hotels, sold Ennismore to Accor in 2021 in a deal that valued the company at over $1 billion, and then kept Estelle Manor for himself. He and his wife Eiesha, who serves as the artistic director of both Estelle and its London sister Maison Estelle in Mayfair, own these properties personally, entirely outside the Ennismore/Accor structure.

The property sits on 85 acres of Oxfordshire countryside, surrounded by over 3,000 acres of parkland, in a Grade II-listed Jacobean house that, in a previous life, has been a wartime maternity hospital, a gym, and a police training college. Opened in May 2023, it is now 108 rooms, four restaurants, a 3,000-square-meter Roman-inspired bathhouse, padel courts, a gym with 48 classes a week, a kids’ club called The Nook, and a members’ club that runs alongside the hotel operation.

Rooms

We stayed in the Walled Garden and Stable Rooms. They were sumptuously decorated, spacious, and came with all sorts of ayurvedic snacks and goodies. It was a bit challenging to navigate the pebbly gravel in heels on my way to dinner each night, but I made it. I did feel a bit bad for the bellhop who had to lug my giant suitcase up and down the narrow stairs to the second floor.

The estate houses woodland cottages for families near the spa, and larger cottages that start at £6,000 a night.

In the main house itself, there are suites with delicious soaking tubs, bathrooms you can get lost in, and plenty of guests enjoying people-watching from the windows overlooking the pool.

Spa

I can hardly wait to spend another full afternoon at the Enshym Baths. If you want to do the bath circuit, book early as those slots fill up. Make sure to build in time to enjoy tea and snacks at the café. I had one of the best massages of my life at that spa – so good I literally cried.

The Membership Model

This is a hotel and a members’ club sharing the same grounds, which means the energy shifts depending on the day. Weekday stays are quieter while Friday and Saturday evenings are more crowded. Club membership includes full estate access, priority booking, exclusive programming, and community events.

Sustainability

All electricity at Estelle Manor now comes from 100% renewable sources. The property has attained Green Key certification, a leading global standard for sustainable operations, and undergoes rigorous independent audits to maintain its status.

In the walled garden, a “no dig” approach sees herbs, fruits, and vegetables harvested for use at The Glasshouse restaurant. The gardening team repurposes flowers into dried arrangements displayed around the property for up to a year. Bottled water is served in glass bottles (plastic is beneath contempt here) supplied by Blenheim Water, a ten-minute drive away. Other comestibles are locally sourced as well, like the Mayfield Eggs from a nearby family-run farm.

🗝️ The Lobby Bar — Hospitality updates, promotions, and the occasional pun

Michelin Pulls the Green Star

The Michelin Guide Great Britain & Ireland has announced it’s retiring the green star, which recognized restaurants for sustainable practices. The designation launched in 2020, and the 37 green-starred restaurants across the UK and Ireland will lose it by the end of this year. In its place, Michelin is launching an editorial initiative called Mindful Voices. Unlike the green star, Mindful Voices is not a formal accolade and will have no accompanying icon or logo. Make of that what you will. A certification that restaurants spent years striving to earn is gone, replaced with something that amounts to a story series. The chefs found out via a mass email addressed “Dear Chef.” Not very classy, Michelin. The Caterer

Raffles Is Going to Courchevel

Raffles Hotels & Resorts is opening its first-ever alpine resort in Courchevel 1850, set within the Jardin Alpin precinct with views across the Tarentaise Valley. The property is slated for the 2028 winter season, featuring 50 rooms and suites with interiors by Humbert & Poyet. Rosewood beat them there, opening its own Jardin Alpin property in December 2025. One&Only has also announced plans in the same enclave, with a target of 2030. Courchevel is turning into a luxury hotel arms race. If ski-in/ski-out France is on your list, the window to book before rates reflect all this new inventory is closing fast. Tao Hua Yuan Business Traveler

Four Seasons Gstaad Is Coming Back

The Park Gstaad, currently being reimagined by interior designer Joseph Dirand, is scheduled to reopen as The Park Gstaad, Four Seasons Hotel in time for the 2026-27 winter season. This one’s been watched closely in Swiss circles for a while. Six private residences are now also for sale alongside the hotel. If wintertime Switzerland is on your radar, this is worth putting on the list early. parkgstaad

Condé Nast Wants to Be Your Shopping Platform

Condé Nast launched Vette, a creator-focused commerce platform that lets influencers and editors build curated storefronts. Brands drop-ship orders, Vette handles checkout, and creators focus on curation. It’s their answer to LTK and ShopMy, using editorial credibility as the differentiator. Why should this matter to travelers? Travel content is heading in the same direction. Newsletters, Substacks, and creator-led recommendations are replacing the glossy magazine spread. When Condé Nast builds infrastructure for it, that tells you where the money will follow. Influencer Marketing Hub

Your Hotel’s Check-In Is Now Partly Run by AI (But the Desk Isn’t Going Away)

New research from Mews found that 98% of hoteliers have used AI across their operations in the last six months, with AI involved in 11 of the 19 most common hotel tasks. Despite that, 59% of hoteliers say the front desk welcome and check-in should remain in human hands, and that view is strongest among properties already using AI most extensively. Your room assignment, rate, and housekeeping schedule are almost certainly touched by an algorithm now. The being who greets you at check-in is probably still human. For now, at least. eHotelier Insights

TikTok Is Now a Booking Engine

A platform called Cray has been building “the OTA for Gen Z”: a tool that connects influencers and tour operators, letting travelers on TikTok or Instagram impulse-book experiences directly through short-form video. Commission that would normally go to Viator or GetYourGuide goes to Cray instead, which splits it with the creator who generated the booking. It’s affiliate marketing with a booking layer built in, aimed at the generation that uses TikTok the way everyone else uses Google. Arival

TikTok Go now links videos directly to Booking.com, Expedia, and Viator, letting users check availability and book without leaving the app. Bookable clips appear in the For You feed, search results, and location pages, collapsing the reservation process into a single closed interaction. Tubefilter, Travel Weekly

Ascott Is Building for a World Where AI Books Your Hotel

Ascott Limited announced a major investment in AI-ready infrastructure through partnerships with Accenture, Amadeus, and EHL Hospitality Business School, aimed at preparing for a future where intelligent agents increasingly shape how travelers discover, plan, and book stays. The initiative spans digital architecture, distribution systems, and workforce training. The panel they hosted at their global conference put the question plainly: “When AI agents become the first audience, how will Ascott convince software before humans?” Hotel Management

🗝️ Anne Marie, Founder of Alpenglow Travel, Managing Director of Colorado Ohana Ventures, Traveler, Mother, Writer of the Upgrade, Solver of Travel Problems

Sources

¹ Luxury London, “The New London Members’ Clubs,” November 2025. Note: the 130+ figure is widely cited in industry coverage; the piece originally attributed it to The Hollywood Reporter, but the Hollywood Reporter article referenced (Carson Griffith, May 13, 2026) covers New York clubs. Attribution corrected here.

² Growth Market Reports, “Private Members’ Club Market Research Report 2033,” via Hospitality Net / RLA Global, October 2025. Note: market sizing figures vary by research firm ($31.7B–$34.2B for 2024; projections range $59B–$64B by 2033 depending on source). The piece’s caveat about undercounting is well-founded.

³ Business Research Company / Luxury Hotel School Paris, “Global Luxury Hospitality Market,” 2024–2025. Verified across multiple industry sources including digitalguest.com and worldbigroup.com.

⁴ GGA Partners / CMAA Research, “A Club Leader’s Perspective: Emerging Trends and Opportunities for 2023,” February 2023. Note: survey covered primarily country clubs and city/athletic clubs, not social members’ clubs of the Soho House type. Direction of travel applies broadly; absolute percentages should be read in that context.

⁵ Soho House & Co, Q2 2024 Earnings Report (waitlist at 111,000, August 2024). Text updated from 100,000 to 110,000+ to reflect the most recent reported figure. Annabel’s waitlist sourced to Spear’s, “How to Join Annabel’s,” November 2023; “six-year wait” language softened to “measured in years” as no primary source is attached to that specific figure.

⁶ Soho House & Co (NYSE: SHCO), Q2 2021 Earnings Report (30 Houses, 111,910 members) and Q2 2023 Earnings Report (41 Houses, 176,305 members); FY2024 Earnings Release, March 31, 2025 (212,447 members). Member count in text updated from 193,900 (a 2023 year-end figure) to 212,000+ to reflect the correct FY2024 number.

⁷ Soho House & Co, FY2024 Earnings Release, March 31, 2025 (via Nasdaq / BusinessWire). Financials corrected from Q4-only figures to full fiscal year 2024: total revenue $1.2B, net loss $163M, adjusted EBITDA $131.9M. The original text cited $91.7M net loss and $32.3M EBITDA, which were Q4 2024 figures only.

A brief note on this publication. Travel Dispatch will be a new series you can opt into. The Upgrade includes three publications:

1) The Upgrade | Weekly. Everybody gets this. It’s free and arrives on Tuesdays in your inbox. Hospitality hot takes, industry deep dives, the Room Report of hotels worth a stay, and the Lobby Bar with hospitality industry tea and news.

2) Travel Dispatch. You’ll receive your first post for free this weekend. Going forward, they will be available for a paid subscription. These are personal travel essays, destination guides, and real itineraries I’ve built for myself and clients over 18 years in the luxury travel industry. This weekend - you’ll receive my mother-daughter trip to Paris with my bougie bunny. These are not weekly - they will come out once or twice per month.

3) Hotel History. My father, Richard Kelley, wrote a weekly newsletter about the history of our family company, Outrigger Hotels, for 40 years. Paid subscribers will receive occasional editions of my father’s archived Saturday Briefing articles. I want him to live on through his work now that he’s gone.

To customize what lands in your inbox, go to substack.com/settings, click on The Upgrade under Subscriptions, and toggle each section on or off.

Happy travels,

Anne Marie

Subscribe now

A Mother-Daughter Trip to Paris

My daughter is, undoubtedly, the luckiest kid I know. Last fall, she turned 7, and I let her choose a trip with me as her birthday present.

My Bougie Bunny chose Paris, (because of course she did).

Insane 7th birthday present? Absolutely. Do I regret it? Not for a second. I’m decently certain that my 7th birthday involved a Lisa Frank theme and Chuck-E-Cheese. But, my daughter went to Paris.

I’m a luxury travel planner, and honestly, if I can flex my planning skills anywhere, it should be on designing the quintessential Princess Paris trip for my offspring.

Malia loves the “Claris Goes to Paris” books, which feature a little mouse with expensive taste who wants to be a fashion designer, and proceeds to adventure around France name dropping Pucci, Chanel, and Dior. Malia also loves princesses, sweet things, and being the center of attention. She also complimented a woman in an elevator on her bag, saying “I just love your Chanel!” Yes, I know I’m in trouble.

I knew I needed to anchor the trip around fashion, food, and Marie Antoinette.

Where we stayed:

I chose Relais Christine both for its location near the Luxembourg Gardens (and their epic playground), and for its ornate decor.

Our room was fit for a princess, and the staff made sure to sing Malia happy birthday the first morning of the trip over a breakfast filled with hot chocolate and croissants.

What we did:

• A mother-daughter massage at the Cheval Blanc Dior spa

• A boat ride down the Seine blasting music so we could have a dance party

• A tour of the Dior museum to brush up on her fashion history

• A chocolate and macarons tasting tour

• A guided tour of Versailles after watching the Marie Antoinette movie

• A photoshoot in front of the Eiffel Tower

• A private shopping experience at https://www.lileauxfees.com/

Where we ate:

• Vagenende - art deco style French restaurant where Malia devoured escargot

• Huguette - sweet little restaurant with piano music and amazing clam dish

• Giraffe - fancy brunch with views of the Eiffel Tower

• The Ritz - afternoon tea

I am lucky enough that I’ve been to Paris several times in my life, but I’d never seen the city like this - at a slower pace, through her eyes. Everything felt magical, from watching the Eiffel Tower light up to riding the carousel at the Luxembourg Gardens together.

7 is special. She’s still such a little girl who loves dolls and Disney movies, who believes in fairies, twirls in dresses, and doesn’t quite understand what happened at the end of the Marie Antoinette movie. My daughter is also now able to travel as an excellent companion. She never complained about the long flight or distances we walked on winding streets. When it rained, she was thrilled to have a chance to carry an umbrella and sing in the rain. She charmed the pants off of just about every server and front desk person we encountered. I quite honestly had one of the best trips of my life with her.

