🗝️ The Upgrade | Weekly by Anne Marie Brown

1. What It Takes to Run a Retreat

Travelers,

Last week, I traveled to Italy to run the third edition of an annual poetry and yoga retreat I co-host with my friend and fellow writer, Christi Steyn. Christi and I met via early days of Tik Tok when she read my poem “Pretty” on the platform and it went viral. She now has 1.5M followers on the platform where she shares her poetry. (And I now no longer know my Tik Tok login.)

We have run retreats in Greece, Ireland, and Italy that include daily yoga and writing workshops. On our retreats, Christi teaches daily yoga and leads writing workshops. If ever there was a fairy in human form, it’s Christi. I swear she’s made of light and has this just magnetic personality. My undergraduate major was creative writing and I specialized in formal poetry. Thus, I teach classes on rhyme, meter, and poetic form during these retreats. I also handle all the finance, contracts, vendors, and logistics.

While at Exclusive Resorts and Inspirato, I ran small group journeys and chartered cruises of 12 to 20 people per departure, and I often escorted groups onsite. Running retreats operates similarly.

As more online creators have begun to monetize their audiences, retreats have become a popular option. I’ve seen boutique owners, antique collectors, wedding photographers, painting professors, life coaches, and more try their hands at running retreats. A strong creative personality does not necessarily empower people to handle group logistics, and I’ve seen these endeavors go south more times than I can count. These group trips take a great deal of work behind the scenes and can be full of financial, logistical, and legal pitfalls. Run well, they can still operate with thin margins and depend heavily on cost control, contract negotiation, and strong registrations.

This week’s Upgrade rabbit hole is a peek behind the curtain to show you what it takes to run these retreats as a professional.

Even a retreat leader needs a retreat. If you’d like to follow my experience onsite this week in the English countryside with Molly Carr of Belle Vie Retreats (as a retreat guest and not a leader), check out my Instagram stories. I’m going to be interviewing Molly for a future edition of Master Key about what she has learned running her business.

Happy travels,

Anne Marie

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

What It Takes To Lead a Retreat

The final night of our Italy retreat, we lit candles, read poems we had written for one another, and placed found items on a stone table like an altar in a clearing as the night fell. It was all quite witchy and felt like sisterhood. My heart burst with pride and love for this group that had come together just days earlier bonding in such an ancient location.

Running group trips such as these poetry retreats is one of the things I love most, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Hefty deposits are due well before any cash comes in, marketing takes months, and participants expect a lot onsite.

There are entire companies built around connecting online specialists and influencers with retreat venues and DMCs, such as Trova Trip, who position themselves as a marketplace rather than a tour operator. There are distinct financial liabilities involved in being a tour operator, and positioning as a platform can skirt those responsibilities - think like AirBNB vs a hotel.

Creative leaders are often not the people with the logistical and financial skillset to handle a trip on location, yet many creatives believe they must be all things at once - financial manager, accountant, marketer, trip designer, tour leader, coordinator, and onsite talent and host. This is a lot to ask of themselves.

In the retreats I’ve helped run, I advise that it’s good to have two people onsite to prevent burn out. One person handles logistics, the other handles the group interaction and creative aspects. I am both a teacher and coordinator for our poetry retreats, but only the coordinator on others, such as the Mahjong retreats I’m assisting with in Aspen, Sonoma, and Scottsdale.

No matter whether the trip is a $17,000 per person epic jaunt through Egypt, or a $3,200 retreat to Italy, the pricing part is always the most difficult aspect of running a group trip. That is, pricing a retreat so it’s approachable to a creator’s audience, while also covering all costs and our time. The time piece is the part most creators forget to factor in.

The fact is that retreats are not a get-rich-quick idea. At intimate group sizes less than 10 participants, margins are slim unless you price upwards of $6k per person for a five-star accommodation experience. Breakeven for four-star accommodations is typically priced around $3,200 per person. Larger group sizes or higher price points can yield more take home pay, but come with their own downsides.

This is the hardest part. It involves emailing venues around the world for pricing, putting the quotes in a spreadsheet to compare apples to apples because no two quotes use the same format, and confirming the space meets our requirements. With the advent of Claude in my life, this step has become easier - I used to spend hours generating these spreadsheets. Now, I can just drop emails into a project and say “Claude, dear, make a table comparing all these elements across these proposals to give me a per person price per day, and contract terms.”

What we look for are spaces where we can have all our meals in one place, a yoga studio, private living room areas where we can hold writing workshops, and flexible accommodations. Flexible means that rooms can either be twin beds or kings, which allows you to adapt more to whoever happens to sign up. It’s not a requirement, but certainly helps. Activities onsite are a plus so you don’t have to factor in more transfers or time spent off site.

Homes and hotels each have pros and cons. Rental homes have better group spaces, and allow you more control of the group dynamics. You can also bring your own chef and alcohol, which can lower costs. However, room categories are often uneven, which can cause dissatisfaction from the start and makes billing lumpy if you charge different price points. They typically lack yoga spaces, and they are a large fixed cost up front. You can’t drop a room if you don’t fill the trip. I find a lot of rental home spaces in Europe on Oliver’s Travels. Past locations I’ve loved: Temple House in Ireland, Frampton Court in England (currently here, gorgeous), Castello Santa Cristina in Italy (less lux but incredible spot).

Hotels allow for even room allocation and let you drop rooms through attrition clauses up to closer in. They also have more flexible bedding options. However, they cost more per room, the F&B rates are higher, and they often charge to privatize group spaces.

I estimated my time on the 2026 retreat at Castello Santa Cristina, October 6 to 10, at 180 to 230 hours over the year. That covers coordination only, not teaching two workshops onsite.

The hours ran from venue search and pricing through marketing, website creation, guest registration and communication, vendor coordination, 14 hour days on site, and financial close-out. That is roughly five full-time work weeks, mostly before guests even arrive. That’s about 10% of my working year designated to one trip. If we run trips in the same location across multiple years, or run back to back departures in the same location, that lift up front becomes easier.

On site

The prep work starts with packing. You need to bring things not only for yourself, but lots of “just in case” items like ibuprofen, Benadryl, cold medicine, bandaids, safety pins, sewing kit, multiple international outlet adapters because people always forget them, several phone banks… etc. I always set up a WhatsApp group a couple weeks in advance so people can ask last minute questions as they pack. You’ll become an amateur meteorologist, trying to predict the weather for each day.

Once the group arrives, I manage the daily schedule and timing (which often requires adjustments) and text the schedule out each evening, weather changes, communication with vendors the day before and day of activities, dietary restrictions, group dynamics, the balance of free time, lessons, and activities, and cash, including tips and meal payments, with every receipt logged. I also manage my own energy across days that run 12 to 14 hours. When the group has free time, I’m responding to my clients from my travel agency, Alpenglow Travel (my other work doesn’t stop just because I’m on location running a retreat).

Transition days are the hardest. Some guests do not know how to turn on international data, which leaves them without Google Maps or WhatsApp. Vendors run late. The transfer I expected to be a sprinter van shows up as a minivan (in this latest retreat hiccup).

There are always surprises and stressful moments, but I’ve learned to take them in stride. Not everyone reacts the same to stress, so know how your retreat partner reacts in various conditions and be open with each other if you get frustrated.

For example, on arrival day this year, everyone was due at our hotel 15 minutes before the van transfer. One guest’s taxi dropped her in the wrong spot, so she dragged her suitcase down cobblestone streets looking for the entrance and messaged the group for help. I was greeting the guests who had arrived and helping the driver load the bags like a game of Tetris, so I didn’t see her message. Christi was working on the lesson plan for the welcome workshop, and was frustrated I wasn’t answering the message. Everyone was stressed. We talked it through later and let it go.

This is why I argue for smaller groups, even if they are less profitable, and fewer stops. Questions and problems multiply as you spread your attention across more people and more vendors for activities. First-time retreat leaders often feel they need to include a ton of activities. In reality, they are the activity, and they need time for workshops and guest interaction between events, plus downtime, because not everyone is an extrovert (myself included).

The first number a host needs is break-even guest pricing, the price per guest at which the hosts earn nothing, but lose nothing. That pricing should be set at the minimum number of people you can run the retreat with.

Costs on a retreat fall into two groups: fixed and variable costs.

Variable costs, such as meals and activities, rise and fall with each guest.

Fixed costs are what you have to pay regardless of how many people are on the trip, such as a rental home, retreat leader flights, etc. Smaller groups mean fixed costs are allocated across fewer people.

Travelers often do not understand what a single supplement is. It covers the fixed costs that are spread out over one fewer person in the group by having only one person in a room vs two, minus the variable costs, such as food, that you do not pay when the group is one person smaller. Some retreat leaders also add the margin they lose with one fewer person in a room.

Our 2026 Italy retreat charged $600 more for a single room. A five-star retreat that I attended cost $4,225 per person in a shared room and $6,950 in a single room, a supplement of $2,725 for six nights. For a group size that small where rooms are few, I think that premium is more than fair.

Fixed costs stay the same whether 6 people come or 15, so price a retreat to cover them and the floor of what you are willing to make. Treat your time as a minimum host fee that is a fixed cost input in your pricing proforma.

Then, decide on your inclusions and stick to them rather than adding things after bookings open. I’ve hosted trips where costs kept being added late, like private rooms for dinners, which decreases margin.

Our retreat model covers rooms, all meals, a couple of external activities, gratuities, transfers, gifts, workshops and yoga led by us, and a contingency fund. Host costs include an economy flight, a pre-trip hotel night, meals, and a room for each of the two hosts.

For a four-night retreat, break even guest pricing looks something like this:

Pricing above break-even

Running a trip at breakeven doesn’t pay for the time of the coordinator or the creative leader, let alone add any profit to make it worth their time to travel away from home and spend 10-14 hours a day being onsite with guests. Remember, this is not a vacation for a retreat leader.

To take anything home, a retreat leader must add a markup of 25 to 30 percent on top of break-even. That pays each host roughly $30 an hour. Card processing takes 3.5 percent of every payment, so many hosts must remember to pass those processing fees on to guests.

At an $800 room rate, a group of six needs a price near $6,500 to pay the hosts for their time.

Some countries have lower accommodation, activity, and meal costs than others, so the same retreat has a lower break-even depending on your location choice.

Most Trova trips priced below $3,500 per person are in Thailand, Costa Rica, Bali, Vietnam, and Mexico. Around $4,000, the destinations shift to Patagonia, Peru, Sardinia, Europe, and Japan. No price includes airfare.

I find no matter what the price of a trip is, I feel like I need to defend it. Two retreats at the same price per night can include very different things, so check what each price covers.

Atlas and Scout also require travel insurance on top of the price. We also covered wine in our recent retreat, an added bonus.

I am not a lawyer, so hire a travel attorney before you sell any spots.

A retreat leader takes money months ahead, signs vendor contracts, and answers for a group’s safety abroad, so these are the legal exposures you are at risk for: guest injury, transportation, venue contracts that penalize a drop in headcount (ours went from 14 to 8), deposits and refunds, claims about the program, state seller-of-travel laws (California, Florida, Hawaii, and Washington are most cited), and the passports and medical notes you hold.

Carry insurance as a retreat business. Ask about general liability, professional liability, retreat or event packages, hired and non-owned auto, and event cancellation, and check each policy’s coverage territory, since many cover US activity only. Also check your vendors’ coverage.

Track down force majeure coverage: what happens if you can’t run a trip due to a natural disaster or global event, or if you or the creative leader gets sick or injured?

Many creative leaders don’t want to commit to a schedule in advance. What you list on any guest materials must match the inclusions guests experience, or you risk a false advertising claim. This is why we keep our schedule pretty vague. If you promise yoga daily and skip a day, a guest may be upset.

Guests should carry their own trip cancellation and medical evacuation coverage.

Before anyone pays, have a booking agreement, a liability waiver, a health questionnaire with emergency contacts, activity waivers for anything like horseback riding, a photo release, dietary forms, and contractor agreements for co-hosts and teachers.

A larger group lowers the break-even price point because host flights, the van, and the host rooms spread across more people.

Creative retreats tend to work better with smaller group sizes, because a writing workshop depends on every guest getting time and feedback. Antiquing, strictly yoga, or historical tours can handle larger groups because they need less one-on-one time.

You can protect the economics without enlarging the group by running two departures back to back. Two groups of six in consecutive weeks share one set of fixed costs, like host flights.

1. People will always ask for a discount or a payment plan. Put your answer in the booking terms before the first request and stick to it. If you have low sign-ups, fight the urge to discount; you end up running the same trip for less money. Every time I make an exception, it comes back to haunt me.

2. Set hard cancellation terms to protect yourself. Your terms need to line up with the venue’s. Some retreat leaders charge a cancellation fee to cover their admin time spent handling a cancellation and refilling that spot.

3. Add an emergency fund cushion to every budget. A trip always finds a use for it.

4. Pay for the little things. Guests do not want to feel nickel and dimed. Take out more cash than you think you need.

5. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs applies. Guests need meals, sleep, and the right temperature before they can experience wonder.

6. Minimize the number of transition days.

7. Plan no more than one offsite activity every other day.

8. Build in free time.

9. Use a corporate credit card for on-site payments. It keeps them professional and trackable. Photograph every receipt.

10. Start a group WhatsApp chat the week before arrival.

11. People who are constantly late are the hardest guests in a group. Group trips require respect for others and showing up to things on time.

12. Plan for safety. Many creatives are famous and have their share of overzealous fans, so do not publish the retreat location on public sites.

Whether running $17,000 per person Exclusive Resorts trips or $3,200 per person poetry retreats, I invariably hear from guests that they don’t understand the pricing and could travel for less on their own.

My friends, a professional trip like this is not a bargain basement product. It is not meant to be less than you can build a trip for on your own. A retreat is often all inclusive, so comparing one to your average vacation where you aren’t tracking your spend on activities, meals, and transfers does not give you apples to apples.

Additionally, you are hiring professionals as a service to plan and run these trips for you so you can have maximum enjoyment. Sure, you can give yourself a root canal and it’s cheaper than going to the dentist, but are those really comparable?

In my table, a solo traveler spends about $5,345 for a six night trip in a hotel that costs $500 per night. The retreat I am attending for fun in England this week charges $6,950 for a single room, so that gap is close to $1,600.

Add the 230 hours I spent coordinating this trip, spread across six guests and valued at $30 an hour, and each guest is also getting $1,150 of planning labor. That is one host’s time, not both.

Whether you are thinking about leading a retreat, coordinating one, or attending one, or just curious what all my instagram stories were about this week (full of frolicking in front of a castle, lighting candles in a forest, riding horses through open fields, etc), I hope this article gave you more information than you wanted to know.

Join me on a trip in the future - I like to think I’m pretty good at my job. And, if a retreat at $3,500 for four nights feels expensive, remember the hours in this article and what goes into making the magic happen.

🗝️The Lobby Bar

Hospitality updates, promotions, gossip, and the occasional pun

1. Delano Puglia: https://www.hospitalitynet.org/announcement/41015184/ennismore-signs-delano-puglia-introducing-the-iconic-brand-to-italys-adriatic-coast

2. ULTRAs: https://einpresswire.com/article/947456172/the-2026-ultras-honour-the-best-of-luxury-travel-at-the-tower-of-london

3. Preferred Hotels Legend Collection: https://rustourismnews.com/2026/10/01/preferred-hotels-adds-11-luxury-hotels-to-legend-collection-in-2026

4. Influencer backlash: https://skift.com/2026/10/01/content-creator-backlash-travel-tourism/

5. Delta media network: https://skift.com/2026/10/05/delta-air-lines-building-out-its-own-media-network/

6. Leela Palaces CEO: https://skift.com/2026/10/01/leela-palaces-ceo-on-the-overlooked-detail-that-can-make-or-break-a-hotel-stay/

7. Shipwreck hunting (Robb Report): https://apple.news/AZ8pkyb8ASBu3d69WV8Dmkw

26. The Price of Prestige

Travelers -

Ciao from Rome! I’m in the “eternal city” for a couple of nights before heading to Umbria to lead an annual poetry and yoga retreat with poet Christi Steyn. Fun fact - the city’s nickname goes back to ancient Roman writers, with the poet Tibullus using it in the first century BC. The idea was that the city would outlast empires and time itself.