Celebrating my daughter’s birthday was as much a celebration of my day of giving birth, and our bond together, as it was her moment. Let’s face it, motherhood is hard, and after seven years of it, I deserved to reap a bit of what I’d sowed.

Traveling with our kids gives us the brief gift of concentrated time together, focused on memory making and story sharing. There are no “just a second while I respond to this emails” while you’re walking through the Versailles gardens. There is a brief respite from endless navigation of soccer games, ballet recitals, birthday parties, and theater performances. Routine gives way to “yes” moments where you eat gelato at 10am because you are in Paris.

I am so excited to raise a traveler, and can’t wait for the adventures ahead with my wonderfully spoiled Bougie Bunny.

-Anne Marie, The Upgrade Weekly

Dear readers of The Upgrade -

I’m going to use this platform to occasionally share some of my father’s newsletters, The Saturday Briefing, from the archives of 40 years of his weekly articles. Through these pieces, I hope to share the legacy that my family built through 4 generations of family hotel ownership, until our sale in 2016. My father has since passed away, so I want to give his writing new life by sharing it to other fellow hospitality enthusiasts.

-Anne Marie (Kelley) Brown

My father, Richard Kelley'

My Parents Build Their First Hotel: The Islander

by Richard Kelley

‘By the time I was 15, I was the desk clerk and bellman on weekends …’

When I was 13 years old, my parents were completing the Islander Hotel on Seaside Avenue where the Waikiki Trade Center now stands. I got some lessons on how a building was constructed by following my father around the job.

Today is so different from the time my parents entered the hotel business shortly after World War II. There was no real visitor industry then. In 1947, the year they opened the Islander, Hawaiʻi welcomed some 25,000 tourists, the first year the visitor flow rebounded to roughly the same level as in the immediate prewar years. Perhaps my parents were hearing a voice that said over and over again, “Roy, Estelle … if you build it, they will come!”

Well, build it they did. My father not only employed his architectural skills to design the building, but also served as chief financial officer, general contractor and construction site foreman. My mother cooked lunch for the workmen, and when the property was opened, she took reservations and answered letters on a manual typewriter. In later years, when her desk was at the Edgewater, she responded to over 100 letters a day before going home and preparing dinner.

The construction foreman for the Islander was a huge man named Paul Heady who had been out in the Pacific during the war. I was allowed to pitch in and help with the construction where I could do so safely. Child labor laws were not an impediment in those days. Everything went very slowly because construction materials and supplies were hard to obtain in the early postwar period. It was a great experience.

The Islander was a five-story walk-up with 48 units and a little two-by-four office on the ground floor. Listed room rates started at $5.00 a night, single occupancy, and $6.00 for a double. But if you were a little short of cash and a room was available, my father would make you a deal!

The property was fully occupied for many years and provided a base of operations for many additional rental units scattered around the neighborhood in cottages, low-rise apartment buildings and converted homes.

My experience in the hotel industry started in Housekeeping when I was in junior high school. It was in a small but busy room facing the parking lot behind the Islander. We served not only the Islander “tower,” but the far-flung group of outlying units, scattered in a two-block radius, from Aloha Drive to Nohonani Street. You learned how to be efficient because you practically needed roller skates if you forgot something when you went out to make up rooms.

Yoshiko Sato ran Housekeeping efficiently. The laundry was done in small domestic washers across the driveway in an open garage. My summer job was to run towels, linen and supplies to the housekeepers as they cleaned rooms in this far-flung hotel and to help with heavy work, like moving beds and furniture.

By the time I was 15, I was the desk clerk and bellman on weekends. I can remember the thrill of getting a tip when I hauled bags up the stairs of the main building or over to one of the outlying units. I particularly remember those stairs. They were deceptive, zigging and zagging so you could never see more than half a flight at a time. The stairs became a challenge for me in the summertime, when I worked in Housekeeping and carried linen and bags up those flights.

On Fridays, I escaped the stairs by staying up all night to do the audit. The accounting for the whole hotel, more than 200 rooms altogether, was on a giant manual spreadsheet covering three or four pages. Every night, someone had to add in the day’s room revenue and miscellaneous charges across the columns and make the columns and the rows balance, using a manually cranked, 10-key adding machine. I never could get it right the first time and often had to stay far into the morning, punchy from lack of sleep, to make it all add up correctly.

When elevators, air conditioning and hotel swimming pools came along, the Islander became obsolete and was torn down to make way for one of the expansion units of the Waikiki Theater.

Roy and Estelle Kelley at the Islander Hotel, 1947. Islander Hotel.

From Paddling the Outrigger by Dr. Richard Kelley, pp. 26–27. Originally published in the Saturday Briefing newsletter, 1984–1997.

May 19, 2026

In this week’s issue:

• Pre-Departure – The Race for Irreplaceable Hotels

• The Room Report – Passalacqua, Lake Como

• The Lobby Bar – One&Only Courchevel, Fouquet’s Mykonos, World Cup pricing, the most stolen item from hotel rooms

Travelers,

Some of the world’s most storied properties are getting a second life as luxury hotels. A Venetian palace, a former U.S. Embassy in Mayfair, a 15th-century Austrian castle on an Alpine lake – these properties are irreplaceable and chasing the top of the K in today’s K-shaped economy. In The Upgrade this week, I explore what’s driving these historic renovations, where the money is coming from, and my personal favorite historic luxury hotel – Passalacqua.

It’s no question that I was absolutely a princess in another life, so are these properties on my TBV (to be visited) list? Absolutely. What do you think is the most stolen item from hotel rooms? It may not be what you’d expect.

Happy travels! Anne Marie

Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

Check out previous editions of The Upgrade Weekly:

• Why you should travel with your parents

• What's the Deal with Farm Hotels

• What Luxury Hotels Get Wrong

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  🗝️ Pre-Departure - Hospitality Hot Takes

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The Race for Irreplaceable Hotels

In the K-shaped economy, the race for irreplaceable hotels is going strong. Investors are chasing the top half of the “K,” targeting the luxury spending of travelers whose pocketbooks are most insulated against global disruption and inflation.

In this vein, we have recently seen a rash of historic properties being acquired, renovated, and reflagged under luxury brands.

Case in point – two years ago, I sat on the patio of the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan, watching the feluccas sail past at sunset, imagining Agatha Christie penning “Death on the Nile.” Previously a Sofitel, the Old Cataract commands prime real estate on the bank of the Nile and a famous history that rivals many of the Grande Dame properties in Europe.

Now, Mandarin Oriental will take over the Old Cataract as well as the Winter Palace in Luxor, planning significant renovations to both before they reopen in 2027 together with the debut of the brand’s first luxury river cruise between Cairo and Aswan.

Venice, where real estate is finite and demand is not, has become the center of this activity:

• Rosewood Hotel Bauer, the 1880 landmark situated between the Grand Canal and Piazza San Marco, is now in mid-renovation.

• Hotel Danieli is being reflagged as a Four Seasons. Designer Pierre-Yves Rochon is uniting its three historic palaces and restoring Gothic architectural details. The renovation carries a €30 million price tag, with 52 suites and 168 guest rooms. Reopening shortly (“mid-2026”).

• Orient Express Venezia opened in March inside the restored 15th-century Palazzo Donà Giovannelli in Cannaregio, with 47 rooms, suites, and residences, preserving original frescoes and high ceilings.

• Airelles Venezia opened on the island of Giudecca inside a former 16th-century school for young women and a 17th-century villa. Airelles also operates the only hotel inside the Palace of Versailles, so they know something about historic real estate.

Beyond Venice: the former U.S. Embassy in Mayfair is now The Chancery Rosewood. In Berlin, the 19th-century HQ of Dresdner Bank is being converted to a Four Seasons. A 15th-century Austrian castle on Lake Fuschl is now Rosewood Schloss Fuschl.

As a hotel investor, I can confidently say that the economics of building a new luxury hotel from scratch have become almost untenable. Construction costs have skyrocketed with supply chain disruption. With the Iran war and the pandemic still causing ripple effects throughout travel, institutional investors hesitate to back new greenfield development in an industry so susceptible to disruption.

With that kind of development cost, luxury hotels are chasing high ADRs (average daily rates), and one of the best ways to justify them is to offer a historic property. A palace comes with several hundred years of story in the walls. That story is the product – the difference between all-but-identical city Marriotts in San Francisco and Rome, and a place like Passalacqua on Lake Como, a palazzo that once belonged to counts and that hosted Churchill and (though not quite at the same time!) Bellini.

Historic hotels carry an ADR roughly 12% higher than comparably luxurious contemporary properties, with occupancy running about 8 percentage points above average.

Investors like me call this a moat. There is nothing comparable to staying in a 14th-century Venetian palace on the Grand Canal. A newly built five-star hotel nearby competes on amenities and price. The Danieli’s historic pedigree simply blows modern competition out of the (canal) water.

The Danieli in Venice

Ownership structures explain why properties that sat dormant or deteriorating for years are suddenly getting $30, $50, $100 million renovations. Sovereign wealth funds, primarily from the Middle East and Asia, have been targeting European gateway markets aggressively. In 2024, hard assets including real estate accounted for 61% of all publicly disclosed sovereign wealth fund direct investments, up from 40% the prior year.

Aman is a perfect illustration of what this capital is chasing.

In 2022, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund invested $900 million in Aman Group alongside Cain International, valuing the brand at $3 billion. The following year, Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala led a further $360 million round. That’s $1.26 billion in sovereign capital into a single ultra-luxury hotel brand in under 18 months. Aman now has properties under development at AlUla and Diriyah.

Egypt’s Garranah Group is backing the Luxor and Aswan Mandarin Oriental renovations and the river cruise, resulting in a luxury corridor linking Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan under the MO flag. Egypt gets world-class hospitality at its most iconic sites without bearing the full development risk, while Mandarin Oriental gets a flagship presence in one of the most famous destinations on earth.

Public Private Partnerships

Historic preservation in Europe adds another layer of complexity, which often requires both significant investment from an owner-operator, like a family office, or a company like LVMH (invested in Belmond), in partnership with the country or city where the development takes place.

Venice operates under one of the world’s tightest regulatory regimes – facades cannot be altered, architectural elements must be retained wherever possible, and permitting requires navigating multiple layers of local, regional, and national heritage authorities.

For most hotel developers, the combination of regulatory complexity and capital intensity is enough to steer clear of a project. In contrast, sovereign and institutional investors can hold an asset through a two- to three-year renovation and dark period without the financial pressure that kills most private real estate deals.

The luxury brand brings a globally recognized flag, a distribution network, a loyalty program, and the operational expertise to run a property of this caliber.

The structure typically involves the investor owning the real estate while the brand manages under a long-term agreement. Mandarin Oriental’s Paris sale to Gruppo Statuto followed this model, with MO retaining a 50-year management agreement even after selling the asset.

The investor benefits from a world-class operator and premium brand attached to its irreplaceable asset. The brand gets a flagship property it could never afford to own outright, in a location with predictable traffic.

What it means for you

I rarely send clients to a new property in its first year, thanks to the heightened possibility of operational hiccups. But, if you can look past a missed turndown or slow breakfast service, the months right after a major historic property reopens tend to be the sweet spot. Opening-rate incentives are common before pricing stabilizes. Perhaps counterintuitively, neighboring properties often soften rates while a major competitor is off the market to entice travelers before the competition reopens.

When Rosewood Hotel Bauer (see above) comes fully online in Venice, expect the broader San Marco comp set to adjust upward.

🗝️ The Room Report - Personal reviews from my own travels

Passalacqua, Lake Como

In 2024 we stayed in a villa down the street from Passalacqua. When my son developed an ear infection on a weekend, I called their concierge to ask if they could recommend a local pediatrician. Not only did they find a doctor (who drove an hour to our villa on a Sunday), but the hotel also invited us up for a site visit, cocktails on the terrace, and a wine tasting. Now that is service.

Passalacqua offers 24 rooms on seven acres above Lake Como in a palazzo that once belonged to the Counts Lucini Passalacqua and that hosted Churchill and Bellini. “World’s 50 Best" named it the “Best Hotel in the World” in 2023.

It’s now owned by the De Santis family, who also own Grand Hotel Tremezzo farther down the lakeshore.

What sets Passalacqua apart from every other historic palazzo hotel in Italy is that it doesn’t feel like a museum. The De Santis family’s personal antiques are everywhere, plates on the wall that belonged to their grandparents, objects collected when the pace of travel was slower. You feel like a guest in someone’s home, rather than a customer in a hotel designed to look like someone’s home.