Co-leading this retreat is one of the great joys of my job, because it unites my two passions - travel planning and writing. Last year, we stayed at an estate in Ireland. The year prior, we went to Greece. This year, it’s La Dolce Vita in Italy!

It’s been years since I’ve been to Rome, and this time around, I spent a night at the relatively new Six Senses property. If you know anything about my maximalist nature and love for historical hotels, then you know a hotel with brand new construction and minimalist interiors is not usually my jam. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed my stay at the Six Senses. I’ve written up a short Room Report about my stay, including my new Hotel Scorecard, which will be an interactive feature of The Upgrade for you readers in coming weeks. I’m going to skip the Lobby Bar section this week as this is quite a long article as it stands already.

I’ve been working on this week’s article for a while, and hope I don’t tread on any industry publication’s toes (I’m looking at you, T+L), because I really do love reading Condé Nast and Travel + Leisure. The industry awards economic engine behind the Best Of awards lists is something that has caught my eye for years, so I wanted to write about it.

Ciao and happy travels,

Anne Marie

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

The Price of Prestige: Inside the Business of Travel Awards

There has been much kerfuffle in the online discourse surrounding this year’s hospitality awards season. These “Best Of” lists spawn endless debate, hand wringing, and celebration from the travel industry and travelers alike.

For a few weeks if not a couple of months, these hospitality publications catapult themselves, and the hotels that either rise to or fall from grace within their glossy pages, into the center of discussion. As famed showman P.T. Barnum is rumored to have said, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” The discussion is the point.

Amidst the hand wringing, we ask ourselves, “Who are these awards for?” A comment on another Substack took a rosy view, noting that these awards provide hotels an opportunity to celebrate their teams.

While that is undoubtedly true, no business is altruistic, and these lists also generate ancillary revenue for the publications that issue them. I know you love an Upgrade rabbit hole, so here we go.

My thesis around these awards: different methods produce different winners, the 50 Best voting rules favor big city hotels with press budgets and don’t categorize their ranking by hotel type, and reader survey-based awards disproportionately favor hotels with large room counts. Finally, although many of these publications tote the fact that their awards are not pay-for-play, they do serve as an economic engine driving licensing, award ceremony dinners/galas, and sponsorships.

Do awards drive purchasing decisions?

Some advisors say they have never seen a client request a hotel simply because it made a list, but I have, and after the 50 Best and Michelin Key lists came out this year, I received at least four emails asking for properties that appeared on them. Hotels post the accolades on Instagram, websites, and email signature lines, sending a parade of celebratory notes from sales directors through my inbox as a luxury travel advisor. With AI search pulling from what’s published online, Answer Engine Optimized (AEO) prestige from these awards matters more every year.

I truly don’t believe anything nefarious is going on behind the curtain, but I do think these awards have a trust problem that is becoming more glaring each year. Each of these lists carries structural pressures that shape what they say about taste and popularity.

Each of these lists is compiled via different types of voting methods. Editors or inspectors choose some winners, readers choose others. Some programs require a paid application, others calculate winners from guest review scores. Unless you spend an unjustifiable amount of time and money on trade news, travel, and hotel research like I do, you probably haven’t examined the methodology behind each one.

Methodology 1) Reader surveys

Think of these awards as campaigning for hotel industry prom king and queen, where everything comes down to vote volume. Travel + Leisure and Conde Nast fall in this category.

The upside of reader survey awards is that readers vote without comped stays or press trips swaying the voting pool. The downside is that hotels with more guests collect more votes, so larger room counts and bigger marketing budgets can push past smaller boutique properties. While there are exceptions, (Passalacqua is tiny and has an extensive trophy case), plenty of much larger hotels dominate these lists.

This year more than 207,000 Travel + Leisure readers cast over 661,000 votes across 10,088 properties, which is an enormous undertaking. I do like that T+L sorts by category (resorts, city hotels, inns, safari lodges) and scores each on rooms, location, service, food, and value.¹ The 50 Best does not sort, and Sonja Stojcevski, who writes Hospitality Beyond the Deck, noted in my subscriber chat for The Upgrade that hospitality has grown too varied for one generic list to say much.² Different hotel categories have such distinct KPI’s (key performance indices) that ranking them against each other is like comparing apples to tacos.

Methodology 2) Pay for play

These awards aren’t pussy footing around, and state upfront that they are there to make money. Travel Weekly’s 2026 Magellan Awards charge suppliers $1,170 to $1,420 per entry, with a separate fee for each category and the seal included with the win.³ The awards honor design, marketing, and services, so a gold seal describes a campaign and the judges rarely, (perhaps never), evaluate a stay.⁴

Methodology 4) Review data

Tripadvisor picks Travellers’ Choice winners on the quality and quantity of reviews over 12 months, with no application required.⁵ The structural problem with review-data awards is that quantity is part of the formula, so the winners tend to be the hotels that can put the most guests through their doors and collect the most reviews from them. A 600-room resort generates far more reviews in 12 months than a 20-room lodge. Hotels train staff to ask for reviews, place QR codes in rooms, and email guests after checkout will outscore an equally well-run property with happy guests and no system for capturing their feedback. This gives me the ick.

The pool of reviewers becomes bifurcated, because you miss the middle. Reviews skews toward guests who are very happy or very unhappy, guests rate against what they paid, so a $250 hotel and a $2,500 hotel can both score a 4.8 on very different expectations. Additionally, a 12-month window punishes a hotel in a renovation or a slow season through no fault of its quality.

Methodology 5) Inspection

These are structured as secret (or not so secret) shopper awards, and include the Michelin Keys, 50 Best, and Forbes as examples in this category. Forbes Travel Guide says it requires no fee, business relationship, or commission from rated properties. However, in the same breath, Forbes sells the winners partnership programs, assessments, and consulting.⁶ Michelin openly accepts payment from tourism boards to help fund their restaurant guide, and in 2019 Visit California paid it $600,000 to expand inspector coverage for its restaurant guide, with both sides saying the money has no connection to who appears.⁷ ⁸

Michelin launched its Keys in 2023, and the guide now covers about 7,000 hotels in 120 countries, with roughly 35% holding one to three Keys and full-time anonymous inspectors paying their own way, review hotels on five published criteria.⁹ The question becomes whether those criteria are the same we, as travelers and not professional inspectors, would look for in a stay.

Bella Darden, who writes Mind Holiday, tested the system against her own stays and landed on transparency as her main issue. Since Michelin will not say how many nights a rating requires, how many inspectors visit, or how a Key is ultimately awarded, readers are asked to accept that a hotel has earned a Michelin Key based on little more than trust and fairy dust. She also cites an analysis that found three-Key hotels scored lower with guests on average than one-Key hotels, with only 12 of 39 hotels studied making the top 50 by guest satisfaction.¹⁰

The methods produce different winners: T+L readers named Patina Osaka, which opened in May 2025, the best hotel in the world for 2026, while the 50 Best ranks it No. 33, and only one hotel sits in both top 15s, Mandarin Oriental Bangkok, with Capella Bangkok at No. 2 on the 50 Best and No. 80 on T+L.¹¹ ¹²

Who takes the top five changes with the year and the voting method, but the same hotels keep appearing. I’m not sold on consistent excellence as the explanation. The writer behind The Ben Edit called much of the 50 Best top 20 “very generic luxury city hotels.”² Darden counts 36 of the 50 as city hotels and 40 as part of a multi-property group,¹⁰ and Rosewood Hong Kong, Four Seasons Bangkok, Capella Bangkok, Mandarin Oriental Bangkok, and The Upper House all ranked in the top eleven in 2023, 2025, and 2026.¹² ¹³ ¹⁴

My problem with the 50 Best list comes down to voter composition. The voters are not publicly listed, but , a former Condé Nast creative director and an early North American Academy Chair for the 50 Best, has written in this article that each of 13 regions has a chair who recruits anonymous voters (writers, influencers, hoteliers, and luxury travelers, but “no one in PR or travel agencies”). Edwards notes that each voter gets seven ranked votes on hotels they have stayed at in the last two years, with about 850 voters taking part in 2025.¹⁵

I travel a lot for my job and for pleasure. It would not be a stretch for me to stay in seven luxury level hotels in a given year, but that’s not the case for the majority of my clients. Someone who stays at seven qualifying hotels in two years is most likely a hotelier, a travel writer, or a frequent business traveler, all of whom spend much of their year in city hotels.

Because press trips and comped nights count toward eligibility while voters do not appear to follow specific scoring criteria, I find the comped stays problematic.¹² From my experience, even when I’m paying full rates at luxury hotels, if the hotel knows I’m a travel advisor, they bring out the bells and whistles. Press trips and FAM trips (familiarization trips), are next level displays of a hotel’s best behavior.

As a result, the hotels that can host the most press trips are the ones most likely to show up in the votes; Ben Schlappig of One Mile at a Time points out that a 795-room hotel hosts far more invited guests than a 24-room one.¹² , who has taken press trips herself, says hotels treat hosted guests better because they have something to gain.¹⁰

Meanwhile, Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge in Canada and Tierra Patagonia in Chile, which are quite small and rarely host comped or press stays, each hold Three Michelin Keys and neither is on the 50 Best list.¹⁶ ¹⁷

A reader asked in The Upgrade subscriber chat how many winners are advertisers and called the arrangement “pay-for-play in editorial clothing.”² Most publications would categorically deny it, but I think a hotel written about favorably is more likely to advertise in that publication’s future issues, and the awards open several other revenue streams. of Skift writes that these lists will never be entirely objective and calls them “often commercial tools” for selling branded awards and gala tickets or driving page views when winners share them,¹⁸ and winning a list starts a second sale. Let’s take a look at all the ways a publication makes money on these award lists.

Licensing. Proving you won often means paying to use the badge, and T+L licenses its award logos and headlines through PARS International, which prices each package to the buyer and also sells reprints and PDF e-prints.¹⁹ The one public price I found came in 2023, when Savannah’s airport commission approved $50,395 for a T+L World’s Best Awards logo license before the results were out.²⁰

Galas and fees. Winning an award is cause for a celebration, and of course a hotel needs to have a table at the dinner in which they accept an award. I can guarantee that a sous vide steak and anemic green bean plated dinner does not line up with the price of the seat sold to accompany it at these galas.

Displaying the award. Of course when a hotel wins an award, their leadership wants to show the world. World Travel Awards sold a 2023 Asia & Oceania gala Bronze package for £1,000 and a Silver package with a full-page ad for £2,000, with a wall plaque costing £650 more.²¹

While this article is largely about the hotel ranking lists, the travel advisor and other industry awards also follow a pay-for-play model. For example, separate from its hotel lists, T+L began charging advisors $4,000 to appear on its A-List in 2018, payable after selection.²²

Sponsorships and bookings. As affiliate programs make it easier to compete with OTAs, these lists are getting into the booking business. The 50 Best Hotels lists partners including American Express Travel and SevenRooms,²³ and Michelin owns the booking site Tablet and earns commissions on hotel bookings, Darden notes.¹⁰ ²⁴

Distribution. This one is my inference since I have no circulation data, but I suspect hotels on a list are more likely to buy the awards edition and hand it out to guests.

Winning is great for team morale, and it can also change who walks through the door and their expectations, causing strain on a team that may not be prepared for. Colin Nagy describes new interest and search visibility alongside a guest base that shifts from die-hard fans to people checking off what is hot right now, who may be harder to please and less likely to return,¹⁸ and when Passalacqua earned its No. 1 crown in 2023 the award “took the metaphorical phone off the hook.”¹³ ¹⁸

Commercial activity around awards does not automatically create a conflict of interest, since a publisher can run a rigorous editorial process while selling sponsorships and a reader survey can produce useful results even when hotels campaign.

The issue is whether you know which type of recognition you are looking at and how much weight it should carry in your decision. In a past issue of The Upgrade, I noted that travel has become a question of who to trust. Trust was also a buzzword that came up frequently at Skift’s Global Forum this year.

Finally, I say consistently that who owns your hotel matters. When looking at the hotels on these awards lists, I was curious what the ownership breakdown is between owner/operator and family owned, sovereign capital, franchise, private equity, etc. I traced ownership across the top 50 of the 50 Best and the T+L World’s Best list for Master Key, and discovered that nearly three-quarters of the 50 Best turned out to be family-controlled, seven hotels trace to a government or a crown, and 17 of T+L’s 50 have undisclosed local owners.²⁵

Making money from these awards is not inherently bad. These publications are businesses, and the awards let teams celebrate a win in an incredibly difficult industry while also putting hospitality at the center of conversation each time a list comes out with much fanfare. The awards also provide content for those of us who rely on staying relevant to our travel clients, (I used one of the lists to make an IG post this week).

I simply caution my Upgrade readers, before you book based on a list, look at who voted, whether comped stays counted, and think about the economic engines driving these lists.

A list can narrow your options, but it cannot tell you whether a hotel suits the way your family likes to travel, or what you are looking for from a specific stay. That’s where working with an advisor who knows your personal travel preferences becomes important.

And, because hotels pay me a commission after you travel, I have a financial motivation too, weigh my opinion the way I have weighed everyone else’s.

🗝️ Room Report — Six Senses Rome

Before running a poetry and yoga retreat in Umbria, I splurged on one night here for the Roman Baths spa to recover from jet lag. I stayed solo without my kids.

Six Senses Rome opened March 16, 2023, in the Palazzo Salviati Cesi Mellini, between the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. The palazzo began as a cardinal’s palace in the 15th century, and this is the brand’s first hotel in Italy. IHG bought Six Senses from Pegasus Capital in February 2019 for $300 million in cash, and it runs the hotels while other investors usually own the buildings. Here, Orion Real Estate Fund V owns the redevelopment.

Rooms

• Upgraded to a Super Deluxe, huge for a city hotel.

• I heard nothing from the street and slept until noon.

• Light switches are complicated, and the phone buttons did not reach the front desk.

Spa

• I booked for the spa, and the Roman baths delivered. They are included in your room rate.

• Go in the morning. Afternoons get crowded.

Food and Beverage

• Breakfast earned full marks.

• Lunch at Bivium was slow. A photo shoot was running, nobody was at the host stand, and 30 minutes passed before anyone took my order.

Extra Credit

• I booked through our hotel booking portal. I got champagne, a note from the GM, a 1pm check-in, and the upgrade.

• No swimming pool, but the Roman baths have three plunge pools.

• The lobby bar is more zen garden restaurant than cozy martini den.

The Upgrade TLDR

• Score: 83.3 out of 100, a strong stay. I would send a client here.

• Best for: travelers resetting after a long flight who want the baths, large rooms, and a peaceful, organic, modern feel.

• Skip it if: you want a traditional, historical Italianate hotel. The decor felt Aman-esque. It’s not a lively bar scene, and it accommodates kids but isn’t kid-friendly.

• October is still high season in Rome, so don’t expect shoulder season rates.

Sources

1. Hilton, “Travel + Leisure’s 2026 World’s Best Awards Spotlight Hilton’s Luxury and Lifestyle Brands and Properties.”

2. The Upgrade subscriber chat, Substack, reader comments (Stojcevski, Gross, The Ben Edit).

3. Travel Weekly Magellan Awards, About and Contact pages.

4. Travel Weekly, “Entries open for the 2026 Magellan Awards,” March 25, 2026.

5. Tripadvisor, “Travellers’ Choice Awards: What is it and how does it work?”

6. Forbes Travel Guide, Media Center and Partner Services pages.

7. San Francisco Chronicle, “Tourism board gives $600,000 to Michelin for new California guide.”

8. Sacramento News & Review, “Culinary ambitions.”

9. MICHELIN Guide, “MICHELIN Guide Unveils Its 2026 MICHELIN Key Selection” and “The MICHELIN Guide 101,” September 15, 2025.