Chef Viviana Varese runs an open kitchen, meaning you can walk in and get something made to order whenever you want. We did a wine tasting in the private cellar and watched guests roll pasta with the kitchen team. The property spreads across the Palazzo, the Villa, and the Casa al Lago, a lakeside cottage with four rooms that’s perfect for families.

The calendar fills almost a year in advance, and they price accordingly.

🗝️ The Lobby Bar - Hospitality updates, promotions, and the occasional pun

• One&Only is coming to Courchevel. Kerzner International just announced One&Only Courchevel 1850, the brand’s first resort in the French Alps, opening in 2030 on the site of the historic Courcheneige Hotel, with ski-in/ski-out access to the Bellécôte slope. Also in the Courchevel pipeline: Raffles is opening its first-ever ski property there in 2028. Via HotelsMag

• Fouquet’s lands in Mykonos. Barrière just opened Fouquet’s Mykonos on Paraga Beach, the brand’s first Greece location, with 61 suites, three villas, an indoor pool (rare on the island), a Barbara Sturm spa, and a restaurant created with Roka. I’m there with clients this summer. First impressions to follow. Via HotelsMag

• World Cup hotel pricing update. If you’re planning to attend any matches this summer, the anticipated pricing hysteria in host cities has not materialized. 80% of hoteliers surveyed reported bookings are tracking below forecasts, with visa barriers and geopolitical concerns cited as the main factors. Rooms are available in Miami, LA, and New York at rates more reasonable than predictions suggested. Via HotelsMag

• The most stolen item from hotel rooms is… (hint – it’s not the shoehorn). Over 88% of hotel staff surveyed said towels are what’s most commonly filched, followed by bathrobes at 66% with hangers in third place. Hotel theft costs the industry roughly $100 million a year in the U.S. alone. The branded pens and mini soaps? Take ’em. That’s marketing. The Frette bath towels? Hotels are charging your card for those. Via AOL (is anyone else surprised that AOL still exists?)

🗝️ Anne Marie

alpenglowtravel.com | AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com

Oahu, Hawaii

The Insider’s Guide from Someone Who Grew Up There

I grew up on Oahu, right outside of Waikiki at the base of Diamond Head. My family had a hotel company. We go back at least twice a year to see my siblings who stayed behind, and we host friends and their families regularly there. This guide is built on a lifetime of knowing and loving the island.

Setting Expectations

Oahu does not have the hotel product to compete with the Rosewood Kona Village or the Four Seasons Lanai. If your vision of a Hawaii trip is staying at your resort the entire time and leaning into full-service amenities, Oahu is not your island. Nothing in its hotel lineup will match those properties.

What Oahu does have is everything else: the best restaurants in the state, better shopping than any other island, a huge range of activities you can easily drive to, and a genuine energy that the quieter islands do not have. The key is knowing what kind of experience you are in for.

I can’t emphasize this enough - rent a car. There is too much to see beyond Waikiki to go without one.

Hotels

From a luxury standpoint, your real options on Oahu are:

• The Halekulani

• The Kahala

• The Ritz-Carlton Waikiki (residences)

• The Jewel

• The Four Seasons Ko’olina

• The Ritz-Carlton Turtle Bay

Ritz-Carlton Waikiki (Residences)

The location is unbeatable, the pool is solid, and the bar is great. You will need to walk a couple of blocks to the beach, but with small children we found it completely manageable. The family suites accommodate a family of four or five comfortably, and

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May 12, 2026

Inside The Upgrade this week:

• Pre-Departure – Why you should travel with your parents, a personal note

• The Room Report – The British Pullman’s new luxury train car

• The Lobby Bar – Your new passport might have Trump’s face on it, UAE airspace is back open, hotel earnings reports worth watching, good-bye to Spirit airlines (not that I ever flew on them)

Travelers,

This week’s edition of The Upgrade | Weekly is more personal. This weekend had me thinking about my parents – both of whom I lost within 6 months of each other in late 2022 and early 2023. As part of the sandwich generation, I wanted to take a moment to remind you why you should travel with your parents while you can. If you aren’t ready for the guilt trip, scroll past to the Room Report where Baz Luhrmann has designed a train carriage, Celia, for the Belmond British Pullman, and it is a maximalist masterpiece.

Happy travels, Anne Marie Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

The Upgrade is free for subscribers. Support this publication by forwarding it to your friends and booking your trips with us.

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Yours truly in Botswana with my parents

🗝️ Pre-Departure – Hospitality Industry Hot Takes

Why You Should Travel With Your Parents

I often write about traveling with my children and the benefits of raising kids who have a global view that extends beyond their own country. Most of my clients are millennial families, trying to navigate room configurations that work for a couple with two or three kids, hotels located near playgrounds, and activities that won’t result in meltdowns.

What we don’t explore often enough is the other end of the curve – traveling with our parents once we are no longer children. Yes, every older parent is a unique case. My father at 80 happily navigated safari vehicles in Botswana. My mother thought a hotel without room service was equivalent to camping.

Yes, our parents may not remember to turn on international service for their cell phone before travel. They may need 5pm dinner reservations in a country that eats at 9pm. They may be prime targets for pickpockets and scam artists. They may book the wrong date for a hotel and then argue at check in about why their Booking.com reservation can’t be honored. They may forget their daughter is a travel agent and try to make their own bookings, which they hopelessly mess up.

Nonetheless, I am going to argue here in favor of traveling with your parents as an adult.

I was in my early 20s, working my tail off in my first job, a full social calendar, bounding between happy hours, hikes, and bachelorette parties. The last thing on my mind was calling my parents. They often called me, after all, and I could schedule time on my calendar if they really needed to see me. I was very busy.

My father, who had been in the travel industry for most of his life, had a tradition of taking a solo trip with each of his seven kids when they reached adulthood. He’d been asking me for a few years where I would like to go for my trip, but I kept putting it off. I had limited PTO.

As the youngest – the child my dad had at age 50 with his second wife – I grew up with people thinking he was my grandfather. He had white hair when I was born. Soft spoken and brilliant, he loved travel with a passion I inherited.

I was knee deep in planning a trip to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos for clients – one of the first trips I would be responsible for – and I was proudly explaining the details to my dad when he asked if I’d like to take that same trip with him.

He had never served in the Vietnam War, but it had a large impact on his life, and he’d always wanted to travel there.

I am forever grateful I said “Yes” at that moment.

My dad and me in Halong Bay, Vietnam, 2009

For the first time, my father passed the travel leader baton to me. I ordered our visas, created binders with all printed documents, designed the itinerary, bought the flights.

In line at TSA, my father paid me the highest compliment, “Honey, you are such an easy person to travel with.” We spent ten days (all of my PTO for the year) traveling through Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos together.

My father’s Parkinson’s was starting to take its toll, and I held him upright down temple steps, cupped my hand over his head as he ducked into Tuk Tuks, and helped him locate the restroom at night.

I could tell the trip was hard on his weakening body. We booked massages at each stop to ease his pain, and I cancelled a few items to free up time for him to rest, despite what he had always said: “You rest, you rust.”

That was our last trip together, just the two of us. After Vietnam, my life got busier than ever. I got married, moved away for graduate school, then moved home and had two children.

My dad kept a framed photo of us in front of Angkor Wat on his desk. In the hospital during his last few weeks, when I’d come visit him and bring ketchup or ice cream (his favorite foods), he’d talk about our trip and what it meant to him.

The photo my dad kept on his desk - Angkor Wat

I was on a ski run in the mountains with my brother when I got the call that he was gone. The run was called “Angel’s Rest.”

Looking back, I want to grab everyone around me by the collar and whisper like a Victorian ghost, “Travel with your parents! Do it now, before it’s too late.”

Those moments in Southeast Asia – eating bowls of breakfast pho with steam curling in the humidity, dodging motorbikes like Frogger, blocking out my dad’s deafening, lumberjack snores while swaying to sleep on the night train – those were what I see as the peak of our adult relationship.

On that trip, he seemed to recognize the traveler in me, and bless the future I’d chosen for myself in the travel industry.

So, whether you’re a parent worrying about pulling your kids away from college or a budding career, or you’re an adult child making room on your calendar for your parents like it’s hardly top priority, listen up.

🗝️ The Room Report Personal reviews from my own travels, hotels you should know about

Last year, I traveled on the British Pullman’s Murder Mystery Train ride to celebrate my 40^th. I’m now absolutely dying to hop on the Pullman again to check out it’s new private car, Celia.

The Baz Luhrmann Train Carriage Is Exactly What You’d Expect

With purple velvet, marquetry walls, and a signature scent, Celia is in a class of her own when it comes to luxury train cars. Baz Luhrmann and his wife, Catherine Martin, designed a private train carriage for the British Pullman and it looks exactly like a scene from one of his films. The launch party was hosted by Anna Wintour and included Roger Federer and Tom Ford. I can’t believe they forgot to invite me.

The concept is built around a fictional 1920s West End actress who was secretly gifted her own Pullman car. The carriage seats up to 12 for exclusive group bookings, and the details are extraordinary: bespoke marquetry walls depicting flowers and fairies, a tasseled purple velvet sofa, custom glass, Hand and Lock embroidery, and a signature scent Luhrmann and Martin personally selected to complete the atmosphere.

A private transfer picks you up from your London hotel, a butler greets you at Victoria Station, and a dedicated chef prepares a fine dining menu in your private onboard kitchen. Your Guest Experience Curator handles every detail in advance, including excursion itineraries and live entertainment.

Celia is bookable through Belmond directly or through a travel advisor, like yours truly. If a private Belmond experience is on your list, email me at AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com.

🗝️ The Lobby Bar Hospitality updates, promotions, and the occasional pun

Your New Passport Might Have Trump’s Face On It

The U.S. State Department is releasing a limited run of commemorative passports featuring President Trump’s portrait, timed to the country’s 250th anniversary this July. Between 25,000 and 30,000 available, against 160 million U.S. passports in circulation. If you’re renewing online or applying anywhere outside Washington D.C., you almost certainly won’t receive one. Check your expiration date before you book anything this summer. Most European countries require at least six months of validity remaining at the time of travel. [Read more]

The UAE Is Open

The UAE airspace has fully reopened with normal commercial operations restored. For travelerwho had Middle East travel on hold, this is the green light. We’re watching for governments to lift remaining travel advisories so the return can be complete. [Read more]

Hotel Earnings Season Is Worth Watching

Skift reports investors are closely watching April-May hotel earnings for signs that performance has improved after a soft 2025, with attention on energy costs, World Cup demand pacing, and margin resilience. For anyone planning group travel or high-end bookings over the next 18 months, this is one of the cleaner reads on where hotel pricing is headed. [Read more]

Hyatt’s Luxury Bet Is Paying Off

Hyatt posted first-quarter RevPAR growth of 5.4% year over year, led by its luxury brands, which recorded double-digit RevPAR growth in Q1. Pipeline of executed management or franchise contracts grew 9.4%, 3,996 rooms opened, and net rooms growth hit 5%.

CEO Mark Hoplamazian put it plainly: “If there’s any sign of weakness in terms of the high-end customer, we have not seen it.”

Rising airfares, higher oil prices, and geopolitical noise have done nothing to slow spending at the top of the market. For our clients, this confirms what we’re already seeing in booking patterns. Demand for the best rooms at the best properties is not softening. Book early. [Read more]

Spirit Airlines Is Gone

Spirit Airlines, the largest ultra-low-cost carrier in the U.S., is shutting down after its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy and failed bailout talks with the Trump administration. High fuel prices were cited as the final blow.

If you have outstanding Spirit bookings, contact your credit card company immediately to dispute charges. Spirit is not in a position to rebook or refund you. This is a good reminder of why booking through a travel advisor matters: when an airline folds, we are already on the phone working the problem before you even know there is one. [Read more]

The Travel Industry By the Numbers

The World Travel and Tourism Council put the sector’s contribution to the global economy at $11.7 trillion in 2025, representing 10.3% of global GDP, with projections to reach $16.5 trillion by 2035. The industry recovered from COVID and kept growing. That tracks with what we see on the ground: our clients are not pulling back. They’re planning bigger trips, booking further out, and spending more intentionally. [Read more]

🗝️ Anne Marie

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The pyramids, a Dahabiya cruise down the Nile, Abu Simbel, and why this is the moment to go

🗝️ This post marks the first of the Master Key series - comprised of actual itineraries I’ve built for luxury clients, my own travel guides, and in-depth brand history lessons from the hospitality industry. These posts are for paid subscribers.

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Egypt can feel intimating for travelers, yet is on most people’s bucket list. It was certainly on mine. Prior to my own trip three years ago, I didn’t feel comfortable building trips for clients in Egypt.

As a luxury travel advisor, I pride myself on my network of providers that I’ve built around the world, as well as bringing personal travel experience to my itineraries. In some areas, those connections have to be made in person. I wanted to make sure that I had traveled to Egypt in person - and this is the trip that I’ve now built for several clients with the connections I made there.

This is the right time to travel to Egypt. The Middle Eastern war has made many travelers wary of visiting the region, but Egypt remains a safe place to travel with the same travel advisories it had prior to the conflict. What the slowdown in arrivals has meant is smaller crowds, lower rates, and probably the best time to go to the country I’ve seen in years.

Additionally, The Grand Egyptian Museum finished opening its full collection in 2024. The small luxury dahabiya category on the Nile has matured into an incredible collection of ships. And for the first time in a long time, the crowds are manageable. Europeans who might otherwise go are choosing elsewhere right now, and that’s your opening.

I’ve built out a full sample itinerary, and I want to walk you through how I think about Egypt as a destination, what makes this trip work, and the specific places that make for an amazing first-time visit.

Yours truly in the Hathor Temple

Structural Overview

This is a 10-night trip - Cairo, Luxor, cruise the Nile, Aswan and Abu Simbel, then back to Cairo.

You need 3 nights in Cairo on the front end to see Giza, Saqqara, and the museums without rushing.

Read more

Travelers,

If it seems everyone is heading to the Cotswolds to forage for wild garlic, visit storybook villages with wisteria-covered cottages, and drink overpriced lavender coffee while arranging flowers at Daylesford, you are witnessing the Farm Hotel marketing push.

The generation who turned to feeding their sourdough starters during Covid lockdown is going all-in on countryside living (but not in a Tradwife way). Farm Hotels went from “have you heard of this?” to fully booked six months in advance.

Confession – I’ve just started reading Lydia Millen’s Evergreen Journal and own several Holland and Cooper tweed ensembles, so I absolutely am the target market.

For example, this week The Room Report covers my 40th birthday trip through the English countryside. Very on-brand. Read on for my deep dive into the Farm Hotel zeitgeist.

Happy travels!

Anne Marie, Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

Yours truly at Estelle Manor on my 40th birthday trip in the British Countryside.

🗝️ Pre-Departure – Hospitality Industry Hot Takes

The Farm Hotel Moment

There’s a Plum Sykes piece making the rounds about the American-Sloane Aesthetic movement – the Barbour-wearing, countryside-romanticizing set that has moved from a British niche to the “quiet luxury” signal filling my Instagram feed. Sykes described throwing a dinner for American writer Chris Black in London, horrified that he wore a Barbour jacket to the affair in full view of the other guests. Sykes, the voice of the Cotswolds luxury ladies, observes that “the British country thing will always be romanticized because it’s so classy.” (P.S. by Plum Sykes, April 2026)

In 2022, U.S. private equity firm KSL Capital Partners, which has invested exclusively in travel and leisure for over 30 years (and which purchased my family’s company, Outrigger Hotels, in 2016), acquired The Pig Hotels, the UK’s defining farm hotel group. At time of acquisition, The Pig portfolio was running 91% average occupancy. The most recent filings show turnover at £50.6 million across nine properties for 2024, with ADR (average daily rate) growth even as occupancy softened slightly to 77% amid broader UK hospitality headwinds.

Meanwhile, across the broader hotel industry in 2025, luxury hotels posted 5.3% RevPAR (revenue per available room) growth while the economy segment slowed by 1.8%.

Farm Hotels capture more of each guest’s wallet than city hotels because their guests are essentially captive.

You’re eating all three organic meals on property, booking local honey facials at the spa, paying for falconry jaunts, buying jam from the farm shop, doing the biodynamic wine tasting – all without leaving.

Industry data puts full-service hotel TRevPAR at 1.3 to 2 times RevPAR. Farm Hotels with a captive audience and five revenue streams sit at the top of that range.

Across hospitality broadly, repeat guests contribute 41% of revenue despite occupying only about 8% of the beds. Community engagement is what drives Farm Hotels’ loyalty and repeat business. Their revenue streams extend well beyond the guest stay.

For example, The Pig sources within 25 miles of each property, building a strong local reputation for those looking to support local business. Babylonstoren – in South Africa – runs a wine club for people who’ve never set foot on the property. Heckfield Place hosts movie nights for Hampshire locals in their basement theater.

The community flywheel is harder to put a number on than RevPAR, and thanks to that, it’s harder for bigger brands to replicate.

People are exhausted from over-stimulation. Travelers are looking to put their phones on silent, read an actual book, pick some flowers, and listen to the birds. Throw in gathering eggs and a giant soaking tub and I’m in.

One note for families: these properties aren’t universally engineered around children. Thyme and The Pig both welcome kids, but if you need a kids’ club and a pool, hit up Estelle Manor.

The category has a few clear leaders in the UK.

The Pig started it. Robin Hutson failed his O-levels. He started as a waiter at Claridge’s, worked his way through hotel management, co-founded Hotel du Vin (the boutique brand that rewrote British hospitality in the 1990s), and sold it for £66 million. In 2011, he opened the first Pig in Brockenhurst, Hampshire, built around a kitchen garden and a rule he called the “25-mile menu”: every dish sourced from the property or from producers within 25 miles. He deliberately eschewed Michelin stars. The ethos is abundance displayed in gloriously unkempt kitchen gardens, potager menus, foraging walks, and wood-fired ovens. There are now ten Pig hotels across England, each following the same rules.

A failed O-level student proved that farm-to-table hospitality could scale without losing its soul.

The Pig

Thyme, outside the village of Southrop in the Cotswolds is a more architecturally oriented version of the same idea. Spread across multiple barns, cottages, and structures centered on a medieval manor house, Thyme boasts curated interiors, serious food, a cooking school, a farm shop, and a proper spa.

Caryn Hibbert was an obstetrician in London when she spotted Southrop Manor in an issue of Country Life and decided she was ready to midwife something different.

She moved her family to this 16th-century manor in 2002, with a vague notion of growing vegetables and raising her children in the countryside. The derelict farm buildings on the property needed a purpose, so her father, an engineer, said he’d restore them if she’d build a business. And has she ever!

Thyme

Heckfield Place. I visited this lovely little gem on my 40th birthday jaunt through England last year, and immediately decided to redecorate my entire house in that aesthetic, much to my husband’s dismay.

Dr. Gerald Chan, a Hong Kong-born billionaire and co-founder of Morningside Group, bought a 400-acre Georgian estate in Hampshire and spent over a decade restoring it before opening its first room in 2019. The farm is 100% biodynamic certified, the first hotel in the UK to achieve this distinction. Biodynamic reaches beyond organic: the farm operates as a self-sustaining ecosystem, planting and harvesting on lunar and cosmic cycles. Seven climate-controlled greenhouses grow sixty to seventy vegetable crops and forty to fifty varieties of cut flowers that grace its guest rooms. The farm also supplies the spa, which uses only estate-grown botanicals.

Skye Gyngell, who previously held a Michelin star at Petersham Nurseries Café, runs the estate restaurant, Marle. There we enjoyed a long, luscious dinner during which we imbibed a bit too much organic wine and spotted an Instagram influencer wearing a green tulle ballgown being photographed in the gardens. In February 2025, Marle earned a Green Michelin Star for sustainable gastronomy. The full field-to-fork experience, with a cozy, sunlit lobby lounge, feels like a magazine version of my living room.

International versions:

Blackberry Farm in Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains is the original. Wildflower Farms in New York’s Hudson Valley (Auberge Resorts Collection) is the new option.

Babylonstoren in South Africa’s Cape Winelands – a working farm dating to 1692 with a 3.5-hectare garden growing over 300 edible and medicinal plants, two farm-to-fork restaurants, a wine estate, and renovated historic cottages. I’m going in January, stay tuned.

British countryside hotels

Last year I hit 40, and I decided the right way to celebrate would be cavorting around the English countryside with five of my closest friends. The itinerary: the Belmond British Pullman murder mystery train, Cliveden House, Four Seasons Hampshire, Estelle Manor, and dinner at Heckfield Place.

Belmond British Pullman. I’ve been dying to do the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express for years. However, the price led me to realize I could either spend three nights with my husband living that dream or take my five best friends on a different week-long adventure. The girls’ trip won. We did the Belmond murder mystery route – I am an Agatha Christie devotee – dressed in 1920s costume. We spent a full day nibbling through an endless meal while trying to decipher clues as characters made their way up and down the train. Nearly three quarters of the passengers dressed up which was half the fun. A long day with a lot of wine. Despite feeling clueless at solving mysteries, I highly recommend the experience.

Cliveden House. Built in 1666 by the 2nd Duke of Buckingham as a gift to his mistress, now a Relais & Châteaux property. The grounds are beyond gorgeous, and a public park surrounds the estate. Turns out it’s possible to get lost on the grounds when you’re a group of 40-year-old women whose Google Maps won’t load. We hired the vintage river boat for an hour-long tour of the property and its history. A candid caveat: for 17th-century authenticity, there was no air conditioning. We left the sash windows open and a very pleasant doorman spent part of the evening evicting bees from our suite. If you go in summer, know what you’re signing up for.

Four Seasons Hampshire. A restored 18th-century manor 40 minutes outside London, FS Hampshire felt like a Jane Austen novel, except the beds are Four Seasons, the best we slept in on the trip. Room 1107 is the heritage suite in the manor house – book it. The canal boat tour is pricey but entirely worth it. Croquet on the lawn with a bar cart and a local club member explaining the rules was the afternoon I didn’t know I needed. Guest Services Director Adam is from Oxfordshire and knows the countryside well. Pick his brain. I will be back here with my kids.

Estelle Manor. I had been stalking this hotel since it opened and was genuinely worried it would be a scene full of influencers with service that couldn’t match the aesthetic. But it exceeded expectations. The Enshym Baths Roman Spa Thermal Journey is just glorious, with 180 minutes of cold plunges, a Scottish Bucket, steam rooms with heated marble slabs, and Ayurvedic food in the tea room. Off-roading in the Ineos Grenadier through the back tracks of the Oxfordshire estate was a riot. Dining in the Japanese restaurant and the Dim Sum billiards room was excellent. The only hiccups: front desk made several billing errors and check-in was slow, a real pet peeve. Everything else was perfection.

The EU Border Change That’s Already Creating Four-Hour Lines

The EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) requires US passport holders to register biometrics at the border on first entry into any Schengen country, and processing times are up to 70% slower at peak airports. Reports from clients are that things are running smoothly at CDG and slow in Lisbon. Book a VIP arrival service if you’re worried.

Hotel Earnings Season

April-May earnings calls are shaping up as the industry’s clearest read on demand quality and pricing power after a weak 2025, with investors closely watching energy costs, World Cup pacing, and margin resilience.

Travel Had Its Best Year Ever in 2025

The World Travel & Tourism Council reported travel’s global GDP contribution hit a record $11.6 trillion in 2025, growing at 4.1% versus overall global growth of 2.8%, with Asia-Pacific climbing 8.1% and North America up just 1%.

U.S. Hotel Construction Is Contracting

CoStar data shows U.S. hotel construction has declined for 15 straight months to 136,990 rooms – the longest pullback since 2008 – with luxury the only segment growing (+4.5%) and overall supply growth at just 1.4%.

European Hotel Investment

Per Hospitalitynet, European hotel investment jumped 23% to €27 billion in 2025 even as RevPAR grew just 2% – investors are buying ahead of recovery, which means well-capitalized properties are actively improving product.

Belmond’s Villa San Michele Reopens

Villa San Michele reopened April 28 after an 18-month renovation with 39 redesigned rooms, a new Guerlain spa, and restored Fiesole gardens – full details here. If Florence is on the list this year, this is the property.

COMO Le Beauvallon Opens on the French Riviera

COMO just opened Le Beauvallon on the Riviera following a full restoration – worth flagging for anyone with the South of France on the radar this summer.

Sensei Lanai Is Expanding

Larry Ellison’s Sensei wellness brand is expanding beyond its original Four Seasons Lanai property into a global network, with a new partnership at Zadún, a Ritz-Carlton Reserve in Baja.

Uber Now Books Hotels

Uber launched hotel bookings this week through a partnership with Expedia Group, giving its 202 million monthly users access to over 700,000 properties worldwide. Uber One members get 20% off a rotating list of 10,000 hotels and 10% back in Uber credits. The company is also adding VRBO vacation rentals later this year and a room service feature that delivers to your door via Uber Eats.