10. Bella Darden, Mind Holiday, “The hotel rating industrial complex is broken,” September 2026.

Mindholiday

The hotel rating industrial complex is broken.

Last year, I paid over $500/night for a birthday hotel stay that was supposed to be special—three nights at a hotel on the ocean in Puerto Escondido, where I imagined myself staring at the deep blue sea and being taken care of for 72 hours, without having to lift a finger…

Read more

a month ago · 64 likes · 21 comments · Bella Darden

1. Hotel Online, “Travel + Leisure Announces 2026 World’s Best Awards,” July 7, 2026; Osaka Highlights, “Patina Osaka named the ‘World’s Best Hotel.’”

2. One Mile at a Time, “The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2026 List Published: The Winners, And My Take On The Rankings,” September 15, 2026.

3. Time Out Hong Kong, coverage of the World’s 50 Best Hotels 2023, September 2023.

4. The World’s 50 Best Hotels, 2025 results list (PDF).

5. Yolanda Edwards, Club Yolo, “Travel Awards Season,” November 6, 2025.

Club Yolo

Travel Awards Season

How many of you use lists to plan your travels? Restaurants with doors covered in decades of Pudlo and Johannsens stickers usually end up being great meals, albeit packed with others who’ve found their way there by following the same breadcrumb trail. Walking into a hotel you’ve booked only to see a red Michelin Key plaque or a Forbes star can feel reassuring, like you’ve really chosen the right spot. And if you’re torn between three hotels in an unfamiliar city, checking these lists can be a helpful tiebreaker. But given how much attention the lists get, it’s hard not to wonder: how are they made, and how do they shape how we travel…

Read more

a year ago · 99 likes · 32 comments · Yolanda Edwards

1. MICHELIN Guide, Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge, Three Keys. https://guide.michelin.com/jp/ja/hotels-stays/tofino/clayoquot-wilderness-resort-bedwell-river-12128

2. MICHELIN Guide, Tierra Patagonia Hotel & Spa, Three Keys. https://guide.michelin.com/gb/en/hotels-stays/torres-del-paine-national-park/tierra-patagonia-hotel-spa-6617

3. Colin Nagy, Skift, “Congrats, You’re the ‘World’s Best’ Hotel. Now Comes the Hard Part,” September 27, 2024. https://skift.com/2024/09/27/congrats-youre-the-worlds-best-hotel-now-comes-the-hard-part/

4. PARS International, Travel + Leisure licensing and reprints.

5. City of Savannah, City Council agenda item 34, logo licensing agreement with PARS International, July 27, 2023.

6. World Travel Awards, Asia & Oceania Gala Ceremony 2023: Tickets.

7. Travel Market Report, “Travel + Leisure A-List Controversy Is a Slippery Slope for Travel Media,” March 29, 2018.

8. The 50 Best Hotels, “Our Partners.”

9. Gulf Business, coverage of the MICHELIN Key launch; MICHELIN Guide, Hotels page.

10. Anne Marie Brown, The Upgrade Master Key

25. Experiential Luxury Travel is the Next Frontier

Travelers -

I’m getting ready to head to Rome on Friday! I’m co-leading our annual poetry retreat with Christi Steyn in Umbria this year. I’ll then spend a week in the Costwolds with my mother-in-law. I can’t wait to bop around to moody pubs and antique stores in little villages with one of my favorite women. I’m excited to have some unstructured time to read Agatha Christie books, write, and take a deep breath as I reflect on the past year.

I’m in desperate need of a break after hosting my daughter’s 8th birthday party, which was Parent Trap themed and a slumber party in which nobody slumbered.

Today’s article arose from several weeks of following recent M&A news in the experiential travel industry, which is essentially my home base. What is all this money flowing into experiences signaling for the travel industry? I’ll bring you along as a hospitality insider for a peek into what’s happening.

This week's Lobby Bar covers ownership and contract fights at Soneva, Sandals, Oheka Castle, and the Beverly Wilshire, plus Aman's first Colorado hotel and a new $44 insurance requirement for Tanzania.

Happy travels,

Anne Marie

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

The Business of Experiential Travel

Experiences happen to be my area of expertise. My previous title at Inspirato (eleven years ago) was “Director of Experiences,” and my job was to create and run a portfolio of small group trips, expeditions, chartered cruises, events like the Masters, and custom FIT (free independent travel) trips for members of the luxury travel club.

This is why I find it hilarious that the hospitality industry is only now catching on to how huge an opportunity experiential travel presents.

The problem is, when the industry discusses experiences, everyone seems to be talking about different things. Some mean DMCs (destination management companies) and tour operators, like Abercrombie & Kent. Some mean all-inclusive luxury lodges like White Desert or Clayoquot. Some mean on-property activities at hotels. Others mean OTA (online travel agency) marketplaces like Viator and GetYourGuide.

For years, the luxury status symbol was the Rolex watch, the Birkin, the mid-life crisis Lambo in a ghastly color. Today, keeping up with the Joneses means cocktail conversation about which gorilla trekking lodge you dropped $5k per night at in Rwanda (it was One & Only Gorilla’s Nest for us).

My clients are dragging/bringing their kids and parents along for the ride. Gen X and Millennials are fitter than any previous generation, and the Silver Tsunami is every bit as excited to travel in retirement, so these families want luxury experiences in nature that work for all three generations.

Virtuoso surveyed 2,485 advisors across more than 50 countries for its 2026 Luxe Report, and 45% of them are seeing more requests for what they call “ultraluxe” travel, where every detail is included, up to full resort buyouts.^1,2 Three-generation trips are climbing too, with grandparents pushing grandkids toward hikes and rivers and away from screens.

The population of people with $30 million or more in assets is projected to grow 34% by 2030, which explains a good chunk of the growth at the top end (see my previous articles about the K-shaped economy).³

Part of it is generational. Millennials and Gen X watched their parents spend decades collecting things (search “millennial inheritance” on Instagram for an idea of what fills my storage unit following the death of my parents), and plenty of them have decided a week in the Amazon gives you memories that a Lladro porcelain collection cannot touch.

Part of it is Instagram, which made certain hotels recognizable on sight (Nihi Sumba, and Giraffe Manor, which I have yet to score a stay at).

Part of it is time. We don’t leave the office at the office the way our Boomer parents did, and we are getting colon cancer, among other fun maladies, at higher rates than any generation before us.⁴

Wealthy Millennials and Gen X want to “adventure max” the small amount of time they have off while they are still healthy and fit enough to hike the Camino or go gorilla trekking.

Hotels and investors see where the next generation of luxury travelers is headed. A hotel that controls the entire guest experience has a greater chance to wow them and captures a heftier share of wallet, and if the scenery or wildlife inspires rave reviews, it becomes a cult property in its own right.

I would define experiential travel as all-inclusive journeys, complete with meals, activities, guides, and luxury accommodations. These experiences can occur on a bespoke, FIT (free independent travel) itinerary put together by a DMC and a travel advisor, they can be on a small group departure by operators like Abercrombie & Kent or Backroads, or they can at a lodge, camp, or hotel.

Private equity (PE) is a good leading indicator in travel, because few firms focus on travel and hospitality alone, and PE is buying direct ownership stakes in safari operators. In 2018, TPG’s Rise Fund bought 34% of Wilderness Holdings, the parent of Wilderness Safaris, and FS Investors’ African Wildlife Holdings bought another 24%. Wilderness then became a buyer itself, acquiring Jacada Travel out of administration in 2020 and relaunching it as its own consumer-facing tour operator.^5,6,7

PE is also reaching into the ground-operator layer in East Africa. Egeria Private Equity agreed in 2025 to acquire Afrika Invest, the Netherlands-based company behind Tanzania Specialist and Africa Safari Trips, which sells direct to consumers and runs its own guides and vehicles on the ground.^8,9

The lodge rollup is also hard to ignore. KSL Capital Partners has been building out an experiential-lodge platform. KSL, who bought my family’s company, Outrigger in 2016, took a majority stake in Baillie Lodges in 2018, folded in Chile’s Tierra Hotels in 2022, and combined both under a new brand, Beckons, this past March, retiring the Baillie Lodges name in the process: nine lodges across Australia, New Zealand, Chile, and Canada, backed by $100 million in recent property investment. CEO Michael Crawford, formerly president of Four Seasons, wants to double the portfolio in three years and has named Africa as a target market.^10,11

Auberge Resorts Collection is running a similar play, minus the KSL tie. Auberge sits under Dan Friedkin’s family office, The Friedkin Group, and this year it launched Auberge Safari, bringing nine Tanzania camps and lodges under its brand from Legendary Expeditions, which the Friedkin family already owned, and Chem Chem Safari.^12,13

Marriott is doing the Auberge play on a larger scale in Kenya, where it signed The Ritz-Carlton, Masai Mara Safari Camp and JW Marriott Mount Kenya Rhino Reserve Safari Camp under agreements with a local investor group, Lazizi Group.¹⁴

That makes two distinct plays: PE firms buying equity in the safari companies themselves (Wilderness and the operators Egeria is after), and hotel groups buying reach into safari through management contracts and brand rollups without owning the real estate (Beckons under KSL, Auberge under the Friedkin family office, and Marriott in Kenya).

I personally think the draw of experiential travel comes from a combination of the following:

a) Wanting to prove something to ourselves (such as hiking up to Machu Picchu or visiting all 7 continents)

b) Experiencing pressure to maximize our limited time off or limited with our children before they fly the nest

c) Seeking to create lasting memories

d) Existential climate dread (I wanted to see the mountain gorillas because so few are left in the wild)

e) Milestone celebrations

f) The desire to decrease the friction involved in accomplishing all of the above

White Desert is insanely priced and equally sought after. Its camps take no more than twelve guests each. In case you hate the Drake Passage as much as I do and have beaucoup cash to drop on seeing emperor penguins, White Desert flies you by private Airbus from Cape Town onto its own glacial runway.¹⁵

Pricing starts around $71,500 per person for six days, which could also fund an entire school in Africa for a year, so there’s that. I’m not judging.¹⁵

I haven’t been, but it’s on my bucket list solely for the audacity of that pricing and because I get seasick.

Everyone is getting into safaris! I’m a safari addict, and if I were to be reincarnated, I’d like to be a safari camp manager in Botswana. So, let’s start with the safari action we are seeing in the industry.

At the luxury level, safari camps are as posh as any five-star hotel, with incredible meals, a small tent count, and an all-inclusive stay where the lodge guides control the entire experience.

We spent time in January at two Great Plains camps in Kenya, Ol Donyo and Mara Nyika, after gorilla and chimp trekking in Rwanda. Mara Nyika gave us a private vehicle per family, a Masai guide who grew up on the concession before her tribe leased the land to the camp, and more leopard and cheetah sightings in three days than I’ve had anywhere else. They made me a happy camper.

Singita still reigns supreme in the luxury safari market, and it charges the rates to hold that crown: Sasakwa and Sabora at Grumeti in Tanzania, Lebombo on the Mozambique border, Kwitonda next to Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, and Elela, a new camp opening in December in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. It’s the gold standard for a reason, with near 1:1 staff-to-guest ratios and low-volume, high-value tourism that funds anti-poaching and habitat work directly.¹⁶

And of course there’s Wilderness and Great Plains, which are as luxurious as AndBeyond across their portfolios, with a heavy emphasis on conservation and experiences beyond seeing animals on a game drive.

Giraffe Manor in Kenya and Mnemba Island in Zanzibar are the Instagram-legible entries, and both are notoriously hard to book, which is its own luxury signal and the bane of my existence as an advisor.

Shinta Mani Mustang in Nepal took the top spot on Robb Report’s 2026 list of the world’s greatest luxury hotels less than three years after opening. Bill Bensley designed it in the Kali Gandaki River Valley, it has a five-night minimum, and the itinerary folds in high-altitude hikes, monastery visits, and a consultation with a resident practitioner of traditional Tibetan medicine.¹⁷

Bhutan’s Amankora lodges operate under the country’s high-value, low-impact tourism policy, which caps volume by design, one of the rare cases where the conservation ethic and luxury positioning line up.

Shinta Mani Wild in Cambodia, same architect as Mustang, sits inside a private wildlife reserve in the Cardamom Mountains. Guests zipline into camp. The tents are all-inclusive and butlered, and you can join rangers on active anti-poaching patrols if you want your stay to double as fieldwork. (And no, they don’t entrust you with weapons to take out any poachers you manage to track down!)

Nihi Sumba appears on every major best-of list, Robb Report, Travel + Leisure, and Condé Nast, year after year. It has 2.5 kilometers of private beach, 93% local staffing, and some of the world’s best surfing and diving on the doorstep. You can ride horses on the beach, so I’m sold.¹⁸

Amangiri in Utah is the domestic property most of my clients already know and lust after. I should have stayed there when it was less than $3k per night, but hindsight is 20/20.

Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge on Vancouver Island is reachable only by seaplane, helicopter, or boat, inside a UNESCO biosphere reserve on Clayoquot Sound. It has 25 canvas prospector-style tents with heated floors, and this season added nighttime bioluminescence kayaking and a private floating sauna in the Tofino inlets.¹⁹

I’m going to try to hit this one up next year if I can stomach the price point, because it’s absolutely gorgeous and has one of my favorite GMs.

Dunton Hot Springs in Colorado is an 1880s mining ghost town, restored shack by shack along the Dolores River between Telluride and Mesa Verde. It has two Michelin Keys, 13 cabins plus one tent, and natural geothermal hot springs, including one hidden inside a teepee.²⁰

Awasi distills the whole trend into one property group. The lodges require a ton of upfront planning and coordination from the travel advisor, but they are super cool. Every villa gets its own guide and its own 4WD, and sorry, football fans, there are no TVs.

• Awasi Patagonia: 14 timber-and-glass villas on a private reserve facing Torres del Paine, each with a private wood-fired hot tub looking at the Paine Massif.

• Awasi Atacama: a 12-suite adobe lodge in San Pedro de Atacama with some of the clearest night skies on earth.

• Awasi Iguazu: 14 stilted villas in the rainforest on the Argentine side of the falls, turning what’s normally a day trip into a three- or four-night stay.

Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica in Peru is the Amazon’s answer to the safari camp. You can canoe at dawn, go wildlife spotting with naturalists while dodging mosquitos the size of B52s, and spend nights on the Madre de Dios River searching for piranhas (while hoping they won’t find you).

What used to be the Baillie Lodges portfolio, folded into Beckons this year, covers more of this trend within one country than almost any other group.

• Silky Oaks Lodge, Daintree, Queensland: treehouse suites over the Mossman River in the world’s oldest rainforest, Gourmet Traveller’s #2 resort in Australia for 2025, First Nations-led Kuku Yalanji experiences.

• Longitude 131 Degrees, Uluru (aka Ayers Rock): tented pavilions facing the rock itself, degustation dining under the stars, guided walks with Anangu traditional owners.

• Southern Ocean Lodge, Kangaroo Island: rebuilt after the 2020 bushfires, a dramatic clifftop setting.

• Capella Lodge, Lord Howe Island: a remote UNESCO World Heritage island with very limited capacity.

Blanket Bay in Glenorchy has thirteen rooms on Lake Wakatipu at the foot of the Humboldt Mountains, and it is a Relais & Chateaux and Virtuoso partner property. It works as a base camp for the Routeburn Track, heli-hiking, jet boating, heli-skiing, and a private dinner in the Wine Cave. I’m obsessed with New Zealand, and this hotel never fails to deliver an extraordinary experience.

Huka Lodge sits on the Waikato River outside Taupō and is part of Beckons. Alan Pye opened it as a trout-fishing camp in 1924, and Queen Elizabeth II visited four times. A roughly NZ$25 million centenary renovation reopened it in March 2025 with a doubled dining room, a new outdoor terrace, and wellness grounds built from huts modeled on the Kiwi bach. I sold Huka Lodge for years to avid fly fishermen and women, and then the rest of the world caught on to how special this place is, even if you’re not an angler.^21,22,23

Gleneagles in Perthshire predates this whole trend and is getting rediscovered because of it. Plenty of guests come for the golf (my husband will be one next summer), and the rest come for the 850-acre estate: falconry, gundog training, off-road driving, salmon fishing on the Tay, and one of the best clay shooting schools in the world. It isn’t all-inclusive, so be prepared to dust off your wallet.²⁴

Estelle Manor in Oxfordshire is building out its experience options to capture more share of wallet. You can take a falconry forest walk, fly fish on Blenheim Palace’s own lake, go off-road in INEOS Grenadiers, or abandon your children at the kids club like we did and bliss out at the Eynsham Baths, a Roman-inspired thermal spa.