🗝️ Anne Marie

Book your next trip with Alpenglow Travel

The service: this is really where they go above and beyond. From the friendly doormen who know the whole history of the place, to the front desk agents and concierge who will tell you which pub has Irish music that night, this hotel pulls off being five star without feeling stuffy.

The food: burgers at the carriage house, tapas in the Tack Room, tea in the Gallery, a Michelin-starred meal in the Oak Room, everything I eat there is scrumptious.

The grounds: they have an epic fairy garden onsite where I could explore for hours.

The facilities: the Ryder Cup is going to be here next for good reason - their golf course is gorgeous. The Padel Club is an incredible day spa with a private yoga room, fitness facility, jacuzzi facing the trees, steam room, sauna, and Padel courts.

Family friendly: a lot of five star hotels aren’t welcoming to little kids, but Adare goes out of their way to include them. They have family lodge style accommodations that are 2 and 3 bedrooms, and tons of family friendly activities. I took Malia two years ago and she loved the falconry and receiving a special fairy key.

If you’d like to check it out, reach to me at AnneMarie@AlpenglowTravel.com

Travelers,

I spend a lot of my time on hotels, touring them, reading about them, sleeping in them, listening to sales presentations in hotel ballrooms while nursing a cup of mediocre coffee. It blows my mind that a property can invest millions in its product and still get simple aspects of service wrong.

Happy travels, Anne Marie Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

The Upgrade is free for subscribers. Support this publication by forwarding it to a friend and booking your trips with us.

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🗝️ Pre-Departure – Hospitality Industry Hot Takes

What Luxury Hotels Get Wrong

Give me a martini, and I’ll wax poetic about hotels. Brands pour millions into the design, the press coverage, the sales director dinner with agents in their territories, and then drop the ball on service in ways that are completely avoidable.

The 1 Hotel in Hanalei is a good example. It’s a gorgeous property with an unbeatable location on Kauai. I had it on my personal must-see list. Then, the reports came in from fellow advisors and our clients: forgotten room service, housekeeping arriving mid-afternoon, slow pool service, concierge that responded with crickets. I stopped recommending it.

Part of my job is meeting annually with hotel sales directors and asking hard questions. These are the pet peeves that I see repeatedly ruining otherwise 5-star stays.

You never have to play The Chair Game at Four Seasons Naviva

1. The Chair Game

You peruse row after row of chairs after breakfast, heart sinking as you realize every single chair has a book, pair of sunglasses, or unfolded towel thrown haphazardly over it. You vow to wake up early tomorrow and claim your real estate before the other guests.

If you are paying upwards of $1,000 a night, you should not be setting an alarm for the poolside hotel hunger games.

Grand Velas Los Cabos handles this well: you give your name and room number when you claim a chair, which will be held for 30 minutes before items are removed if your chair remains unoccupied. Most importantly, they actually enforce this.

2. Light Switches That Require a Degree

There is an inverse relationship between a guest’s ability to turn on a light and the hotel ADR (average daily rate).

During a recent stay at the One & Only Mandarina, my family spent every evening in semi-darkness because we could not figure out the lighting panels. On our last day, we discovered a skylight with its own switch which had been there the entire time. Let there be (more) light.

3. Charging for Water at the Restaurant

Our hotel folio at a certain 5-star in Cabo had astronomical restaurant bills. The culprit was bottled water charges at every meal. We started smuggling plastic bottles from the room, which made my environmentally conscious heart die a little. If the tap water is unsuitable for guests, bottled water at on-property dining venues should be included.

4. Slow Pre-Arrival Communication

I work with hotel concierges constantly, coordinating welcome amenities, booking restaurants, arranging transfers. Legacy concierges are worth their weight in gold. When a hotel takes three days to reply to an email and answers only half my questions, I know they aren’t taking the advisor relationship seriously.

In contrast, you have the concierge team at the Lanesborough, who are on it. They reach out proactively, they remember my clients, they provide service you didn’t even know you needed. Recently, they sourced sold-out V&A Marie Antoinette exhibit tickets for a client, and that won them my business until the end of time.

5. Housekeeping After 1pm

I worked housekeeping for two summers at my family’s hotels. A well-staffed team does not need until 3pm to turn a room. We travel with kids who are up at 6am, eat breakfast early, and want to be back in the room by noon. Returning to an unmade room when you want clean sheets and towels for a shower is disheartening. The Amans of the world notice you’ve gone to breakfast and turn the room without being asked.

What You Said

I asked my network for their hotel pet peeves:

• Waiting 90 minutes for luggage they insisted on bringing to your room (Hotel Arts Barcelona holds this record in my personal experience)

• A long check-in spiel after 12 hours of travel with screaming children – I don’t need to know about “Star Gazer” lounge access

• Missing check-in time and not making up for it

• Slow pool service

• Resort and destination fees

• Exorbitant laundry pricing

• Not enough hangers

• Hidden outlets, or none by the bed

What Others Are Saying

• Gina Jackson, a London-based hotel writer whose work appears in Conde Nast Traveller, The Times, and the Evening Standard, recently published her own take on hotel pet peeves, and a few of her points are worth adding to the conversation.

• Expensive yet boring minibars. Gina makes a strong case that minibars should be complimentary. She points to Heckfield Place restocking daily with house-made biscuits and cordials, and NIHI Sumba personalizing the minibar entirely based on a pre-arrival preferences form.

• Non-alcoholic options that are actually worth ordering. This one I hadn’t thought enough about, but Gina is right. A hotel with a thoughtful wine program but just two token mocktails is failing to serve a meaningful portion of its guests.

• A general lack of generosity. Gina’s broader point is one I think about a lot: when a hotel is charging four figures a night and nickel and diming its guests, even the most affluent travelers feel taken advantage of.

🗝️ The Room Report - Personal reviews from my own travels

A love letter to my favorite hotel in London, a luxury hotel that gets it right

The Lanesborough, London

When clients ask for a London recommendation, I always land on the Lanesborough. I studied abroad in London, fly through Heathrow whenever I can, and have sent enough clients there to know exactly what they’re getting.

The service is unlike anywhere else I’ve been. When my clients tested positive for Covid mid-stay, Sameer (the Sales Director) and the team upgraded them to a suite so they could sleep in separate rooms, sent soup up, and arranged for a doctor. When I brought my daughter, Malia, for her 7th birthday, we arrived at a room with a teepee full of books, a stuffed cat (she loves the hotel cat, Lilibet), a tea party set up for her doll, and enough treats to make Marie Antoinette swoon.

My daughter, Malia, with the Lanesborough cat, Lilibet

The lobby bar is my favorite haunt in the city: tableside martinis with blue cheese olives, piano at night, a bartender who remembers your name, and a crowd that’s half guests and half locals.

🗝️ The Lobby Bar - Hospitality updates, promotions, and the occasional pun

The Hotel Pipeline Is at an All-Time High

With the Middle Eastern conflict, I’m frequently asked about the state of travel in our industry at the moment.

Nadine at The Stanza shared the following data that I will now be writing on a cocktail napkin and producing from my purse when asked this question.

Per Lodging Econometrics, the global hotel pipeline just hit a record: nearly 16,000 projects and 2.4 million rooms in development worldwide. The growth is concentrated in luxury and premium categories, now the fastest-growing segments globally. Developers are building more rooms, and those rooms are more expensive.

Hotel conversion projects are up 13% from last year, also an all-time high, which tells us that the supply of sites that lend themselves to a true luxury property is finite. You can’t manufacture a clifftop on the Pacific or a palazzo on a Venetian canal, you have to take it over and rebrand it. Developers are responding by repositioning existing buildings under stronger flags rather than building from scratch.

What this means for travelers: more new luxury inventory is coming, but the truly singular properties will only get harder to access and more expensive to book.

To book any hotel, visit our Booking Portal or email Info@alpenglowtravel.com.

🗝️Anne Marie

The reason I started writing “The Upgrade” is because my father, Richard Kelley, wrote a weekly newsletter about the hospitality industry called “The Saturday Briefing” for 40 years. He passed away four years ago, and as the resident writer in our family, I decided to carry on his legacy.

My dad and me in Cambodia

Coming full circle, my dad was honored by Travel Weekly with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014, along with Geoffrey Kent of Abercrombie & Kent.

I met Emma Weissman, Senior Features Editor for Travel Weekly, at the Wave Awards last year when I was a guest of Outrigger Hotels at the event. Both of us grew up in the industry, and she asked me to be a guest on her Humans of Travel podcast from TravelAge West.

I grew up in a Hawaii hospitality family. My grandfather, Roy Kelley, built Outrigger Hotels from the ground up, and my father, aunts, sister, brother, and brother-in-law grew it into the multi-national hotel corporation it became by the time we sold the company in 2016. During summers in high school and college, I worked internships in front-line operations departments such as housekeeping, front desk, maintenance, and bell.

I was often one of the first readers of my dad’s “Saturday Briefing” drafts. I learned about REVPAR and EBITDA from diagrams on cocktail napkins at family dinners.

In this podcast episode, I talk about what it was like growing up around that world and what Outrigger’s presence meant for Hawaii’s tourism landscape. I also touch on the story behind launching Alpenglow Travel, lessons from a career that started in a luxury destination club running their experiential travel department, and evolved into building a boutique luxury travel agency.

I watched my dad wake up at 4am every week to draft and edit “The Saturday Briefing.” It went out every week without fail. He had such an impact on the tourism industry, and on me, that I hope to carry his legacy forward.

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🗝 The Upgrade · Weekly · by Anne Marie Brown

In this week’s The Upgrade:

• Pre-Departure: The Ethics of AI in Luxury Travel Planning

• The Room Report: One & Only Mandarina + How Sonia Cheng Rebuilt Rosewood

• The Lobby Bar: What’s Actually Happening with Rosewood, American Airlines Says No to United, Hotels Worth Hollering About (2026 Openings)

Travelers,

It’s Monday. My inbox is bursting with pre-arrival plans for summer travelers and a lot of newsletters about AI, because Claude is my current obsession. In this week’s The Upgrade: the ethics of AI in travel planning, a treehouse resort in the Mexican jungle, and the woman who turned a forgotten hotel brand into a global status symbol.

I’d apologize for the length of this week’s newsletter, but my therapist told me to stop apologizing so much.

Happy travels, Anne Marie

Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

The Upgrade is free for subscribers. Support this publication by forwarding it to your friends and booking your trips with us.

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🗝️ Pre-Departure - Industry hot takes, what our team is working on

The Ethics of AI in Luxury Travel Planning

I’m fairly active on Reddit, and I’ve been following a community called Chubby Travel for about a year. The name has a long backstory, but the short version: it’s a welcoming corner of the internet where advisors and travelers talk about luxury travel without the usual gatekeeping. A month ago, I had the chance to meet Alex Barnes, the advisor who runs it, at a tech incubator hosted by our shared host agency, Coastline Travel. I may have fan-girled. Hard.

We spent two days doing a deep dive on AI in travel planning, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

AI is still controversial in this industry. But the advisors who are using it well are absolutely outpacing your mom’s travel agent.

My team has gone deep down the Claude rabbit hole. I wake up at 3am watching Instagram reels on how to use it better. I send the team podcasts, training resources. I’m hooked.

Now, I want to be VERY clear: I would never use AI to design a client’s trip from end to end.

That’s a hard line for me.

Claude might tell me it’s possible to hit three cities in Italy in seven days with two toddlers. As a parent, there’s no way I’m suggesting that unless I hate someone. The human aspect and 18 years of experience I have in this work is not a feature you can automate, and let’s be real, Claude gets it wrong as frequently as my business school classmates trying to show off, (that is to say, confidently incorrect).

Where AI genuinely helps is by freeing up the time a qualified advisor would otherwise spend on admin. Travel planning is a remarkably fragmented industry. We work across CRMs, itinerary builders, commission tracking, GDS platforms, plus the proprietary portals for every hotel and cruise brand (I see you, Four Seasons). I receive itineraries from destination management companies in live links, PDFs, Word docs. I book tours on Viator and GetYourGuide, restaurant reservations through concierges or OpenTable, transfers through Rolzo or Carey Limo.

Now I can pull all of that together into a beautiful, branded client document in a fraction of the time. I can also use it for quality control: flagging missing confirmation numbers, catching a transfer window that’s too tight, double-checking logistics I might have skimmed. I’m a very good advisor, not a perfect one, and having a second set of eyes that doesn’t get tired is genuinely useful.

Advisors using AI this way handle more reservations, service clients better, and free up time to build the hotel sales director relationships that actually matter when I reach out and beg for a client upgrade. I have become more efficient and excited in the past three months than I have since launching our agency.

I’m working on convincing Alex to let me do a full profile on her. Stay tuned.

🗝️ The Room Report - Personal reviews from my own travels

One & Only Mandarina: A Treehouse in the Jungle (with hazards)

If you aren’t on Reddit, it’s worth checking out. A significant amount of what AI search surfaces now pulls from Reddit, and it’s one of the better places to get real, unfiltered answers about travel. I moderate a small community there and post travel reports regularly.

My most recent is a full spring break review of One & Only Mandarina, north of Puerto Vallarta. Jungle treehouse situation set into a hillside above the Pacific. One & Only Mandarina is one of those hotels that had a rocky opening between the doldrums of Covid and reports of golf cart issues and service misses. I can confidently say they have fixed these issues.

Most unexpected bonus – a kids’ club my kids actually wanted to stay at so mommy could work by the pool without playing referee.

Most unexpected drawback – my 5 year old son’s arm getting sucked into a pool drain that wasn’t capped in the first five minutes of arrival at our beautiful jungle villa. He is fine. His arm looked like a giant hickey. I jumped in fully-clothed and may never sleep again.

Read: One & Only Mandarina Spring Break Review

🗝 Bonus Section: Master Key - Deep Dives on Hotel Brands. New this week, and back whenever we have something worth the deep dive.

Rosewood: How Sonia Cheng Turned a Sleepy American Brand into a Status Symbol for Modern Wealth

In 2011, a thirty-year-old took over a hotel brand most people in the industry had largely forgotten about. Rosewood Hotels was small, traditional, and almost entirely concentrated in North America. Her family’s Hong Kong-based investment group had just paid $229 million for it.

That thirty-year-old was Sonia Cheng, and what she did next is one of the more interesting brand transformations in modern hospitality.

Her stated goal was to build the Four Seasons for millennials (that’s me!): take a quiet collection of historic properties and turn it into a global status symbol for a new kind of affluent traveler. Younger, more culturally curious, and deeply allergic to anything that felt generic or performative.

She did it through three moves, each one a direct rejection of what the rest of the industry was doing.

She weaponized sense of place. Every major luxury chain spent decades perfecting the same formula: consistent marble lobbies, predictable room layouts, a brand identity so uniform you could be in Dubai or Denver and barely notice the difference. Sonia’s answer was to take Rosewood’s existing “A Sense of Place” concept and push it further than anyone had before. Rosewood Hong Kong doesn’t look like Rosewood Paris. Rosewood London doesn’t echo Rosewood Las Vegas. Each property is a cultural hub where locals actually want to be, not just somewhere travelers pass through.

She built a lifestyle ecosystem. Luxury buyers don’t just consume products, they seek identities. So she shifted Rosewood from hotel operator to lifestyle curator: Asaya, the brand’s wellness concept; Carlyle & Co., a members club; a coherent brand world with enough depth that you never want to step outside it. It’s why Rosewood resonates with younger wealthy travelers in a way legacy luxury brands often don’t.

She killed pretentious service. Modern luxury travelers don’t want stiff, formal, aristocratic hospitality. They find it exhausting. Sonia replaced the old rules with a culture that encouraged staff to show up as themselves. The result is service that feels warm and present rather than performed. Done well, it’s what keeps guests coming back.

The brand Sonia inherited was a footnote. What she built is one of the most interesting stories in luxury hospitality right now, and the pipeline my Rosewood rep walked me through last week suggests she’s just getting started.

🗝 The Lobby Bar - Hospitality updates, promotions, and the occasional pun

· American Airlines Says “No” to United

· Most Anticipated Hotel Openings of 2026 in the Luxury Sector

What’s Actually Happening with Rosewood

First, let me kill the rumor. Marriott is not buying Rosewood. I asked my rep Nicole directly. I cried with relief. The brand is independent, healthy, and expanding fast.

They just rolled out “Rosewood 3.0,” a new logo and identity refresh. What matters is that their “sense of place” philosophy is still intact. Every property is built to feel unmistakably tied to its destination.

What’s opening and when:

Americas: Rosewood Calistoga is open now, 96 rooms with private residences on a brand new site. The Raleigh Miami Beach and Rosewood Exuma (private island villas) are both coming in 2027.

Europe: Rosewood Rome is projected for this fall. Blue Palace Crete pushed to Spring 2027. Courchevel opened last ski season and ran 90% occupancy.

Asia and Middle East: Amala in Saudi Arabia launches this year, Maldives next. Three properties coming in China. Unpublished but signed: Puerto Rico, Punta Cana, Milan, Sardinia, Seychelles, Kyoto, Tokyo, Seoul, Mexico City, and Costa Rica.

On Rosewood Mandarina specifically: I was just there for a site visit and dinner when I stayed next door at One & Only Mandarina (see above). My honest read: Rosewood is genuinely oceanfront in a way O&O is not. More open, warmer feeling, walkable. The beachfront rooms are beautiful, lots of light wood, private pools, direct surf views. It is, unfortunately, quite hot because it’s so exposed in contrast to O&O’s treehouse orientation. The Japanese restaurant was excellent. Beach bar Buena Onda has a stunning sunset, great ice cream, and aggressive mosquitos.

After last month’s Punta Mita cancellations, Rosewood has more availability and softer rates than usual. Rates starting at $800/night in May against a normal ADR of $1,500+. If you’ve been curious, now is a good time.

One flag: Kona Village has had reports of slow pool service, spotty room service, and housekeeping hiccups. Nicole acknowledged prior staffing challenges and believes things have improved. I’m watching it. Will report back.

Book through me via the Booking Portal or email AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com.

🗝 Happy Hoteling, Anne Marie

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🗝️ The Upgrade · Weekly by Anne Marie Brown

In this week’s The Upgrade:

• Pre-Departure - Derby Season, the Summer of Europe, How to Score an Upgrade

• The Room Report - Attending the Masters

• The Lobby Bar - Susurros Corazon and Rosewood Mandarina

Travelers,

The Masters. Holy cow, what a show it was this year. Our post about the top tips for attending went viral, and we are here for it. Learn where our clients are headed this summer in Europe, and the honest truth about hotel upgrades.

Happy travels, Anne Marie Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

🗝️ Pre-Departure - Travel strategy, what our team is working on

Derby Season is Here

The Masters is over, which means the Kentucky Derby is next up on our roster. The pageantry, the electricity, the hats, it never gets old. Our clients will be in Millionaires Row and the Stakes Room this year, wearing custom hats from a local milliner and taking paddock tours. Kylee wrote up everything you need to know about attending on the blog if it’s been on your list.

[Read: Behind the Scenes of the Most Iconic Two Minutes in Sports]

The Summer of Europe

Everyone I know is going to Europe this summer, and not just for a week - extended stays. It feels like the “European Grand Tour” of the 17th-19th centuries is back. I’ve planned a couple’s trip to Mallorca, a family jaunt through the English countryside, girls’ trips in Ibiza and Mykonos, villa rentals in Lake Como, bike tours with Backroads, river cruises in France for milestone birthdays, and much more.

My own little family, (Jack age 5, Malia age 7, and Matt, my husband), are heading to England (Estelle Manor and the Firmdale Covent Garden hotel in London), the Dolomites at Sonnwies, and renting a house in Grasse (South of France) for a friend’s big birthday. Finding hotels with kids’ clubs is now a real driver for me personally, and I can’t wait to experience Sonnies’ farm programming for littles.

A few things worth knowing if you’re planning Europe this summer: early June is your sweet spot for Greece, Paris, and Italy. By July and August you’re looking at mass crowds and five-star hotels starting around $20,000 for the week, minimum. If Passalacqua or any of the marquee Lake Como properties are on your list, book a year out. I mean that.

The Real Story on Hotel Upgrades

You’ve probably seen “upgrade on arrival, subject to availability” on a hotel confirmation. That note comes from our preferred partner programs like Rosewood Elite, Mandarin Fan Club, Four Seasons Preferred, and our consortium membership through Virtuoso. It’s a real perk. But how much does it actually mean?

Hotels build a profit margin into every booking. If you book direct, the hotel keeps it. If you book through a third party - such as Amex, Chase, an OTA (Expedia), or a travel agent, those parties receive commission for your stay, typically around 10%.

If you Expedia or Booking.com, the hotel takes zero responsibility for your reservation. If something goes wrong, you’re on your own.

A travel agent costs you nothing extra (unless you are booking a trip that we charge a planning fee for), and the hotel knows we expect our clients to be taken care of. We monitor your stay every step of the way, and hotels are more worried about a bad advisor review than dealing with Expedia.

There is a hierarchy to upgrades at every hotel (some may argue different orders, but this has been my own industry experience from both sides):

• Preferred Partner clients

• Consortium clients

• Return clients

• Amex/Chase

• Direct bookings

• OTAs (Expedia, Booking.com)

Travel advisors spend a significant part of our year meeting with hotel sales directors so our clients get prioritized. Before a client travels, we email the hotel reservations desk and the sales directors to notify them that our clients are VIPs and request that they be prioritized for upgrades. The more sales we do with a property or brand, the more we build those relationships with sales directors, the better chances we have of scoring an upgrade for our clients.

That said, upgrades are never guaranteed. Low occupancy alone doesn’t guarantee a hotel will upgrade you, because the property may have reduced housekeeping staff on a slow night, or may have a policy against upgrading to suite categories because of the additional labor involved in turning those larger rooms.

This is why I always tell my clients: book the room you actually want to be in. If an upgrade comes, it’s a great surprise. If it doesn’t, you’re still exactly where you wanted to be. Don’t count on an upgrade for your happiness.

🗝️ The Room Report - Personal reviews from my own travels

The Masters: A Wild Weekend

My husband was at Augusta this year for the Masters with a group of friends celebrating a milestone birthday. Kylee and I posted a quick Instagram recap of the advice we’ve given Masters clients over the past ten years we’ve worked together, and it went viral.

The video comprised these three pieces of our advice:

1. Have a merch plan. Know everyone’s sizes and color preferences before you walk in. Get in, get out. Be prepared to throw some elbows.

2. Try everything on the concession menu, especially the Georgia Peach ice cream sandwich.

3. Bring a list of phone numbers for the payphones on the course. Phones aren’t allowed inside. A call from Augusta National lands differently.

Our inbox filled up overnight with people who’ve been entering the ticket lottery for years. This felt like the year influencers discovered the Masters, and suddenly it wasn’t just on every golfer’s bucket list. It was on everyone’s.

Kylee and I have been running Masters packages together for a decade, first at a luxury destination club, now through Alpenglow. It’s one of those events that feels impossible to people, from sourcing housing, to access, to complicated logistics. It reminded me why what we do matters.

The Masters is just one version of a complicated trip. Safaris, multigenerational Europe itineraries, yacht charters, corporate retreats, every trip we build has its own moving pieces, and I genuinely love that every day feels like a Rubik’s cube.

🗝️ The Lobby Bar - Hospitality updates, promotions, and the occasional pun

Firstly, the rumors are FALSE - Marriott is not buying Rosewood. Confirmed directly by the global sales director of Rosewood. Some exciting Rosewood updates to come next week in The Upgrade Weekly.

Two promotions worth knowing about right now:

• Susurros de Corazon — from $400/night starting in May through fall.

• Rosewood Mandarina — rates starting at $800/night in May (normal ADR is $1,500+) following low occupancy after the cartel incidents in March. I stayed next door at the One & Only Mandarina over spring break and got a look at the property. It’s stunning.

To book either of these or any hotel, visit our [Booking Portal] or email Info@alpenglowtravel.com.

🗝️ Anne Marie

Forward this to a friend who’s planning a trip this summer. They can subscribe here.

This week, we (Alpenglow Travel), have several client groups heading to the Masters so we thought we’d share some of the tips we give them.

1) Try to tackle your merchandise plan early in your trip, but timing matters. The first day morning will be insanely crowded, so go in the afternoon. You want to get in and get out. You might have to get aggressive, it can feel like Black Friday in the 1990’s at Walmart. Have notes ready with sizes and preferred colors for what you are buying for other people. You can ship directly out, so don’t worry about packing all the gear home.

For some reason, the creepy little gnomes are the most coveted item from Augusta National and can go for $1,000 on the black market. My business partner had one, but her dog bit the head in half and we both cried a little.

According to NBC, “This is the 10th and perhaps final year Augusta National will sell the limited edition gnome, which features the traditional old man with a white beard in colorful golf attire. Each year's gnome is different, with the 2026 edition featuring the character dressed in khaki pants with a white-and-green striped polo shirt and blue vest holding an umbrella in one hand and a Masters-themed cup in the other.”