The same logic is showing up on the water with Explora Journeys and the yacht lines from Ritz-Carlton, Aman, Orient Express, and Four Seasons. UHNW clients who charter actual yachts get offended when you call these vessels “yachts,” so perhaps we should call them micro luxury cruises. The jury is still out about how well these capital-intensive projects have turned out for their financial backers. I think the most successful one will be those who actually own the entire experience. I’m not sold on the idea of outsourcing shore excursions - and the feedback from several of these ships have shown that those haven’t always been handled in the best way.

If you read The Upgrade, you are a luxury traveler, a hospitality industry insider, or a fellow advisor. Maybe you are one of my friends or family members that I bribed to join my paid tier because writing is my first love and there’s something intoxicating about being paid to do it.

As a former Director of Experiences who is now, as I like to think, Master of Experiences, I love seeing the hospitality industry finally take luxury nature-based travel seriously. I’ve been saying for years that the smartest hotels will copy the African safari lodge model and capture more of their guests’ wallet and emotional experience, instead of hoping they book a mediocre-but-exorbitantly priced day-boat charter through the concierge.

🗝️The Lobby Bar

Hospitality updates, promotions, gossip, and the occasional pun

• A Singapore court cut Steele’s Soneva debt from 18% to 15% and set a November 15 start for a sale. Steele, the KSL Capital and GIC vehicle that holds about 74.9% of the group, issued up to $37 million of debt securities in August 2025 at 18% compounding with a 2x payout on exit, and the judge found the group needed far less and that Steele did not seriously look for other lenders. The court removed the 2x term, declined founder Sonu Shivdasani’s request for a buyout, and told Steele to begin the sale process both sides agreed to in 2025 by November 15 unless it can show that date is impracticable. (Singapore International Commercial Court)

• Royal Caribbean is buying half of Sandals and Beaches for about $3 billion. Guess you could call it a deal with…real sole.

  The deal values the resort business at roughly 10 times forward EBITDA and is expected to close in early 2027, with Sandals executive chairman Adam Stewart keeping a leadership role in the joint venture. Existing reservations and loyalty programs continue as usual. (Yahoo Finance)

• Oheka Castle goes to bankruptcy auction October 27. The Long Island wedding estate from Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” video is selling with its hotel, event spaces, and condo development rights, and its website still advertises rooms and weddings until then. (LongIsland.com)

• The Beverly Wilshire is suing a sports travel company over 300 World Cup rooms. The hotel alleges Jet Set Sports contracted the rooms for six nights at $594,000 before taxes, then told the hotel on January 23 to release them, and says it could not resell any. It is asking for $636,000, and none of it has been decided in court. (California Post)

• Aman is building its first Colorado hotel at the base of Aspen Mountain. A construction sequencing plan finalized July 31 puts more than four years of work ahead for Aman Aspen, a hotel with four full-ownership residences, and the neighboring Chalet Alpina, with about three years before the new lift starts spinning. (Aspen Journalism)

• Tanzania now requires $44 travel insurance for foreign visitors to the mainland. The policy comes from the National Insurance Corporation, covers emergency medical care, evacuation, repatriation, and lost luggage for up to 92 days, and visitors without one can be denied entry. Zanzibar has its own separate policy at the same price, and Kenya added a similar rule in July. (Citizen Digital)

Sources

1. Virtuoso, 2026 Luxe Report, October 2025

2. Seatrade Cruise News, Virtuoso 2026 trends, October 7, 2025

3. Altrata, World Ultra Wealth Report 2026, June 2026

4. ecancer, American Cancer Society colorectal study, February 2017

5. Tourism Update, Wilderness Holdings stake sale, July 2018

6. Travel Weekly UK, Jacada revived by Wilderness, 2020

7. Egeria, Afrika Invest acquisition, October 2, 2025

8. PitchBook, Tanzania Specialist profile

9. Travel Weekly, Beckons launch, March 11, 2026

10. Luxury Travel Advisor, Beckons launch, March 11, 2026

11. Auberge Safari, Travel Professionals FAQ, May 2026

12. Hotel Online, Marriott and Lazizi Group, 2025

13. Luxury Travel Advisor, White Desert Whichaway upgrades, 2025

14. Aspire, Singita Elela opening date, 2026

15. Travel Noire, Robb Report 2026 greatest hotels, 2026

16. NIHI Sumba, 2026 factsheet

17. Beckons, Clayoquot 2026 season release, May 26, 2026

18. MICHELIN Guide, Dunton Hot Springs

19. Luxury Travel, Huka Lodge renovation plans, August 1, 2024

20. Gourmet Traveller, Huka Lodge reopening, 2025

21. Newstalk ZB, Huka Lodge renovation, March 16, 2025

22. Abercrombie & Kent, Gleneagles

24. The Upgrade | Weekly – The Paradox of Being a Female Leader in Travel

Travelers,

I have held various leadership and board positions in the travel and hospitality industry over my career. Yet, agency owner may be the most challenging, perhaps due to the time in my life that collides with this position.

Today’s Upgrade addresses an innate paradox I’ve noticed: the industry is dominated by women, yet structurally makes it difficult for them to run it.

On the surface, the travel industry is an attractive career path. Travel advising, specifically, allows us to combine ambition with flexibility. We can ostensibly work from anywhere, set our own hours, and in some cases, be our own bosses. That flexibility is exactly why 80 percent of advisors and 70 percent of agencies are female-dominated. However, scaling past solo-advisor size requires being the 24/7 person who takes calls on the weekends and family trips, often being a content creator or at least the author of a newsletter, and steps away for “just a second” from dinner. This isn’t a trade off many of us are willing to make once we have children, and for those of us that do try to juggle it all, the stress and guilt are often overwhelming.

The Lobby Bar this week covers Rosewood Hong Kong's repeat win atop the World's 50 Best Hotels list, Ritz-Carlton Residences’ conversion in Brooklyn Heights, the posthumous opening of Dolly Parton's SongTeller Hotel in Nashville, a look at how new luxury hotels get built in Venice, and PURE Life Experiences wrapping its four-day run in Marrakech.

Happy Travels -

Anne Marie

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

The Paradox of Being a Female Leader in the Travel Industry

I was 33 by the time I had our daughter, and 35 when my son arrived, following years of unsuccessful attempts to get pregnant. My doctor told me I needed less stress. I was traveling most of the year for work. My pregnancies and deliveries were difficult. None of it was easy, but I reminded myself that I had chosen this and longed for motherhood for years. I had quit my corporate career in luxury travel in order to be a mom.

Today, I am 41 with two incredible children, six and eight years old. I love them, but I’m faced with a constant tension between wanting to soak up every minute with them while also being completely obsessed with, and proud of, what I’m building.

Case in point: I missed my son’s birthday this week for a work trip that I very much wanted to go on. Facing his tears as I departed, I smoothed back his hair and told him that mommy had worked very hard to earn this opportunity, and that I would celebrate with him at his party that following weekend when I returned. I could feel my heart ripping out of my body as I ducked into my Uber.

On this top-producer trip to Rosewood Mandarina, I’m surrounded by other millennial female agency founders who are also navigating motherhood and business ownership. These are some of the heavy hitters in our host agency, other affiliate agency owners who are putting up astronomical numbers and who have built travel businesses most agents won’t create in a lifetime.

At dinner on my final night, we discuss perimenopause, HRT (hormone replacement therapy), school sports schedules, and the push and pull of handling both parenthood and clients. It feels like someone always needs us. We answer client calls in the middle of the night, step away from family dinners, and work on every vacation. My daughter asks me why I’m on my phone on Labor Day weekend while we are at the lake. Under the dinner table at Rosewood Mandarina, I’m currently handling a client who was booked in a room category below what he thought he was getting.

Our dinner conversation turns to marriage. Some of us mention that our husbands aren’t happy with how much we travel and leave them to solo parent. I am reminded that my part-time job has quickly become a full-time obsession.

When we travel, we often operate as what Alex Barnes, another agency owner who has built a huge following on Instagram, calls “luxury backpackers.” We jump from hotel to hotel to squeeze in as many site inspections as possible. In between, we scramble to answer client emails and hop on calls with our teams to problem solve.

There is no “off” switch.

We all arrived at agency ownership by way of quitting demanding corporate jobs that we found unfulfilling, transitioning from law, finance, and sports management. Having reached the upper levels of our industries, we wondered if office life was all there was. We are the quintessential millennial overachievers who executed the playbook - straight A’s, college, graduate degrees, high-powered jobs, climbed the ladder.

None of us started out hoping to become full-time travel advisors. We quit the rat race vowing to fill our days with mahjong, tennis, and taking care of ourselves for once. I left to take care of my parents until they passed away and try to make a go of a writing career, oh and to have a family. I made it five years before I started feeling like I’d lost a piece of myself, my larger purpose in my days.

I'd already spent a decade in luxury travel before I tried to leave it the first time. I went back to work after my daughter was born, then built a travel tech platform with my husband that failed when Covid hit, then swore off the industry again, until a friend asked me to help expand her agency in 2025. It was supposed to be a part-time gig with a short timeline. I laugh at that now.

Around the table at Rosewood Mandarina, the women all agree: our second careers seem to have blown up into behemoths once we attacked them with the same drive we brought to our previous jet-fueled jobs.

Most of us work out of home offices with little privacy. My children come home from school, completely ignoring the Ritz “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door, and rush into the middle of client calls. I scoop them up for a quick hug before shooing them off to another room. I work for two more hours, our nanny shuttling them to after-school activities, before I step away to help with dinner and bedtimes.

My commission this year covers our nanny’s pay, with a respectable cushion to spend on our travel budget. The irony of spending most of my income on childcare when I worked so hard to become a mother is not lost on me.

Surrounded by these other badass female founders, I finally feel like I have a place to talk about all this.

This tension we are feeling is part of what drives the dearth of female leaders in the travel industry. Travel is a largely female dominated industry. Roughly 80 percent of U.S. travel advisors identify as female¹, and women own about 70 percent of the nation's agencies². However, that 70 percent is comprised mostly of solo operators or small teams working from a home office, like mine.

In the companies with scale, the numbers reverse. Women held 28.4 percent of board seats at publicly traded hospitality companies in 2025⁴, and, among Virtuoso's largest member and host agencies, the top job at only five of thirteen I checked (two of which now sit inside larger corporate parents). Executive committees are worse. AETHOS Consulting found female representation across hospitality leadership teams at 22 percent⁵, and a UK study of top FTSE 350 hospitality companies found only 4 percent had a woman as executive director⁶.

Women make up 74 percent of travel buyers and more than half of supplier and travel management company staff⁷. We're most of the industry's front line and its client base, and a minority of who runs it.

In Jacques Ledbetter’s and Forbes article about women in hospitality, he included the image above. “11 travel executives spanning hotels, airlines, casinos, cruise and online travel met the U.S. President in the Oval Office and stood shoulder to shoulder for a picture that’s been widely circulating across the travel and hospitality industries. There were no women among them.”

Is it a matter of opting out of leadership roles once we realize what they will take in the travel industry? Or is that opportunities that are more likely to be provided to male counterparts because of the perception that we as women would prioritize families over executive demands?

I recall fighting for a VP position that, in my mind, I had earned at a previous company through two years of demonstrated growth and leadership. Surrounded by male peers who had been promoted to that level with lesser accomplishments, I asked for title change. I was told that I was “too assertive” for the executives to recommend me for the higher role. Many women in similar positions have received feedback about being too “assertive, direct, emotional, cold, or hard”. Among my male friends from business school, none of them had ever received that feedback.

I think the answer is: all of the above. Yes, I have been thwarted from advancement at various stages in my life, and I have pivoted due to personal choices, such as stepping back for a few years to take care of my parents and kids.

The other female founders at the Rosewood Mandarina event and I discussed whether it’s possible to create boundaries with clients around work and personal time. The consensus was that it’s possible if you have a team of employees and perhaps pay for an after-hours service, but that almost inevitably, the buck stops with us. If we book using a DMC (destination management company), the client has an in-country contact during their trip, which adds a layer of protection. Yet we still receive the escalations.

, founder of Blonde Atlas, Atlas Adventures, and The Heart of Travel, and I sat down together when I was in London this summer where she allowed me to pick her brain about how she is handling agency ownership. I’ve been a fan of her Substack for a while, and wanted to hear her perspective on this topic.

Her full interview will be published as Master Key piece later this week, gifted to everyone, not just paid subscribers.

Yes, this job comes with great flexibility, and we can do it from anywhere. I worked from a pool last week. Alex Barnes is working from Switzerland this week. Whitney just got back from Morocco. The downside is that our work also follows us everywhere. My screen time is 11 hours a day, and my brain is half present at the best of times. It’s difficult to schedule time with friends because I’m often out of town, and many of my friends are my clients (which I greatly appreciate).

That leads to the next thing the group of leaders at Rosewood Mandarina kept coming back to, which is mental health. Most of us mentioned having a therapist (marriage or personal) and making specific time to exercise or take a daily walk at minimum.

In our former corporate lives, we had finance, accounting, marketing, legal, and support teams behind us. Now, we handle every stage of the booking and operations process, plus every business management and ownership role. We may outsource bookkeeping and social media, or have an offshore VA (virtual assistant), but even the most successful among us are handling many more facets of our businesses than we did in our previous roles.

I, personally, feel pulled nonstop in all directions, like there’s never enough time in the day. I wake up every night between 2 and 4 am, my brain going a million miles an hour. I used to answer emails in those hours, but now I use the time to write these Substack articles, which feels better for my mental health.

I’m trying to become more intentional about setting my out-of-office replies, blocking my calendar when my kids come home, and pushing clients from text messages to emails during work hours. I’ve begun using Calendly to schedule calls because that way I’m less likely to book them over my “dedicated” family time.

It's difficult to disconnect on evenings and weekends because travel planning at this level is personal, and clients make buying decisions over margaritas with friends on a Saturday night. When I am the brand they're buying, they want access to my brain exactly when I'm supposed to be at the dinner table. Rates change hourly, inventory disappears over a weekend, and something always goes wrong, a flight delay, a human error, somewhere in a hundred moving pieces.

One of the other agency owners, who doesn’t have kids, wondered aloud whether she could dedicate more time to clients than those of us who are moms. Kylee Glaser, my business partner at Alpenglow, and I answered that while we are intentional about our work time and home time, we don’t let our kids’ schedules affect our client service. We are, perhaps, more efficient with our time because we know it is limited. Bedtimes are sacred in our house. I go to sleep early, right after tucking in my kids, knowing I’ll wake up in the middle of the night.

On the positive side, my children see me doing something I love. If I need to, I can block time for a mid-day school meeting or Halloween party in the classroom. I’m not beholden to PTO restrictions. I tell my kids, Mommy doesn’t have to work. She chooses to work.

The second benefit of this career that I like to highlight is that my kids benefit directly from my work. When I held a corporate role, my home life and work life were quite separate. Had I stayed, I’m not sure how much my kids would have connected the work I did to anything in their own lives. As an agency owner, I tell my kids that the reason we get to travel as much as we do is because mommy works hard planning travel for clients. If they want to go back to Paris for their next birthday, mommy has to sell more travel.

Kylee put it this way: it’s important for her to expose her kids to what’s possible in luxury travel, and she hopes it inspires them to work hard and strive for a life where they can reach that same level.

I am raising tiny luxury travelers. My daughter accompanies me on site inspections if I meet with a hotel sales team on a family trip. My kids, the original Bougie Bunnies (check old posts on my substack for this cartoon series I created), have stayed in more five-star hotels than most adults will in their lifetimes. They have opinions on caviar and hotel check-in processes. Traveling with them for work also leads to interesting conversations, like why they see more cigarettes in Paris than at home in Colorado.