2) Try everything on the concession stand menu list. Obv the pimento cheese sandwiches are famous, but go outside of your comfort zone and try the Georgia peach ice cream Sammies as well because they are bomb. My mother was from Ohio and used to make pimento cheese sandwiches when we were growing up. I still find them disgusting, but when in Rome…

3) You can’t bring your phone into Augusta National, so write down a list of numbers you want to call while you are there. My husband called me today from one of their payphones and it was a pretty cool moment. And no, even if you are head honcho of your company, you still don’t get to skirt the rules. We had to help a particular client come up with a game plan to leave the course, go get his phone, take his call, and come back in that honestly required as much planning as a Mission Impossible er, mission.

4) If you plan on going next year, secure your rental house early. There are zero decent hotel options, so rental houses book up early and most of the inventory can kind of suck.

Fun terminology if you want to look like you’re in the know watching the tournament this week:

• People attending are never called “spectators” or “fans”, they are “patrons.”

• The portapotties are called “comfort stations.”

• It’s not “the rough” it’s “the second cut.”

As a caveat, I don’t play golf and I really don’t get the hype, but my husband is on cloud 9 attending this for his first time ever, so I’m trying to be supportive. Don’t mind me single parenting two crazy children, running a company, while my husband spends thousands of dollars to eat pimento cheese sandwiches and try to bag a garden gnome. I’m not salty or anything, really.

Why did the golfer bring an extra pair of pants to Augusta?

In case he got a hole in one.

FORE

Anne Marie

Luxury Travel Advisor, Founding Partner, Golf Widow

AnneMarie@AlpenglowTravel.com

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I started writing this newsletter as a tribute to my father, Richard Kelley, who wrote a weekly hospitality industry newsletter for 40 years. My family owned and operated the hotel company, Outrigger Hotels, for 3.5 generations prior to selling to private equity firm KSL in 2016.

I grew up in the hospitality industry and live and breathe all things hotel and travel. I own a luxury travel agency called Alpenglow Travel.

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3. Hotel History. My father, Richard Kelley, wrote a weekly newsletter about the history of our family company, Outrigger Hotels, for 40 years. Paid subscribers will receive occasional editions of my father’s archived Saturday Briefing articles. I want him to live on through his work now that he’s gone.

   

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Each Upgrade | Weekly includes three sections:

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Recent Articles Include:

• Why You Should Travel With Your Parents

• A Deep Dive Into Farm Hotels

• What to know about attending the Masters

• Why Memories Matter - the Business of Experiences

• Kenya Believe It? - Safari Recap

Why should you care what I write?

I have been in the hospitality industry my entire life. I manage a fund of hotel investments (we are LPs in most of them), and view the hospitality industry world both from the owner/investor side and the agent side.

You are reading this newsletter because I know travel. I live and breathe it. I travel voraciously. I read everything about new hotel openings, go to industry events, devour instagram hotel room tours, read and post (far too much) on Reddit.

How did I get here?

I spent most of my career, starting 18 years ago, working for Exclusive Resorts and Inspirato, two luxury destination clubs where I helped create and run their experiential travel, small group trips, and bespoke custom travel departments.

I learned how to create an itinerary with proper pacing, what to look for in hotels, how to handle just about every travel emergency, and built a rolodex of global partners.

I went to business school and got my MBA from the Darden School of Business, so I could learn to run my own business.

I was at the peak of my career after Darden - building a team that was one of the most profitable departments of the company, doing what I loved.

What happened next

My parents passed away unexpectedly 4 years ago. It was devastating for me. I was very close with them. It was a wakeup call to start living my life on my own terms.

Two former colleagues from Inspirato approached me about teaming up to start a new agency, our own travel agency, with the culture and values we would have wanted from the beginning.

Alpenglow Travel Was Born

We are a high-touch, boutique agency headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with a hell of a team of a lot of countries and hotels under our collective belts. All three of us are moms. We have spent our kids’ entire lives traveling with them.

What else you should know about me

I love skiing, hiking, the ocean, and writing. I have written 24 children’s books as a ghost writer. I’m a published poet - I have this weird super power that I can write a rhyming poem in perfect meter in under five minutes. You’ll see my poetry occasionally on Substack.

I am obsessed with Agatha Christie and period dramas like Bridgerton and Downton Abbey. If I could, I’d retire to the Cotswolds in a honeystone cottage, take long walks, have geese and chickens, and write poetry all day.

I grew up in Honolulu, and still own a home there, where I visit most of my family. I’m the youngest of 7 kids.

I love puns.

I hope you enjoy my writing and reach out to learn more about how working with an Alpenglow Travel advisor can help you upgrade your next travel experience.

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Happy Travels,

Anne Marie

The Upgrade Weekly is a free publication. Please support my work by forwarding it to a fellow travel-obsessed friend.

This is my mom in Kenya in that 1970’s and me in Kenya.

In January, we took a two week trip to Africa, and started with gorilla and chimpanzee trekking, which I posted about here: Gorilla and Chimpanzee Trekking in Rwanda

This post recaps our experience in Kenya visiting two top camps by Great Plains.

Our Itinerary

We flew from Colorado to Kigali via Istanbul, overnighted in Kigali, spent three nights at One and Only Ngyungwe House to see the chimpanzees, and two nights at One and Only Gorilla’s Nest to go gorilla trekking.

Then, we flew to Nairobi and spent a night at Hemingways, before flying to Great Plains Ol Donyo camp for two nights, and finishing at Great Plains Mara Nyika for three nights.

Hemingway’s Nairobi 9/10

Granted, we arrived super late at night and left pretty early the next morning, so I just got to see our suite, but the suite was huge and had a glorious soaking tub. The hotel staff were very accommodating with a swift check in and helping us take to-go breakfast on our way to the airport the next morning. This is a solid choice for an overnight in Nairobi. My only complaint was the bed was very hard and, at 40, that was rough on my back.

Ol Donyo – a Great Plains Camp

We flew to Ol Donyo, and didn’t go with a charter flight, so made two other stops to drop of people on our way. Honestly, it wasn’t that bad as most of the stops were close together.

Rooms – 8/10

The rooms are cottages with thatched roofs and hard walls, so not a safari tent for those who might be nervous about staying in a tented camp.

They have entire walls glassed in, so you can watch the monkeys try constantly to enter your room, or the gorgeous sunset reflected in your plunge pool.

We had a little living room area with a fireplace, that our wonderful room attendant set for us each night. We really enjoyed having a glass of wine by the fire.

On the roof, there are star beds. We did some stargazing for about five minutes before we got eaten alive by mosquitos, and it was romantic but ultimately, itchy.

The bad part of the rooms and why they are an 8 instead of a 10 is that they are extremely hot. Where a tent can have airflow, the glassed in doors prevent any such airflow, and due to the monkeys, you really can’t leave your doors open if you value your possessions.

We made that mistake the first day and they tried to run off with my pink sparkle retainer case I’ve had since I was 16.

We used our fan by the bed each night, but I’m a hot sleeper and this was pretty rough for me. I don’t need AC, but I do need airflow.

Service – 10/10

Really loved everyone we interacted with. Our guide was exceptional.

Game Viewing – 6/10

Ol Donyo is the only camp on a giant private concession. This means there aren’t as many cars driving around to find animals and calling in sightings to each other. This is good in the sense that you don’t have a million cars hounding a single lion, like in the parks, but the downside is that it makes the guide’s job much harder.

We’ve been to Africa several times and it’s one of my areas of speciality, so in all honesty, I’m probably a snob about game viewing and have been spoiled by Botswana.

I did love all the little things we got to see though, lots of cool bugs and birds.

But, on the whole, we mainly saw some very cool super tusker elephants and giraffes.

Ol Donyo does have a great watering hole hide where you can watch the ellies and giraffes come to drink in the afternoons.

Food – 7/10

Solid, healthy, nothing exceptional. Monkeys stole a croissant from my table – I think they were targeting me for not letting them abscond with my retainer case.

Bugs

I am not afraid of bugs. I love spiders, I find stick bugs fasctinating. We timed our trip unfortunately after a big rain when all the black flies hatched at Ol Donyo, and they were a big problem.

Our meals were outside, and lunch was inundated with flies. Finally, we started taking our meals in our room so the glass doors could keep them out. They weren’t as bad at dinner, but lunch was just like a Hitchock movie.

I was told this is a rare event and we were just unlucky.

Other activities

Ol Donyo just isn’t a place meant for game drive after game drive. They have a helicopter ride built in to the price, so that was amazing flying over Pride Rock from the Lion King. That was a cool perk, but if you are afraid of helicopters, obv skip this one.

I had booked Ol Donyo because they offer horseback riding and I was super excited about that. My family had a ranch when I was little, and we would ride nearby at C Lazy U in the mountains when we visited.

I’m by no means an expert rider, but I’m comfortable on a horse.

We found out we had to be tested on our riding skills in a paddock before they’d approve us to ride, and the horses are only English trained. They deemed our riding to not be expert level enough to go out into the bush, which crushed my tiny Colorado ego in ways I’m ashamed to admit, and was a massive disappointment.

I totally get that you need to be an expert rider to go out near lions – no one wants to be a lion snack. But, they should advertise that it’s only available for that level and you have to be English trained.

Mara Nyika

Our final stop was Great Plains Mara Nyika, and this camp blew me away. I’ve mainly stayed in Wilderness camps, and this was my first Great Plains experience.

One very cool thing is that they offer a giant camera and with a bazooka-sized lens in every tent for your use during your stay.

I loved learning to use this and pretending that I was a professional photographer.

I used my own SD card and just uploaded the videos to my phone with a little plug in thingy every day at nap time between game drives.

Tents – 10/10

Great Plains has really nailed the Restoration Hardware/Colonial aesthetic.

Our tent had a living room, bedroom, and bathroom, all a separate spaces. I’ve never seen a tent this enormous.

I’m big on baths, and the gigantic copper soaking tub because a twice daily ritual for me, watching the animals out our tent window and listening to the wind in the trees.

The beds this camp were epically soft, and best of all, there was great airflow.

Service – 10/10

We had one of the first female Masai guides, and she was spectacular. I want to be friends with her forever. She was so smart, and said she grew up on the concession before her Masai tribe agreed to leas

e the land to Great Plains and a few other camps.

She knew the area and the animals so well, I felt like I was in a National Geographic video daily.

The benefit of Mara Nyika is that every family or couple gets their own private vehicle, which can make a huge difference if you’ve ever experienced being stuck with horrible people on a game drive, or even just people who don’t have the same game viewing goals as you do.

There are occasions when I’ve met wonderful people on such drives that have remained friends, but I’ve also experienced the downside.

Our own private vehicle meant we got to crack all the ridiculous animal puns we wanted to, and take as many photos of baby everything (lions, leopards, wildebeest), as our hearts desired.

Game Viewing – 10/10

You can see why the illustrators for the Lion King went to Kenya for inspiration. There are animals literally everywhere at this concession.

Being a private concession, they do a decent job of keeping cars at a minimum around sightings, but sometimes there were cars from other camps that wouldn’t pull away from a sighting to make room for others to come in, and we ended up with more than the supposed allowable number.

January was a great time to go because we saw so many babies, and were there before the rainy season.

I have never seen so many cheetahs and leopards, or lion cubs as I did in these three days.

Other Activities

We loved the surprise bush brunch they set up for us with an omelette cart and mimosas. I’m a sucker for these surprise and delight moments on safari, and this was a highlight for me.

This is not a camp you can really do walking safaris at, but you can do night drives, which are cool.

We visited a local Masai village after requesting it specifically. My mom visited a Masai village in the 1970’s on the trip where she fell in love with my dad, so this was a must-do for me. It was one of the best parts of the trip!

We also visited the women’s beading workshop, which supports some of the Masai women, who usually don’t have other sources of income.

Food – 10/10

Hands down, best food I’ve had at a safari camp. It was healthy and fresh and so good that I gained 5 pounds entirely from those three days, (I think).

Kids

We didn’t bring our kids on this trip because they are 7 and 5, and I think my 5 year old would scare away any animal in two seconds.

I get asked a lot as a TA what age people can bring their kids to Africa. I think it depends on a lot of factors – you have to check the private concession rules for minimum age, and the rules of the camp. A lot of them are 6 and up.

It also depends on the kid. I’m bringing my 7 year old daughter to South Africa next year, because she can handle the long flight and is patient and curious enough to handle game drives.

My tiny terrorist of a son (whom I of course love very much), needs to grow out of his five-year-old Tasmanian devil phase before I will take him on safari.

TLDR

I loved Kenya. It was my first time there, and I would absolutely go back. It’s a great introduction to Africa for first timers, and a more approachable price point than Botswana. If you are going to Rwanda, it pairs well.

Mara Nyika is amazing. Go straight there.

To book your safari, email AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com

Economic uncertainty brought on by tariffs, trade wars, inflation, geopolitical flux, and an unpredictable presidency has brought the luxury goods market down by 2-5% in personal spending this year, according to Bain.

Meanwhile, the luxury hospitality and leisure market has continued to grow exponentially as people seek out experiences and memories over goods.

There’s a trend on social media currently in which parents ask their children to “name one gift you received at Christmas last year.” Most of the kids can’t recall any on the spot. Then they ask them, “What trips did we take last year?” And kids are able to rattle off the places they went and things they experienced.

Increased Spend

McKinsey forecasts that spending on luxury hospitality on the global scale will exceed $390 billion in 2028, up from $239 billion in 2023.

While less expensive rooms have maintained rate parity to last year, RevPAR, (revenue per available hotel room), in the luxury sector has been higher every month than in 2024, (according to CoStar, a real-estate date firm).

High Pricing

The pandemic created a travel frenzy as people emerged from lockdown with their bucket lists and pent up cash to spend on travel. CoStar notes that while occupancy rates in luxury rooms of $1,000 per night or more are slightly lower than 2024, rates have continued to rise.

• Globally: The number of hotels with an ADR (average daily rate) over $1,000 jumped from approximately 150 in 2019 to around 460 by 2024.

• In the United States: This number increased even more dramatically, from just 22 hotels in 2019 to roughly 80 by 2024, an almost four-fold increase.

New Luxury Hotels

We are also seeing the supply side of the luxury hotel market increasing - which normally would forecast a pullback as supply outpaces demand. However, I think in this current market we are seeing the industry respond to continued forecasted growth as Boomers, the wealthiest generation to date, retire and spend big on travel.

In London, Rosewood, Auberge, and Six Senses all added new glitzy hotels this year. Savills estimates there are 1,618 luxury hotel rooms still indoor development.

Luxury Goods Crossover

Luxury fashion houses have seen the writing on the wall, and have decided to get in on the travel boom, with labels like Armani and Bulgari opening name-brand hotels. LVMH partnered with Belmond to launch a luxury sleeper train in Britain, which has been plagued with issues on its first few departures, and its 54-suite Orient Express yacht will sail its inaugural voyage next year.

Pop-up beach clubs and ski lounges by Dolce & Gabbana and Burberry, spas by Dior, and other partnerships have continued to show the bleed between luxury goods and the hospitality sector.

What I’m Seeing

From my own clients at Alpenglow Travel, I’m seeing the following trends:

1. Boomers are traveling like never before - With trips to Japan and Egypt, my Boomer clients have told me they are trying to travel while their bodies can still handle these more intense trips.

2. More last minute planning - Clients are booking closer and closer in to their departure dates, and are shocked at the rise in rates across airfares and hotels. There seems to be more reticence to commit to travel plans far out across the board.

3. Demand for help with points - As credit card companies gamify the points system and make it more difficult to redeem points for travel, clients are searching for more assistance in utilizing their points.

4. Bucket list destinations - There’s been a general uneasiness in my client base centering around the geopolitical and domestic political climate, increase in prices, and health concerns even for younger Millennial clients. There’s a sense of “running out of time” that seems to be pushing people to take more bucket list trips, like seeing the Northern Lights or experiencing a safari.

5. Women traveling in groups - I’m seeing more and more demand between Millennials and Boomers in particular for women to travel with friends instead of their partners.

What Does This Mean for Travel Advisors?

As people grow disillusioned with social media serving them more and more AI-generated content, there becomes a greater need for verified human judgement, experience, and expertise.

The meteoric rise of Fora - a mass-market host agency that will certify just about anyone to be a travel agent - has made the job more accessible than ever. If you are seeing a flood of “travel advisors” across your feed, this why. On its surface, travel is a sexy industry with flexible hours and low barrier to entry. However, the margins are low and it’s a constant hustle to grow and maintain a client book.

The jury is still out as to whether Fora will hold its own against the heavy hitters like Brownell and Coastline, as it onboards scores of inexperienced agents. It’s reminding me a lot of MLM boom currently.

While Fora has great technology, the training, vetting, and support system for new agents just isn’t up to snuff yet, and there’s no replacement for a seasoned advisor with years of first-hand luxury travel experience and industry connections with vendors formed around the world.

On one hand, I’m loving the increased interest and visibility that the travel advisor industry is receiving. On the other, I’m concerned about the backlash we are bound to see as too many inexperienced agents make big dollar mistakes and people lose trust in working with advisors.

It feels a bit like the Wild West out there right now.

What I’m Watching

As we head into 2026, I’m encouraging my clients to book airfare and hotels as early as possible. Right now, you should be booking spring break and your summer travel plans. I’m already seeing hotels and flights sell out in Hawaii for March.

I’m also strongly advising that clients purchase travel insurance. I’ve had several clients this year with last minute emergencies where either travel insurance has saved the day, or I’ve had to really call in some favors at the upper levels of major companies to try to recoup big dollar trips.

To work with me, email AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com

Maybe you’ve seen women in the Cotswolds or France on an Atlas Adventures trip, or visiting Agatha Christie’s home on a Ladies Who Lit jaunt, or taking aesthetic photos on a photography retreat.

From interior designers to reading retreats, summer camps to antiquing trips, I am seeing a surge in travel oriented around creating community experiences abroad for women.

Here are a few examples:

Boxwood Ave Abroad Interior Design Trip

This, of course, is right in my wheelhouse - small-group travel plus empowering women? Sign me up.

Let’s talk about why these trips are becoming so popular.

When I put together my 40th birthday trip for my girl friends in the British Countryside, we all came away energized and fulfilled in a way that many of us hadn’t for a long time. For many, the week was the longest they had been away from their children.

We had to trust that yes, our husbands could handle the kids for that long without burning down the house. And yes, as much as other people need us on a daily basis, we needed THIS.

My 40th Birthday British Countryside Trip

We women play a lot of roles for a lot of people - running businesses, mothering children, wifing - and there’s not much time left for true connection with friends, reading, thinking, or just taking things at our own pace.

When we travel with our families, we are still the cruise directors - and often come home feeling more depleted than before the trip.

At home, I feel like I’m constantly behind in catching up with friends, and I rarely feel intentional with my time.

Enter the Women’s Trip.

Imagine a trip where somebody else is in charge and you actually get a vacation.

• You don’t have to pick the restaurant or the hotel.

• You pack just for yourself and wear what you want.

• Somebody texts you the schedule for each day, and you can opt in or out of what you want.

On a trip where you are able to:

• leave your phone in your hotel room, where you give yourself permission to have an adult conversation at dinner without worrying about whether the babysitter will text with an emergency

• where you can poke around in an antique shop for as long as you want

• or dance and belt out Disney songs because everyone else on the trip also knows all the words…

That is MAGIC.

For many of us, we haven’t taken this kind of trip since our days of bachelorette parties.

The focus on these trips is not on how much we can drink, but rather on how much we can take care of ourselves. And we finally have the money to do it right - no more trundle beds in a random AirBnB split between too many girls with too much drama.

I was lucky enough to help a friend and amazing creator put together a poetry retreat for women in Ireland this October, and what happened was truly special.

My Women’s Retreat in Ireland with Christi Steyn

We had an international group of women who really bonded with each other. Everyone came seeking something - mostly, time for themselves to be creative. Time that is so very hard to take at home.

Maybe it’s my algorithm, but I’m flooded with images and videos of women taking back this travel for themselves.

And I’m SO here for it!

You know how when you’re a little kid and you talk about what you want to be when you grow up?

Well, this is really all I want to do. I love building group trips and giving people the chance to explore the world and connect together.

I’m putting together a few retreats next year, but would love to know where you’d like to go?

xoxo

Anne Marie

I worked at Exclusive Resorts for the first five years of my career, where I helped design and run their Once in a Lifetime group trips for members of the club. I truly loved my job, especially the aspect of designing trips. From curating incredible experiences for each group, to planning out the daily pacing, and selecting the best hotels, each trip felt like a work of art that I was so proud to create.

After getting my MBA at Darden (UVA), I was asked to create the Experiences program at Inspirato. There, I grew the department to one of the most profitable areas of the company, running chartered cruises, expedition trips, and small group luxury journeys around the world. I also pitched and launched the Bespoke custom travel department, a travel agency that sat within the club.

Eventually, I left to create my own company. For the past few years, I’ve remained a travel agent, booking travel mainly for close friends and family. A year ago, two former colleagues and I decided to start Alpenglow Travel, a travel agency that combines all of our expertise and connections in the hotel and travel world.

Today, we can do the following:

• Help you design and book individual travel

• Book your hotels and attach our perks to them for certain hotel partners

• Run your corporate or executive retreat

• Help you run your YPO forum retreat

• Design and run your influencer retreat

• Help you with your milestone group trip

• Take you to major events like the Kentucky Derby or US Open

I’m often the person everyone calls to ask about my favorite hotels in a particular area. I read all the travel blogs, follow the instagram accounts, order the magazines - I devour information about travel.

I also REALLY love fashion, especially dressing with a theme for a trip. I find it helps me feel present in a location. There are people that will disagree with me who are perfectly comfortable wearing nothing but athletic gear around the world and pride themselves on packing only carryons.

I am not that person. I love dressing up. I take joy in the hunt to curate a travel wardrobe over several months. This Substack will contain packing guides to show you how I approach packing for a particular location. I also get into a trip by watching movies and reading books themed or set in a particular destination.

You can read my packing guides on my Shop My account:

Products curated by Anne Marie Brown

So, in short, what I do is:

• Book Travel

• Design Travel

• Travel (FREQUENTLY)

• Plan What I’ll Wear Traveling

• Dress Up While Traveling

Come along for the ride. Subscribe to learn more about my favorite hotels, my trip itineraries, and learn about my packing strategies.

Subscribe now

If you aren’t familiar with the term “capsule wardrobe,” it basically means packing items that can create multiple outfits across a color theme.

I’m as guilty as my mother was of overpacking on occasion - but not every trip calls for a giant suitcase, and so a capsule wardrobe approach helps keep my suitcase real estate manageable.

As someone who travels both for a living and as a passion, I’ve become an efficient packer the night before a trip. However, the lead up to that point takes several months.

I am creating packing guides to help others who love fashion but don’t know how to approach dressing on theme for a trip location.

For Ireland, I went with dark green, brown, black, and cream as my color palette.

I knew I wanted to layer items, because the mornings can be cold, but it warms up during the day.

I travel frequently with my Barbour jacket - it’s my favorite travel coat for wet weather and wind. Because it’s heavy, I don't pack it in my suitcase but rather bring it in the plane cabin with me.

For warmer days, I layered a vest under my Ralph Lauren blazer/hacking jacket.

My favorite accessories for travel are scarves and hats - mostly because I get cold easily and they can change any outfit. I also absolutely LOVE my reversible horse bit belt.

I like to have solid color dresses so I can pair them with scarves and different earrings so I can wear them to multiple dinners with a different look.

A belt can be used around a jacket or long sweater with a scarf to create another look.

Malia calls these earrings my “knockers,” which makes me giggle. I travel with them a lot.

In terms of shoes, I absolutely love my Aquazzura heels and bring them on pretty much every trip. They go with everything.

My Fairfax & Favor riding boots are a new favorite staple and fit right in to the countryside.

I brought tennis shoes for walks and workouts and brown loafers for days around town.

Below is a link to all these items if you need more detail:

Ireland Packing List

Pants x 4 pairs

• Jeans

• Black pants

• Brown pants

• Green pants

Shirts

• White ruffle neck button down

• Black button down

• Plaid shirt

• Black long-sleeved base layer

• Black wool turtleneck

• Undershirts x 3 tank tops

Sweaters and Vests

• Boden Embroidered Frill Sweater

• Joules Fair Isle vest

• Barbour vest

Jackets

• Barbour waxed jacket

• Ralph Lauren blazer

Dresses and Skirts

• Black Maje long-sleeved dress

• Green Veronica Beard sweater dress

• Satin midi cream skirt

• Boden tweed mini skirt

Accessories

• Wool tights - black and brown

• Hicks & Brown hat

• Flat cap

• Reversible belt

• Scarf - warm one and a silk dress up one

• Underwear and socks

• Swimsuit

Shoes

• Brown riding boots

• Black or brown loafers

• Tennis shoes

• Aquazzura heels

Happy packing, travelers!

Anne Marie