At the same time, they know that I gave up time with them after school to bring them to those places. I make sure they connect the two. If I have to bring my phone to the playground, I make sure to explain why to them. I’m not on my phone because I’d rather be scrolling Instagram than spending time with them. I’m answering emails because people are counting on me. I tell them about my clients’ trips, what those families are celebrating, and what I’ve built for them.

I must be doing something right, even if I feel like I’m dropping balls all over the place, because my daughter said recently that she wants to take over my business one day. As a kid who grew up wanting to be the CEO of my family’s hotel company, but never made it to that leadership position before we sold it, my little heart burst with pride realizing I’m building a company my daughter is proud of too.

TLDR:

Thank god for my husband, who is picking up the pieces as I try to hold it all together with duct tape and hope.

🗝️The Lobby Bar

Hospitality updates, promotions, gossip, and the occasional pun

• Rosewood Hong Kong topped the World’s 50 Best Hotels list for a second year running. I have lots of big feelings about “Best Of” awards, and am working on article about the awards business in general. The TLDR for the lobby bar is that Capella Bangkok and Four Seasons Bangkok at Chao Phraya River took second and third, and fourteen properties are new to the list this year. Lots of city hotels. Some weird rankings.

• Marriott is turning a Brooklyn Heights landmark into residences. Because branded residences are all the rage, Marriott and developer SomeraRoad plan to convert the former Hotel Bossert into a standalone Ritz-Carlton Residences property, with completion targeted for 2029.

• Dolly Parton’s SongTeller Hotel opens September 29 in Nashville. RIP to the queen of Nashville, and one of my all-time inspirations. I grew up going to Dollywood and am absolutely going to visit this hotel. The property, built around her songwriting catalog through Herschend Family Entertainment, now debuts a month after her death on August 25.

• Every piece of furniture in a new Venetian hotel arrives by boat. Ok so this isn’t really news, but I think it’s a cool take on all the luxury hotels opening in Venice this year and how they came to be renovated. AFAR toured three new luxury openings, Airelles Palladio, the reopened Danieli under Four Seasons, and Orient Express Venezia, tracing how marble tables get lifted through windows by crane on a city with no roads to build on. (Laura Rysman, AFAR)

• PURE Life Experiences wrapped its four-day run in Marrakech. The invitation-only experiential travel show ran September 7 through 10, pairing roughly 1,800 travel designers and specialist operators through custom diaries of up to 45 one-to-one meetings each. I have not yet scored an invitation, because The Upgrade has 1,100 of you wonderful readers and is not yet an industry-wide phenomenon. A girl can hope.

Sources

1. Host Agency Reviews, “2021 Travel Advisor Demographic Report.” https://hostagencyreviews.com/blog/2021-travel-advisor-demographic-report

2. American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA), International Women’s Day post, via LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-society-of-travel-advisors

3. Rachel Louise Ensign and Chelsey Dulaney, “The Rise of the Unstoppable American Tourist,” The Wall Street Journal. [ADD LINK]

4. Penn State School of Hospitality Management, 2025 hospitality leadership report, via Hertelier. https://www.hertelier.com/post/women-hotel-leadership-stalled-2025-penn-state

5. AETHOS Consulting Group, “Women’s Presence Growing in Hotel Boardrooms,” via Hotel Management. https://www.hotelmanagement.net/operate/aethos-report-shows-women-s-presence-hotel-boardrooms-up-but-not-enough

6. GBTA Foundation and WINiT (Women in Travel), October 2025 study, via Meeting Spotlight. https://www.meetingspotlight.com/research/gbta-study-shows-ongoing-barriers-womens-advancement-business-travel

7. Jacques Ledbetter, “The Women Hospitality Leaders Who Should’ve Been In The Room,” Forbes, September 8, 2026. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquesledbetter/2026/09/08/the-women-that-shouldve-been-in-the-room/

23. The Upgrade | Weekly – The Rise of the Celebrity Travel Advisor: The New Class in an Old Industry

Travelers -

I am back from Mexico and enjoying a brief stint at home in Colorado before leaving to run a poetry retreat in Umbria and enjoy a week in the Cotswolds with my mother-in-law.

I spent last week with a handful of other advisors hosted under Coastline at the Rosewood Mandarina in Mexico. (Their rates are amazing this fall, and if you’re interested in booking, please reach out to me for a quote).

The interesting part of this trip was so much more than the hotel - it was that the group of advisors I was with were all top-producing advisors, and all women.

Naturally, we discussed several aspects of our jobs, the push and pull of juggling parenthood and entrepreneurship, as well as our love/hate relationship with social media. Social media has become a necessary part of the advisor world, so I decided to dig into what that means for the people harnessing it well.

In the Lobby Bar - families keep ditching the school calendar, SeaDream builds a new ship, Arnault's hotel empire is trending downward, Champagne gets stronger and scarcer, and airport tech moves faster while airfare doesn't get any cheaper.

(Quick plug - if you are enjoying The Upgrade, please consider booking your travel or hotel stays through me. I write this little publication for fun, but travel advising is my real job, and I’d love to have some Substack readers as clients. AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com)

Yours truly with one of my business partners, Kylee, at the Rosewood Mandarina last week

Happy travels!

Anne Marie

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

I love nothing more than planning travel for other people, whether friends, family, or clients. I have been in luxury travel for almost two decades, first at Exclusive Resorts, then Inspirato, and I co-founded our small agency with two former colleagues not quite two years ago. We quickly figured out that we are the brand, which meant putting our faces on social media to build trust with an audience that had no reason to know us yet. We are aware of our own industry experience, but proving that to strangers is the hard part.

I pitched the Bespoke Travel concept to the executives at Inspirato in 2015. Fresh out of my MBA program, I walked in with a full case study including market metrics, a staffing model, and one of the better P&L forecasts I have built, arguing that we should run a travel agency inside Inspirato. There were doubters in the room. These were people who had watched the OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) eat the travel planning industry alive. Eventually, I convinced them that travel advisors were not an extinct species.

Travel Market Report recently picked up an NBC News segment under a headline about online booking being “so nineties” and the humble travel agent making a comeback, tying it to survey data showing that the higher the ticket price, the more likely the traveler used an advisor.¹ TMR had covered the same comeback in 2018, quoting Virtuoso’s Matthew Upchurch and Ovation’s Jack Ezon on a wave of young, high-producing advisors entering the business. Ovation’s average agent at the time was 28 years old and writing $3 to $5 million a year.² The travel agent has been declared dead and reborn more times than I can count.

The eleven years since I built that case at Inspirato have proved my hypothesis right, thanks largely to social media. Social media has pushed certain advisors to the front of the trust matrix as we use Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, and Substack to widen awareness and earn credibility with people who have never met us.

Since the pandemic, American travelers have been on a tear, especially at the top of the market. In “The Rise of the Unstoppable American Tourist,” Rachel Louise Ensign and Chelsey Dulaney argued that a strong dollar and a supercharged US economy turned Americans into zealous international travelers.³ With a largely American client base, it has been a good stretch to be an advisor. I have written before about how the scores of newly minted millionaires have expanded the luxury travel market since people at that level already work with tax and financial advisors, so a travel advisor is a natural fit.

Internova’s North American traveler survey found more than 60% of respondents plan to use a travel advisor as their primary booking channel in 2026, particularly for international trips and anything with a high price tag.⁴ Virtuoso’s Luxe Report has nearly half of advisors expecting a slight rise in demand next year and 18% expecting a significant jump, with 55% predicting per-trip spend will climb as well.⁵ Virtuoso’s fall numbers push it further: the network is on pace for a 21% year-over-year sales increase, with 45% of advisors reporting rising demand for ultra-luxe stays such as hotels within hotels and private members’ clubs.⁶

Travel has become the flex. You keep up with the Joneses by scoring a summer stay at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc or vacationing at Badrutt’s Palace, not by buying a bigger TV or a Ferrari. The Economist made the same argument this year about where the rich are putting their money now – hotel nights, not handbags.⁷ The question is, how do you book the best trip for your money?

The influencers of the early Instagram years usually had a name like “Whimsy and Wanderlust” or “Cobblestones and Cardamom,” posted photos of themselves in breeze-blown dresses walking into a Santorini sunset, and scattered lots of emojis. They were in it for the free stays hotels handed out in return for “exposure.”

Now, the travel influencer is morphing into the travel advisor. As influencers and hotel reviewers seek to monetize their followings, they are running retreats and dropping affiliate links on their blogs, TikTok accounts, and websites. Or, they are becoming advisors via platforms like Fora.

Instagram has also gotten crowded. People are looking for a departure from the pastel single-shot scenes of the past decade and want to hear from someone who actually knows the properties. Or they want entertainment. Growing a following on Instagram is hard work, so my hat is off to any advisor who has managed it and turned it into qualified leads.

Influencers are becoming advisors, and advisors are becoming influencers.

Air Mail ran a piece recently on the wave of social-media-savvy operators entering the $2 trillion travel industry.⁸ Building trust is one thing, but converting interest into a booking is an entirely different matter. Done well, social media fame can move a young advisor into the top ranks within months, not years.

Here are a few of the rising names in that world.

Olivia Ferney. Her publicist is working overtime this month. Under the handle @travelwithlivii, Ferney has crossed 400,000 TikTok and 1.3M Instagram followers at age 25, mostly by reenacting (or faking) phone calls with supposedly wealthy clients,⁹ and it landed her on TIME‘s 2026 list of top creators.¹⁰ Off the app, she is CMO of Miami’s Top Tier Travel, profiled by The New York Times in August. Is she actually booking travel or just the top of the funnel and a marketing arm for the agents of Top Tier? TBD. As ’s RPS (Rich People Shit) piece on Becca Bloom proved last week, people can’t resist arguing about whether a wealthy person’s lifestyle online is staged. Top Tier Travel charges a $100,000 annual fee plus a $1 million yearly travel minimum, in exchange for same-day private jets or a giant croissant flown in for a client’s birthday.¹¹ Ferney told the Times that billionaires are her easiest clients while multimillionaires give her the most trouble because they spend big, get buyer’s remorse, and ask for refunds.¹¹ Secondary coverage added a Birkin overnighted to Capri and a Brabus sports car gifted for a Gen Z birthday.¹²

Mayra Bazavilvazo posts as @worldstompers under the banner “Luxury Family Adventures” to about 63,000 followers, with a companion site covering Asia, Europe, and the Caribbean. She is a photographer and planner who positions herself as a travel journalist first rather than a content creator, but she is also booking travel.

Camille Larmoyeux Scherr posts as @luxurytravelermedia to 431,000 Instagram followers and runs a TikTok, @luxury_traveler, with another 203,000 and close to 10 million likes, mostly hotel walkthroughs and NYC-adjacent luxury content. She came out of airline consulting and built the following first, then became a travel advisor to monetize. She’s hosted under Fora Travel. She also runs a companion Substack under the same name, past 5,000 subscribers, publishing weekly. Granted, last week she used some of Alex Barnes’ content about Hotel Du Cap Eden Roc, including her photos of the House Rules, without crediting her, which is frowned upon in our world.

Some seasoned advisors are getting famous as they learn to utilize social media to grow their client base. These are some of the advisors who are handling social media well, and seeing their client base grow along with them.

Jennifer Byrne, Tropical Travelers. Byrne has 30 years in the industry, owns The Tropical Travelers, and has built a TikTok following approaching 400,000 on resort walkthroughs and breakdowns of which all-inclusive resort suits which traveler.¹³ On camera, she is blunt about the videos being marketing for the job – which is booking – and she tells followers outright that she is not a free source of custom itinerary advice.

Hao Tang posts on Instagram as @besvisor (a mashup of “Best Advisor” and “Bespoke Advisor”) and has been selling luxury travel since 2015. He has about 150,000 Instagram followers, and works as a Virtuoso advisor under Andavo out of Colorado. Maybe one day I’ll meet him in my home state. His bio pitches “Top 0.03% Global Advisor.” He came out of corporate at Ralph Lauren (a Fortune 500 fashion house), not the travel industry. He targets suite-and-villa, first-class-or-private travelers and says he caps his client count. He converts followers to inquiries by posting property content from his own stays

Eli Wagner, the founder of Wagner Bespoke Travel, is another heavy hitter. She was on the trip with me to Rosewood Mandarina, and was gracious enough to sit down for an interview with me that I’ll post in the coming weeks on Substack. She’s a former entertainment lawyer, having worked for Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. During the pandemic, she pivoted to selling travel, and is now one of the top advisors under Coastline. She was named a Travel + Leisure and ILTM (International Luxury Travel Market) Rising Star in 2023, with Hollywood and influencer clients in her PR bio. Her Instagram sits at 29,000 followers, but is growing steadily. Eli likes to say that she’s not a 20 year old in a bikini on Instagram. Her content is largely about building trust and displaying her in-depth knowledge of the luxury hotel space. She conducts interviews that I’ve come to love with hotel owners, like Valentina Desantis of Passalacqua and Grand Hotel Tremezzo. Eli can also now add tech founder to her resume, as she recently built a booking platform to streamline her business.

Alex Barnes, @alextravel.s on Instagram. She has grown her audience to 133,000 followers in a few short months by posting room tours and her advisor hot takes on Instagram. I was sitting in a tech incubator with Alex hosted by Coastline in March and she didn’t have Instagram for her business. It’s incredible she’s built such a following in a few short months, largely through “talking head” videos showing the inside world of advising at the UHNW level. Another recipient of the Travel + Leisure Rising Star Award, Alex has only been under Coastline for a year, and yet has quickly risen to their top advisor spot. Alex’s mother is an advisor, so she’s no stranger to the industry, but she came from tech previously and knows how to leverage it well. She predominantly books luxury hotels, and is also the moderator of the Chubby Travel forum on Reddit.

Substack has its own version of this at a smaller scale, and I am one of many advisors writing here to share what I know about hotels, travel, and the professional planning industry.

I joined Substack because I had been reading The Stanza and The Heart of Travel for a year. , an advisor based in London who writes The Heart of Travel, makes the case that Substack is the more durable model for anyone building an audience today. You own the newsletter, the subscription, and the consultancy, and the audience becomes the direct market for your expertise.¹⁴

Haldeman started as a travel influencer around 2016, built an early following, and became more influential once she began sharing which hotels clients kept raving about.¹⁴ In a recent article, she cites Deloitte research showing 77% of people follow creators to learn something or because they share an interest, and notes that audiences follow a small set of favorites across platforms no matter who has the biggest number.¹⁴ She concludes that authority now comes from knowledge, experience, and a track record rather than follower count. As she puts it, “the reader has become the editor of her own media ecosystem.”¹⁴ I have an interview with Whitney coming next week! I had the pleasure of having lunch with her in London this summer, and was blown away by her poise and expertise.

an art historian who books trips exclusively to Italy, has built a subscriber base of 5.2k on Substack around a newsletter and podcast that works as an ongoing trip-planning consultation for readers.¹⁵

, who has 4k subscribers, is a longtime beauty and wellness writer turned custom travel designer. She writes a weekly newsletter called Trippin’ mixing city guides, hotel openings, and product picks from a rotating cast of guest tastemakers.¹⁶

writes Luxury Travel, Unzipped, which pairs insider intel with downloadable resources, thus working as both a lead magnet and an editorial product.¹⁷

While there are many other travel advisors joining and posting on Substack, these are the ones who have the orange checkmark badge. And I can’t cover everybody. of Skift recently wrote that he is enjoying seeing “advisors lean into good travel writing and editorial work on Substack.” I’ll flatter myself and hope he’s including The Upgrade in that nod.

Several advisors have built entire client bases on Reddit. Now that Reddit feeds most of the AI search engines, a handful of moderators are ranking high in search based on their Reddit posts.

Answering questions or posting on Reddit is a way for an advisor to show their knowledge, which often builds trust with new clients, many of whom have never worked with an advisor before.

However, Reddit can also be a double-edged sword. While an advisor is equally likely to be able to demonstrate trust on Reddit, vetting leads that come from the platform can be time consuming and fraught with false starts. There are an equal number of people with real luxury travel experience and the budget to work with a professional advisor, and keyboard warriors, dreamers with a sparkling water budget and champagne taste, or trolls. The onus falls on the advisors who moderate those forums to keep discussion civil and productive, but can also lead to cries of censorship because no one wants to think their opinions won’t make it into a particular forum.

People are quick to pile on in those forums, and you have no idea if you are being dressed down by an actual luxury traveler or some person in their mother’s basement who has never left the country.

What matters is how you want to travel. Working with a professional advisor should help you arrive to the right recommendation for your own travel style, not the way someone else travels.

As a fascinating WSJ podcast noted last week, the Reddit community is largely allergic to being sold to. While Instagram content floods our feeds with sponsorships and recommendations for products from the mouths of influencers backed by brands, Reddit users want real personal opinions and will sniff out anything that feels too sales-y.

Sarah Lee moderates r/FATtravel and works as an independent affiliate of Departure Lounge. She spent nearly seven years in finance in Hong Kong before switching to travel, and she has built a large book of business. Her stated minimum is $250,000 per trip or a referral from an existing client. Her team also moderates FATsafari and FATcruise. “FAT” comes from the r/fatFIRE world, where fat means big budget. That crowd is mostly tech and finance people with liquidity who research obsessively and trust peer reports over marketing.

Tom Calahan, co-founder of Dorsia Travel, started r/FatTrips in response to r/FATtravel. His argument was that few dependable sources exist online for ultra-luxury travel, and the ones that do are either over-moderated or run by publications with a financial reason to stay polite. He built his name first through a blog called “The Good, The Bad and The Luxurious,” positioned as honest and free of PR fluff. That blog made him a name in hospitality circles before the agency existed. His co-founder Lucie came out of client relations at top London hotels. Their minimums start around $2,500 per person per day, five times our own agency’s $500 floor.

Karen Shelton moderates r/LuxuryTravel and founded My Path Unwinding Travel in Waxhaw, North Carolina, in 2015 after a career in clinical psychology. She runs a second brand, Luxury Travel PhD, and serves as an ASTA chapter president. Her business skews toward escorted tours and premium cruise, with Tauck, Abercrombie & Kent, Adventures by Disney, and AmaWaterways among the partners she leads with. r/LuxuryTravel has 68,000 members and “is an advisor worth it, and who should I use” is a recurring thread there.

Alongside the working advisors on social media, we have the rise of the Aman-splainer, or green screen expert. On TikTok and Instagram, a green screen video puts the creator in the corner of the frame with a photo or clip filling the background while they narrate. In travel, it usually means someone narrating a hotel room tour they did not take or reacting to somebody else’s viral post.

As for the YouTube reviewers who visit properties and earn on views (if you want a passionate defense of Ryan Walker from an Upgrade reader, check the comments on my piece “Who Do You Trust in Travel,”) remember that their incentive is not to find the best hotel for your budget and your family but rather to shock you, hold your attention, and get you to share their video.

Hotels are catching on that they may not want to be film sets. Forbes reported this month that some small ultra-luxury properties are fielding complaints from ultra-wealthy guests who would rather not find themselves serving as background extras in a content shoot.¹⁸

An advisor works like a broker, taking what you want and sourcing the right hotel, tour operator, or destination management company (DMC) to build it. DMCs are the region-specific companies who hire your guides and drivers, and finding ones we trust as advisors takes years. That is why it's fair to ask any advisor how many trips they’ve planned with a particular DMC partner.

Most of the time, we work with DMCs as a layer of protection and expertise as we can’t be experts in every single city, as much as we’d like to be. A DMC also gives a client an in-country contact during their trip on that time zone. Booking through OTAs (such as GetYourGuide or Viator) comes with lower costs, but higher risk in quality as DMCs vet vendors, but OTAs don’t – they operate as marketplace platforms.

Many new advisors don’t know their way around working with DMCs or have as many sales director relationships, but may have more capacity to be high touch for a smaller book of clients. A boutique agency built on years of property visits and DMC (Destination Management Company) relationships may not look any different online from an influencer with a beautiful Instagram feed, or a hotel reviewer with a green screen behind them.

Some of the new names have the credentials to back the following they have built. Others are a marketing engine serving at the top of the funnel, but may feed into a team of actual advisors. Do your homework.

1) How much time per week are they dedicating to creating online content vs working with clients? If that person’s focus is more on creating content, they may have less time to dedicate to working with clients.

2) Are they hosted by a hosted agency, and if so, which? Some of the major names are Coastline, SmartFlyer, Departure Lounge. See my previous articles for my thoughts on Fora.

3) What kind of sales volume are they handling as a company or individual? The advisor may not share this, but it’s a good barometer. If it’s above $1M, they have been doing this for a few years and are doing well. If it’s massively above that, you may just be another drop in the bucket for them.

4) How do they travel personally? How many countries have they been to? Do they stay in the same level of hotels you do?

5) Who will be your point of contact? Will you be working with other people on their team? What happens when they are out of the office or it’s after office hours (another reason to book with a DMC as an advisor is that clients have an in-country emergency contact while they are traveling).

6) How many years have they been an advisor (not an influencer, a professional advisor)?

7) Ask whether they know the sales director at the hotel you are traveling to.

8) Were they an advisors first or a content creator first? What was their pathway to becoming a professional travel advisor?

Expertise is built through personal travel, FAM trips, site visits, conferences, booking clients, and sitting down with sales directors. Social media is a good lead generator and an excellent way to lose a Tuesday.

Whichever way you source your travel knowledge, whether it is Claude or ChatGPT, friends, Instagram, Reddit, and advisor, or TikTok, remember that it doesn’t behoove you to take the trip someone else enjoyed. You should take the trip you will enjoy. And, as to who helps you book it? Do your due diligence before you give someone your business.

🗝️The Lobby Bar

Hospitality updates, promotions, gossip, and the occasional pun

• “Unreasonable Hospitality” made everyone’s job harder, one restaurant worker says. Adam Reiner, who has worked dining rooms for over 20 years including Babbo, Carbone, and The Grill, argues the bestselling hospitality book set a bar no restaurant or worker can hold, and makes the case for the ordinary acts of service that actually keep a dining room running. (Adam Reiner, Bon Appétit)

• Most parents have already pulled their kids out of school for a trip. A new Omio survey found 67% of US parents have done it and 92% would if it saved money, and TravelAge West’s take for advisors is that a marketing calendar built around June and December is missing half the business. (Kelly Rosenfeld, TravelAge West)

• SeaDream is building its first new yacht in 25 years. SeaDream III debuts in July 2029 at 495 feet with room for about 200 guests, keeping the line’s roughly one-to-one crew ratio while opening up destinations the smaller fleet couldn’t reach, starting with a maiden season from Hong Kong to Tokyo. (Curated Travel Magazine)

• Champagne just got its alcohol cap raised for the first time ever. France’s record heat pushed sugar levels so high that regulators took the region’s limit from 13% to 15%, and cut this year’s harvest almost in half, one of the smallest in 30 years. (France 24 and Bloomberg, via AFP)

• The man who owns Belmond, Cheval Blanc, and Bulgari Hotels fell out of the top 10 richest people on Earth. Bernard Arnault’s net worth is down to $143 billion after losing $65 billion this year, the steepest drop on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and it’s the first time since the index launched that all ten spots are American. (Bloomberg)

• No more kiosks for Global Entry, maybe. CBP is trialing camera tech that verifies members while they’re still walking toward the checkpoint, no stop and sometimes no officer interaction at all, now live at six hubs including SFO, JFK, and Boston. (The Points Guy)

• The TSA liquid rule everyone keeps declaring dead is still standing. 3-1-1 hasn’t changed in 2026; what’s changed is the screening tech, with new CT scanners letting some lanes leave liquids packed, which is where the “rules are changing” rumor comes from. (TSA)

• Book your flights now, because they aren’t getting cheaper. Thanksgiving fares are already running 13% above last year and international routes are up 19%, and with airlines leaning harder on dynamic pricing, the old advice to wait for a dip matters less than it used to. (InsideFlyer)

  If you are enjoying The Upgrade and would like additional articles under Master Key, Hotel History, and Travel Dispatch, become a paid subscriber

Sources

1. Travel Market Report, “The Humble Travel Agent Is Making A Comeback, Says NBC News.” https://www.travelmarketreport.com/articles/The-Humble-Travel-Agent-Is-Making-A-Comeback-Says-NBC-News

2. Travel Market Report, “Travel Agent Comeback Continues to Confound the Public,” 2018. https://www.travelmarketreport.com/articles/Travel-Agent-Comeback-Continues-to-Confound-the-Public

3. Rachel Louise Ensign and Chelsey Dulaney, “The Rise of the Unstoppable American Tourist,” The Wall Street Journal. [ADD LINK]

4. Luxury Travel Advisor, “Rising Travel Costs Reshape How Americans Travel,” 2026, citing the Internova Index: North American Traveler Insights. https://www.luxurytraveladvisor.com/your-business/rising-travel-costs-reshape-how-americans-travel-2026

5. 2026 Virtuoso Luxe Report (PDF). https://static.virtuoso.com/division-marketing/PR/2025%20Press%20Releases/2026%20Luxe%20Report_Global_FINAL.pdf

6. Travel Age West, “Luxury Travel Trends: Fall Surge and Future Insights,” 2026, citing Virtuoso fall data. https://www.travelagewest.com/Industry-Insight/Business-Features/luxury-travel-trends-fall-surge-future-insights

7. FTN News recap of The Economist, “Why the World’s Rich Now Spend on Luxury Travel, Not Luxury Goods.” https://ftnnews.com/travel-news/luxury-travel/why-the-worlds-rich-now-spend-on-luxury-travel-not-luxury-goods/ and

8. Air Mail, “Luxury Travel Advisors Are Having a Comeback, This Time Geared Toward Social Media.” https://airmail.news/issues/2026-5-2/first-class-influencers

9. nss G-Club, “Olivia Ferney: the luxury travel agent turning billionaire demands into TikTok fame,” 2026. https://www.nssgclub.com/en/lifestyle/42441/olivia-ferney-luxury-travel-agent-tiktok-fame

10. TIME, 2026 TIME100 Creators profile of Olivia Ferney. https://time.com/collection/time100-creators/2026/olivia-ferney/

11. The New York Times (Style), “She Makes the Impossible Happen for Her Ultrarich Clients,” Aug. 9, 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/09/style/olivia-ferney-top-tier-travel.html Paywalled; details also confirmed via Entrepreneur, “Travel Concierge Booking Insane Trips for the Ultrarich.” https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/travel-concierge-booking-insane-trips-for-the-ultrarich

12. Daniel Scheffler, “They’re Rich, They Travel and They Love to Complain,” Without Maps. https://withoutmaps.substack.com/p/traveling-beyond-the-algorithm

13. TikTok, @thetropicaltravelers profile (Jennifer Byrne); follower count via Urlebird. https://www.tiktok.com/@thetropicaltravelers and https://urlebird.com/user/thetropicaltravelers/

14. Whitney Haldeman, The Heart of Travel.

15. Danielle Oteri’s Italy. https://www.danielleoteri.com/

16. Zoe Schaeffer’s newsletter. https://zoeschaeffer.substack.com

17. Ane Lowe, “Luxury Travel, Unzipped.”

18. Forbes, coverage of ultra-luxury hotels and content creators, August 2026.

22. The Upgrade | Weekly – Airlines Court the Jet Set, Downgrade Miles-Based Business Class Travelers

Travelers -

Hello from a beach at Rosewood Mandarina! This week, I’m checking in from a Coastline trip that happens to fall over my son’s 6th birthday. Cue the endless mom guilt. Happy birthday, Jack.

So far, we’ve conducted a site tour of all the room categories, had a delicious dinner, and massages. My business partner, Kylee Glaser and I are bunking together and hammering out a ton of work, because a travel advisor never truly vacations.

I also had the distinct pleasure of sitting next to Eli Wagner of Wagner Bespoke Travel, who is kind of a celebrity in our world. You can learn more about her in next week’s The Upgrade.

I flew here on a Southwest flight because oddly, there were no United direct flights to PVR this week. This week, I’m ruminating on the state of the US airlines, and bemoaning the recent rise of involuntary downgrades. Read my interview with Katherine of the @TheLuxuryWifeStyle regarding her recent downgrade experience, and what she and I both learned from being relegated to the back of the plane as points bookers.

Scroll to the end for The Lobby Bar: Virtuoso's numbers on fall overtaking summer, the Six Senses CEO taking over The Connaught, TSA letting non-flyers back to the gate, United's three-flight standby, Southwest's first lounges (not in Denver), kids at Michelin two-stars in San Francisco, and people flying across the world to run marathons.

Happy travels,

Anne Marie

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

I am a giant travel and hospitality nerd, which means I get excited when hotels announce earnings and airlines announce new routes.

Over the past year, I’ve been learning from the points gurus who make booking Emirates first class look easy. My Instagram feed is full of points tutorials, and I did score a first class Emirates flight home from Kenya in January. I was happier than I’ve ever been on an airplane.

But something unpleasant keeps coming up in the airline forums I belong to: involuntary downgrades.

This week’s Upgrade covers the new routes from American, United, Delta, and Alaska, what they are telling us about how people are traveling, why involuntary downgrades are happening more often, and what to do if it happens to you.

American’s New Routes

American announced six new routes for summer 2027 last week:

American is also returning seatback screens to its narrow body fleet, adding 40% more premium seats across the network, and opening Flagship Dining to more business class passengers.¹ American, who posted $71 million in Q2 profit against Delta’s $1.6 billion and United’s $805 million,¹ is playing catch-up with Delta and United in Europe.

United

Denver is a United hub, and I’m a Million Miler. This will be the first year in decades I don’t make 1K status, because they moved the goal posts again. That doesn’t make me any less excited about the new routes. United announced ten new international destinations, the largest expansion in its history. Seven of the ten have never had nonstop US service.²

Most of this airlift is on the Airbus A321XLR, a narrowbody with the range to cross the Atlantic and a cabin built around 20 Polaris suites.³ A widebody needs roughly 250 seats a day filled to make a route work; a narrowbody needs a fraction of that. It’s the only reason an airline can justify flying to Ljubljana at all. (Side note: I have zero idea how to pronounce that.)

Delta and Alaska

Delta will fly Austin to Paris starting March 27, the first US airline to run long-haul service out of that airport, and it’s adding a second daily Newark to LAX flight.⁴

Alaska will fly Seattle nonstop to Paris and Athens starting May 2027 on 787s with lie-flat business class suites, making it the first oneworld carrier flying nonstop between the West Coast and Paris.⁵

Why these routes, and why now

I’ve said this before. The airlines are chasing the top half of the K-shaped economy, and these route maps prove it.

In Q2 2026, revenue from Delta’s premium cabins passed main cabin revenue for the first time in company history, $6.92 billion against $6.85 billion.⁶ United is retrofitting its 787 fleet to match.⁷

After a year of disruption from the Middle East conflict, luxury travelers want straight shots that cut the odds of a missed connection or lost bags. Newark to Ibiza or Valencia skips Madrid, Denver gets a nonstop to Paris (wahoo!!), Philadelphia gets Vienna, and Seattle families can reach Paris and Athens without touching the East Coast.¹ ² ⁵ ⁸

Last October, I was settled into my business class seat on a United flight to Dublin. I’d taken my sleeping medicine for the red-eye, stowed my carry-on, and was ready to go. Then a United employee woke me up to say I was being downgraded to a middle economy seat because they needed mine. I had bought that seat eight months earlier with miles and money, because I was teaching the morning I landed and needed the sleep a lie-flat seat gives you.

I pushed back and asked why me. I suspected a deadheading pilot was getting my seat. They wouldn’t confirm it, but I saw him hovering near the front of the aircraft, waiting for me to leave. A later flight meant missing my lecture. Nobody had been offered a voucher to give up a seat voluntarily; they went straight to me, apparently because I was the only one who had booked with miles.

United initially denied my compensation request by email. I took to the United subreddit to vent and was told to file a Department of Transportation complaint, which airlines have to answer within a set window. I then got back the miles I’d used for the upgrade plus $500 “as a goodwill gesture.” At least it was something.

Last week, the same thing happened to of The Luxury Wife Style, an influencer I follow who travels with kids about the same ages as mine. Her whole family except her 3-year-old was downgraded from Miami to Milan on American. They had also booked with points.

So I went digging to find out why this was happening more. First, Katherine’s side of it.

1. Anne Marie: How long have you been utilizing points for business class flights? How did you learn the system of points upgrades?

Katherine: I’ve been using points for 12+ years. One of my best friends was actually a pilot for American Airlines when I was in college, so she would let me use her buddy passes and I could sometimes fly First Class Miami to Europe for around $200. Once you get used to flying that way, there’s really no going back 😂 so I had to figure out how to do it without paying the crazy cash prices.

I basically taught myself. I’m super analytical and will research like crazy, so I just spent a ton of time learning how the different programs worked, how points transferred and where the best redemptions were.

There are so many more resources now teaching people how to use points, which is amazing, but I still think if you’ve never actually booked an airline ticket with points before, the whole system can feel incredibly confusing.

2. How frequently do you fly business class with your family, and how frequently do you use points for those tickets?

Katherine: My family of four (and our nanny when she travels with us) has only flown Business Class internationally (until last month 😆). We usually take anywhere from three to five international trips a year and we’ve only paid cash for Business Class tickets twice.

Finding four, or sometimes five, Business Class award seats together at what I consider a good points value can be extremely challenging, but at this point it’s almost like a game to me. I actually enjoy figuring out how to make it work.

Another huge reason I love booking with points is the flexibility. My husband’s job can be unpredictable and we’ve had trips where a client is coming into town or a deal is closing and suddenly we have to change plans a few days before we leave. I’m also the person who always buys travel insurance for that reason.

With many award tickets, the cancellation or change terms can be much more forgiving than buying an expensive cash Business Class fare, sometimes free or with a relatively small cancellation fee. That flexibility is incredibly valuable to me.

3. What most shocked you in your recent downgrade experience?

Katherine: Honestly, being downgraded at all was shocking because it had never happened to us and had never really crossed my mind as something that could happen.

We had checked in normally, gone to the Flagship Lounge in Miami and everything looked completely fine. It wasn’t until we were literally scanning our boarding passes and showing our passports to board the plane that we found out three of the four of us had been moved from Business Class to Premium Economy.

One of the strangest parts was that my three-year-old was the only one who had kept her Business Class seat. I was surprised there wasn’t some type of safeguard in the system recognizing that a three-year-old obviously couldn’t sit in a separate cabin from her parents.

A lot of people have commented, “Well obviously you or your husband could just switch seats with her,” which is true in our situation. But what if I had been traveling alone with my three-year-old and the system had kept her in Business Class while moving me to another cabin? It made me realize how odd the whole process was.

The compensation was another shock. We were offered a $600 travel voucher toward future American Airlines travel, while the cash price difference between Business Class and Premium Economy on our itinerary was around $8,500.

But probably the most frustrating part has been what happened afterward. I’ve submitted multiple complaints and still don’t feel like I’ve received a meaningful explanation of exactly why we were selected or a resolution that reflects what happened.

4. What did you learn from the experience?

Katherine: I learned a lot!

One of the biggest things was understanding how much passenger protections can vary depending on which airline you’re flying and where the flight originates.

For example, when you’re flying from the US to Europe, EU261 protections generally apply if you’re flying on an European carrier. On the return, when your flight departs from the EU, those protections apply regardless of whether the airline is American or European.

That was something I understood vaguely before, but I definitely understand it much better now.

I also learned that even after more than a decade of successfully booking award travel, there are still operational things completely outside of your control. I used to book a Business Class award seat and essentially consider the job done. Now I realize the cabin you booked isn’t necessarily guaranteed until you’re actually sitting in that seat and the airline door has closed.

It hasn’t changed my mind about using points because the value we’ve gotten from them over the years has been incredible, but it has made me much more aware of downgrade policies and passenger protections when deciding which airline to book.

5. Tell me more about how your family travels. How many international trips do you take a year? Do you use a travel advisor?

Lately we’ve been trying to take one to two international ski trips and one to two international summer trips each year, although sometimes it ends up being more depending on the year.

Until recently, I would say our European summer trips looked pretty similar to what a lot of Americans picture when they think of a Euro summer: Lake Como, where we’ve probably been a dozen times and actually got married in 2017, Southern Italy, the South of France, Paris, Tuscany, Provence, etc.

This past summer we spent time in both the Austrian and French Alps and they ended up being two of our favorite family trips we’ve ever taken. It completely changed the way I’m thinking about our future travel.

Now I’m almost more interested in finding the destinations people aren’t automatically thinking of, especially when traveling with kids. Sometimes the places that aren’t at the top of everyone’s summer list end up having incredible hotels, amazing family activities and much better value.

And yes, I always book our hotels through a travel advisor unless the hotel or destination is hosting us. There are just too many perks not to. Depending on the hotel that can mean breakfast, resort credits, upgrades, early check-in, late checkout and other benefits.

Recently I’ve started looking at what our hotel breakfasts actually would have cost if we hadn’t had them included through our advisor and some of them are around $300 for our family. I definitely do not want to be paying for the $300 breakfast 😂

I also think a good travel advisor becomes even more valuable when you’re traveling with kids because there are so many little details that matter, from room configurations and connecting rooms to transfers and knowing which properties actually work well for families.

The renewed Middle East conflict pushed jet fuel prices up sharply starting in late February, and in response, the airlines pulled capacity to protect margins. United cut about 5% of its scheduled flights this spring, concentrated on red-eyes. CEO Scott Kirby said that if fuel costs held through year end, they would add $11 billion a year to United’s bill, more than the airline made in its best year on record.⁹ Airlines worldwide pulled roughly 13,000 flights and 2 million seats from their May schedules alone.¹⁰

Fewer flights means fewer open seats to reposition crews, or “deadheading.” Every major pilot union has bargained language requiring the airline to seat a deadheading pilot in the highest cabin on long-haul segments.¹¹ I don’t fault pilots for negotiating this, because let’s face it, no one wants a tired pilot in the cockpit. American’s version came out of a $9.6 billion agreement with the Allied Pilots Association, ratified this year to bring American in line with United and Delta.¹²

When a long-haul premium cabin is full and a pilot needs the seat, the airline bumps a business class passenger.

Two years ago, my husband and I were flying home from Portugal when a gate agent offered us $2,500 each to downgrade to economy. Being a wuss, I declined. My husband took the deal, and I spent the flight next to a pilot.

That is how deadheading bumps used to work: throw money at the business class cabin and keep raising it until someone bites. That system has seemingly been replaced by an algorithmic ranking that puts points bookers on the chopping block first. Katherine’s family got a $600 voucher.¹³

American has said outright that it won’t disclose its downgrade priority rules, even in response to DOT complaints.¹⁴ A separate DOT complaint filed this year argues that American publishes specific procedures for oversales, but nothing about who gets bumped in a downgrade.¹⁵

How does is this ranking determined? As I often say in The Upgrade, follow the money.

Delta, United, and American all pay frontline employees a monthly bonus when the airline hits on-time departure targets. Station managers are judged on D0 (departure exactly on time, zero minutes late), so they push gate agents to close the door at T-10 no matter what. That rewards bumping someone over delaying a flight to run an auction for volunteers.

Document everything. When you book, screenshot the miles you paid, anything spent to upgrade, and the cash price of both economy and business class that day. If you’re downgraded, screenshot the current cash and miles prices for both cabins again, if you still can.

1. Get the gate agent’s name and the time. American won’t release its downgrade records voluntarily, so this may be your only record of who made the call.¹⁴

2. Don’t sign anything at the gate. Some airlines present a voucher as a signed settlement, and signing can waive your right to a cash refund later.¹⁷

3. Keep your original receipt and the boarding pass for the downgraded seat. On an award ticket, ask specifically for the mileage differential refund and the math behind it. Airlines owe it, even though a voucher is what they’ll offer first.

4. Ask whether premium is oversold or a crew reassignment caused the move. Write down who told you and when.

5. If the compensation doesn’t come close to the fare difference, file a DOT complaint at airconsumer.dot.gov/escomplaint/ConsumerForm.jsp.

Europe is more protective than the US, by a lot. On a flight covered by EU261 or UK261, meaning it departs the EU or UK, or arrives there on an EU or UK carrier, downgrade compensation is set by distance rather than by what you paid: 30% of the ticket price for flights up to 1,500km, 50% for flights within Europe over 1,500km and other flights up to 3,500km, and 75% for anything longer.¹⁸ ¹⁹ Airlines must pay within seven days, and the right only applies if you didn’t consent to the move.¹⁹ Again, don’t sign anything as that counts as consent. This is separate from the standard EU261 delay or cancellation payment, and a pure downgrade with no delay doesn’t trigger both.²⁰

US law works differently. DOT guidance says an involuntary downgrade is a “significant change,” and if you continue traveling, the airline must refund the difference between your original fare and the downgraded fare.²¹ If you decline to travel, you’re owed a full refund instead.²¹ However, the rule doesn’t define which downgraded fare counts, and the airlines have taken advantage of that language.

Paying in miles doesn’t change the underlying right. You’re still owed the fare difference, refunded in whatever currency you paid.²² ²³ On US carriers, that usually means miles, so use your documentation and show the airline how many miles the original award cost and how many the downgraded cabin would have cost.

United’s contract of carriage has no downgrade formula. It refunds a difference it calculates internally, usually against a same-day walk-up economy fare rather than a cheap advance-purchase fare, so the refund is often much smaller than you expect. Then, as with my Dublin flight, it adds a “goodwill gesture” in miles, a travel certificate, or cash. Goodwill means United admits zero fault but wants to throw you a bone.

American refunds a flat 40% of the ticketed fare on the downgraded segment. Two researchers filed a DOT complaint this month arguing that number badly understates what passengers lose. On one route they priced, the lowest business fare was $10,644 against a $949 coach fare, a gap nowhere near 40%.¹⁶ American has also started converting complimentary elite upgrades on select routes from business class to premium economy, which is a devaluation.²⁴

The good news is that airlines are adding more direct routes to secondary European cities and vacation hot spots for the luxury jet set, which means less risk of missing your connection.

The downside for those who book with miles is that these are all on narrow body aircraft, which have fewer premium seats and so less margin for error if a pilot needs to deadhead in a business class seat. Be careful about where you use your miles for a business class upgrade on these new routes.

As airlines pull flights in response to fuel costs driven by the Middle East conflict, there are fewer seats to absorb overflow, fewer flights to reposition captains, and a downgrade hierarchy that punishes travelers who booked with points. Your premium seat costs more than ever, and it still isn’t guaranteed.

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

• Fall is the new summer, welcome to the “Fallcation.” Virtuoso’s fall bookings are up 59% over last year and sales are up 69%, with September, October, and November each running 54% to 77% ahead, as travelers trade July crowds and heat waves in Italy and France for shoulder season. If you have been thinking about Europe in October, so has everyone else, so book it now. These people must not have elementary school children. (Morning Brew)

• The man who built Six Senses now runs The Connaught. Constellation Hotels named Neil Jacobs CEO of a new management company for its portfolio, which includes The Connaught, The Emory, and The Berkeley in London, Hackwood Park in Hampshire, a Paris hotel on the way in Saint-Germain, and a project in Marrakech. Jacobs took Six Senses from 8 properties to 27 with 30 more in the pipeline, so expect a wellness push in some very old buildings. (PR Newswire)

• You can walk your friends to the gate again. Gateside by TSA PreCheck lets non-ticketed PreCheck members apply one to three days ahead for a free, one-day pass through security at 13 airports, including LAX, DFW, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Salt Lake City. Denver is not on the list yet, but Pittsburgh has offered a version of this since 2017 and about 20 airports have followed, so it is coming. (The Aviation Circle)

• United will let you stand by for three flights at once. When a delay gets you rebooked onto a later flight, the United app now lets you join the standby list for up to three earlier departures, watches all three, and texts you when a seat opens while your later flight stays confirmed. Before this you picked one flight and refreshed the app yourself, which every one of us has done from a bar at Gate B41. (The Aviation Circle)

• Southwest is building lounges. The airline that spent 50 years without assigned seats will open its first four lounges in late 2027 in Austin, Baltimore, Honolulu, and Nashville, with at least seven more planned and access tied to a new premium Chase card launching next year. Denver did not make the first round, whatever you may have read elsewhere. (AFAR, Southwest Airlines)

• Six-year-olds are eating at Michelin two-stars in San Francisco. The San Francisco Standard talked to chefs and GMs around the city and found kids becoming regulars at the most expensive tables, including at Sons & Daughters, where chef-owner Harrison Cheney brings his own daughter. We see the same thing on our trips: families who want the tasting menu with the kids at the table instead of a sitter in the hotel room. My Bougie Bunnies love caviar. (The San Francisco Standard)

• People are flying 26 hours to run 26 miles. Vogue calls it “sweat-jetting,” Tripadvisor ranked it the top travel trend of 2026, and Accor reports a 50% jump in interest in workout vacations. The examples run from Langham’s Pink Run in 10 cities to a 37-mile ultramarathon through the Icelandic highlands out of Highland Base Kerlingarfjöll, which sounds like the least relaxing hotel stay on record. (Vogue)

  Upgrade Your Membership to The Upgrade to receive Master Key, Hotel History, and Travel Dispatch so my kids can eat more caviar.

Sources

1 Meghna Maharishi, “American Joins the Race to Add New European Routes and Premium Upgrades,” Skift, August 27, 2026.

2 Live and Let’s Fly, “United Airlines Announces Its Biggest International Expansion Ever,” August 2026.

3 “United’s largest-ever expansion: 10 new cities for 2027,” From the Tray Table, August 2026.

4 Delta News Hub, “Ooh la la, Austin: Delta launches first-ever service to Paris,” 2026.

5 Live and Let’s Fly, “Alaska Airlines Adds 787-9 Flights To Athens And Paris,” August 2026.

6 CNBC, Delta Air Lines Q2 2026 earnings coverage, July 2026.

7 CNN, airline seat reconfiguration explainer, 2026.

8 Travel And Tour World, “US and Europe Set for Major 2027 Flight Expansion as United, American, Delta and Alaska Add New Routes,” August 2026.

9 Business Insider, coverage of United’s spring 2026 flight cuts and CEO Scott Kirby’s statement on fuel costs, March 2026.

10 Air Cargo Week, “How Fuel Prices Are Affecting Aviation in 2026,” citing Cirium data on May 2026 global schedule cuts.

11 Aviation A2Z, coverage of pilot union contract terms for deadheading crew premium cabin seating, June 2026.

12 Simple Flying, coverage of American’s labor agreement with the Allied Pilots Association, June 2026.

13 InsideFlyer, “Family downgraded from business class for pilots,” August 2026.

14 Aviation A2Z, “American Airlines Passenger Downgraded After Business Class Seats Given to Pilots,” August 23, 2026.

15 TheStreet, “American Airlines policy change could cost flyers big,” June 2, 2026.

16 Aviation A2Z, “Pay $10,644, Get Coach: American Airlines’ Downgrade Refund Sparks DOT Complaint,” August 28, 2026.

17 Altitudes Magazine, “Airlines Owe You More Than a Voucher: How to Claim Cash Compensation After a Flight Cancellation,” April 6, 2026.

18 SkyRefund, “Your Air Passenger Rights Under Regulation EU261,” 2026.

19 AirTeo, “What Is Flight Downgrade Compensation in Europe?” February 2026.

20 ClaimEU261, “Downgrade Compensation,” 2026.

21 US Department of Transportation, Aviation Consumer Protection, “Refunds,” transportation.gov.

22 One Mile at a Time, “Downgraded On A Flight: What Are Your Rights?”

23 AirAdvisor, “Involuntary Downgrade Compensation: Understanding Your Rights.”

24 Live and Let’s Fly, coverage of American’s Premium Economy upgrade policy change on select domestic routes, effective August 25, 2026.

21. The Upgrade | Weekly – A Fora Follow Up

Travelers,

This morning finally felt like autumn in Denver, with a crisp quality to the air and last night’s rain lingering on our patio furniture. This is my favorite time of year, when the Aspens in the mountains are about to turn all shades of gold for a brief two weeks. With summer behind us, my bookings slow to a more normal pace, as clients start thinking about spring break and next year’s summer plans rather than two months from now. Kids are back in school, I’m home for a few weeks (until I head to Umbria to run a poetry retreat and Aspen to cohost a mahjong retreat).

I want to take a quick moment to celebrate 1,000 of you subscribing to The Upgrade.

I started this little newsletter 21 weeks ago as a way to honor my dad, who wrote a weekly newsletter about the hospitality industry for 40 years. He passed away four years ago, and while I haven’t been able to locate the full archives of his articles, I’ve found a few and have been sharing them occasionally under Hotel History for paid subscribers. I never imagined that my Substack would grow to this point, and I’m constantly amazed by the fact that you all want to read my hospitality hot takes every week. This is to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading my work.

This week’s newsletter is a follow up to my July 21 article about Fora. It was my most widely read and commented on piece, which took me by surprise. One of the Fora executives reached out to me and agreed to spend some time with me at Virtuoso Travel Week to address my concerns I voiced as a legacy travel advisor in the industry.

In the Lobby Bar, we have rumors that Rosewood may be selling its London flagship, Paris trimmed its Palace list (see who got cut!), Hilton is bringing LXR to Costa Rica, Four Seasons named a new Serengeti GM, Italy's luxury pipeline is stacking up for 2027, Bulgari's second UAE property has a shape, and hotel tech darling Mews just picked up a banking license, does that mean an IPO is around the corner?

Happy travels!

Anne Marie

Yours truly, with my daughter, loving autumn

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

Fora Responds to my Article

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for The Upgrade | Weekly about my take on Fora following their unicorn status and $1B valuation.¹

My article got some traction and was shared by several people in the industry. It eventually made its way to Paul Tumpowsky, CRO of Fora. Paul reached out to me and offered to provide his perspective on the company, responding to some of the concerns I raised in the article. We sat down at Sadelle’s during Virtuoso Travel Week, (which sparked a flurry of text messages the next morning asking if Alex Barnes, who joined me for the discussion, and I were moving from Coastline to Fora. Answer – we don’t have any plans to move our host affiliation, settle down ya’ll).

A quick recap –

Firstly, who am I and why am I weighing in on this topic? As a member of the professional luxury travel community for 18 years, growing up in a family that owned hotels for 3 generations, sitting on the advisory board of a venture capital firm, and having created a travel tech platform called Itinerate (a two-sided marketplace connecting DMCs and advisors that we launched in 2020 and pulled the platform shortly after due to the pandemic’s impact on travel), I live and breathe the travel and hospitality industry.

The result has been a handful of different platforms that solve one or two aspects of our job well, and fail at others. Fora seems to be the one technology platform that solves multiple problems smoothly. Leading to the question, are they a tech company or a host agency?

My pitch deck for Itinerate in 2018 included a lot of the bets that Fora has proven right – that travel advisors would make a comeback as people sought flexible careers and influencers looked to monetize their follower bases. Needless to say, Fora has captured my interest since launch, both due to their technology and astronomical growth. However, like all new entrants and disrupters in an established industry, Fora has caused some waves.

I’ve sat through enough travel industry leadership meetings over the years where senior executives bemoan that the travel advisor role was previously on the path to extinction. They worried that young people were not attracted to the job, and senior advisors were retiring with no one to take over their books of business.

Flash forward to 2026, where being a travel advisor is number 18 on LinkedIn’s Jobs on the Rise for 2026,² largely because of Fora. The company has removed a lot of the traditional barriers to entry for new advisors, and made it possible for just about anyone to access an IATA number in order to receive commission from hotels, (with some vetting, of course).³ This has led to an influx of new travel advisors learning the ropes and booking travel.

As with any company that grows quickly, there have been some questions about what that growth and scale mean for the rest of the industry.

• Training and mentorship gaps: I noted that the path to professional advising is slow by design, essentially an apprenticeship. Fora gives people access to information and an IATA number immediately. Their training also seemed to me to be largely self-driven with access to videos etc, but I wondered if they had any kind of mentorship program to hold the hands of new advisors. I also wanted to know about the gates in place to help ease this transition for new advisors. I expressed my concern with the fact that the majority of their advisors are new to travel sales,⁴ and was curious how they ensured consumer protection and service quality.

• Strain on the supplier side: With their rapid growth bringing scores of new advisors to the industry, I expressed concern that the volume of inexperienced advisors might create more errors, more escalations, and more work for hotel sales teams.

• Self-booking and hobbyists: I also expressed concern that I, and other advisors, have seen a handful of my clients become Fora agents themselves, not as a professional career path, but so they could self-book their own trips and essentially receive a commission back for their own travel. I don’t want to see widespread cannibalization of our client base, so I wanted to understand what protections they have in place to prevent people from just becoming a “user” vs an “advisor.” Should a user have the same access as an advisor?

• AI vulnerability. Putting on my VC investor hat, I noted that their business looks more exposed to replacement by AI platforms than traditional host agencies, at least at the lower end. I was curious if they are going to try to go direct-to-consumer with their AI planning tool, or license their technology to other host agencies, because frankly, it’s the best in the industry and we could all benefit from it.

Paul was kind enough to address these questions, and provide his perspective on how Fora is tackling such concerns.

Anne Marie: Can you please share your background and what led you to Fora?

Paul: In 2014 I founded Skylark, which was the first luxury OTA with full-service support from advisors. Prior to COVID, I had known Evan Frank, one of Fora’s co-founders, and we had tried to work together in his previous roles. Henley, one of the other Fora co-founders, and I have sat on several industry advisory boards together. In 2024, after I had stepped down as CEO of Skylark, the Fora founders approached me about joining as Chief Revenue Officer, and I was happy to accept. At Skylark, we had a few independent contractor advisors who worked with us. However, I underestimated the importance of community in that offering. By the time I joined Fora, it was very clear that the advisor community would be one of the key pillars to the success of this business.

Anne Marie: Tell me more about the mentorship and training opportunities for new Fora advisors - you mentioned in our conversation that once a Fora advisor has established a strong booking record, they have access to these opportunities outside of the self-guided training available. What does that threshold look like?

Paul: Fora offers new advisors a mix of structured and on-demand training so they can ramp up on their own schedule. The training starts with the fundamentals, and then opens up to a whole world of destination, supplier, and niche-specific training. Fora currently offers 700+ hours of on-demand training content and 28+ hours of live training per week.

As advisors progress in their advisor journey and earn higher status (e.g., Certified, Advanced, Pro, X), they are also able to access dedicated programming alongside their peer group, exclusive in-person events (e.g., Intensives, Roadshows, and Momentum, a two-day, regional, in-person sales enablement program for advisors focused on growing their businesses.

It builds on the Sales Accelerator and combines status-based tracks, practical workshops, peer learning, and business-growth strategy), and priority access to industry conferences and events.

When new joiners finish the intro course, they join a New Advisor Cohort — one week of live coaching with an HQ instructor, then monthly sessions with the same peer group going forward.

Fora X is Fora’s invite-only agency-within-an-agency for elite advisors who’ve built standout travel businesses.

Fora X advisors get access to retreats, business coaching (1:1, business reviews, growth plans, more focused team calls/specialist support, etc.

More on Fora’s tiered system can be found here. These offerings evolve as an advisor’s business grows to meet the needs of that level.

With our “Path to Pro” and “Path to X” programs, Fora has small coaching programs for high-momentum advisors. Fora also generates and shares business analyses for every Fora X Advisor, that analyzes the Advisor’s goals versus production to give an clear assessment of where the advisor is relative to their goals and their peers, and concrete, tactical, actionable take-aways that the Advisor can execute upon.

Anne Marie: Some of the concern I raised was that there are people who are signing up for Fora to just book their own trips at a discount, essentially a “user” of the platform and not an advisor. You noted there are some safeguards around using the platform just for self-booking purposes, can you expand on that and how that is monitored and enforced?

Paul: Fora was built to create opportunities for people to build and scale travel businesses. While we do allow advisors to book their own travel, our Self Booking policy is there to ensure advisors are building a client-based advisory business.

Because Fora has historically attracted many new-to-the-business advisors, we have intentionally restricted them from overwhelming hotel sales teams with agency-rate requests—something we have always considered inappropriate.

At the same time, we recognize that firsthand experience with a product can meaningfully improve an advisor’s ability to sell it as they build their business. Since Fora advisors who have not yet reached the Pro level do not qualify for FAMs, these stays are generally booked through the Fora platform as full-price self-bookings rather than through agency rates.

That said, Fora does not allow advisors to book travel primarily for themselves. All advisors must maintain a legitimate client practice. Our Trust and Safety team monitors advisors whose booking activity is predominantly personal, and if that pattern continues over time, the advisor is first warned and ultimately removed from the platform.

Anne Marie: Another concern in the industry is that Fora will go direct-to-consumer with their AI planning tool, essentially eliminating the need for clients to book with a professional advisor at the mid-level (I believe a luxury client will lean more towards human interaction). How do you see Fora’s AI as supporting the advisor world rather replacing it?

Paul: Built directly into the advisor workflow, Via is our embedded AI assistant, currently in beta with Fora’s top advisors. Via helps advisors work efficiently, from researching hotels and destinations, managing CRM tasks, and formatting itineraries—all from one conversational interface within the portal. This new ecosystem for advisors is coupled with AI training for specifically for our advisors.

Fora’s mission from day one has been to modernize this career path - creating the tools, tech, training, and community advisors need to be the best at their jobs. Now with AI, the thesis is not “AI replaces the advisor.” It is “AI makes the human better, faster, and more efficient, and the network gets smarter as it grows.” And - we’re already seeing it play out. Fora advisors who are daily AI users are booking more trips, more often, compared to non-AI users.

Anne Marie: How do you serve both luxury-level advisors and entry-level hobbyists equally?

Paul: Fora is the technology platform powering a new generation of travel entrepreneurs. 97% of Fora advisors are new to the profession, and Fora advisors include ex-doctors, lawyers, stay-at-home moms, retirees, and more. Fora has advisors who book over $10M a year alongside advisors who work part-time and make $60K a year. The career path itself is having a moment, independent of Fora. In 2025, LinkedIn ranked travel advisor as the 5th fastest-growing job in the US.

Anne Marie: Tell me more about the gates that open at each tier to ensure that new advisors who don’t have an established booking record aren’t immediately accessing things like Virtuoso benefits and advisor rates?

Paul: Industry access expands alongside an advisor’s demonstrated experience and engagement. As advisors progress to Fora Pro and Fora X, they unlock access to benefits such as Virtuoso accounts and conferences, TA rates, and many partner logins. These tiers recognize advisors who have completed required training, achieved booking milestones, served a minimum number of clients, and received a minimum number of client reviews. This helps ensure industry benefits are extended to advisors who are actively building their businesses.

Anne Marie: What is next for Fora? What are you most excited about on the horizon with this new round of funding?

Paul: Fora is focused on Via, growing into new markets, expanding our offering in categories like cruise and flights, and continuing to hire across teams to better support our advisors growing their businesses.

If you look at the overall travel market, luxury travel advisors make up 5-7% of hotel bookings overall. It’s just a huge amount of room we all have to grow to gain ground on these other channels.

Anne Marie: You spoke about how host agencies should not view each other as the competition, but rather the credit companies as the direct competitors for our client base. How would you like to see host agencies work together with Fora in the future as a supportive and united group to ensure that professional advisors are the preferred booking channel for travelers vs a credit card portal?

Paul: If you look at the overall luxury leisure travel market, the travel advisor has still only penetrated between 20% and 30% of this market. The rest of the market includes big players with big balance sheets, like major OTAs and credit card companies.

As I see the industry developing with more and more technology to support advisors, I believe the best advisors will continue to thrive by creating highly customized advice, building trust, and tailoring vacations to their clients’ tastes and needs. An advisor’s curation, judgment, and insider information continues to be a big advantage for clients over credit card companies and certainly the OTAs.

There are a lot of travel industry professionals and fellow advisors who read The Upgrade. Knowing there were probably a few Fora advisors in that group, I asked to hear from Substack readers what their experience with Fora as an advisor had been like.

Several advisors shared their own reasons for joining the platform.

Tori Carter - https://www.foratravel.com/advisor/tori-carter

“As a Fora agent, I found it really interesting to see this viewpoint on the agency from the outside. I’m about a year into my travel advising career and hit “Pro” status with Fora after about 10 months. Currently working on my continued education to maintain Pro status and “unlock” additional resources for my clients.

I’d describe Fora as a “choose your own adventure” platform as you noted: if you want to push toward becoming a top-level advisor, the resources and community are there to support that. If you’d rather keep it as a side hustle and just break even on the subscription, that’s an option too.

I’ve found great mentorship during my time here, though it looks different from a traditional host agency. I meet with my local city chapter a few times a month for co-working sessions, happy hours, and site visits, and I’ve connected with local mentors that way. I’ve also applied for and been accepted into a few in-agency cohorts, where you’re paired with a top-producing advisor for several weeks for lessons and 1:1 mentorship time.

For the cohorts, you will get an email when you are selected to apply! I am unsure how they select, but my first cohort was when I was an “advanced” advisor (the second level you can achieve after getting accepted into Fora) and was invited to join a cohort that would focus on growing advanced advisor’s business to the next level. The application questions asked me about my current clientele, who my ideal client would be, the type of trips I want to book, my goals for my business in the next year, how I like to learn and what I want to learn from my mentor! From there you find out if you got accepted and get matched with your mentor and group.”

Emily Johnson – Elevate Wellness

“I joined Fora early, when there were only a few hundred advisors globally, because it positioned itself as a modern agency and genuinely delivered on that promise. The technology was and remains excellent, the training was included rather than sold as another layer, and the accessible entry point allowed me to begin while I was still working full-time and hustling in hotels. For someone with decades of hospitality experience but a new travel-advisor business, that mattered.

The issue is what happened next. At 15,000++ advisors now, many with limited personal travel or industry experience, the Fora name no longer signals the same level of expertise it once did. In my view, that growth has diluted the brand and made the individual advisor’s niche, experience and judgment far more important than the host affiliation. Included training is valuable, but doesn’t replace being an experienced traveler or hospitality professional.

From the hotel side, however, I still understand the commercial logic. Paying a 10% commission to an advisor who knows the client and can generate well-matched, repeat business is generally more attractive than paying 20% to 25% to an OTA with little relationship or context. The industry created those distribution economics; Fora simply made the game more accessible. Standards and education matter enormously, but perhaps this is still a case of don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

Aliza Bodzin - The Whole Journey

“This is a great read! Your point about Fora being a tech company that operates as a travel agency is my view as someone who uses the software and connections to enhance some of my pet travel and relocation consultancy’s client experiences. Also, another reason I signed up for Fora to earn a little extra income for bookings I was already helping my friends and family with.

Hot take but based on my conversations & seeing discussions in Fora advisor groups, some people don’t fully understand that Fora is more like a SaaS company than a host agency...”

Bridget Christine - About Little Things

“When I first was accepted to the Fora community, I let it sit dormant for a year. I had established my travel consultancy with an almost anti-agency mindset... I felt I could make more thoughtful recommendations with a focus on the traveler and promoting meaningful, purpose driven travel, rather than commissions driving my advice (I focus primarily on Italian travel). I spent years building my own relationships (with guides, hotels, experience providers, drivers.. etc) with self-funded research trips.

I ended up joining for the credentials, training and research capabilities. I’ve always been curious about the brand perception. I hit “Pro” status within 2 months of putting effort into the Fora-backed side of my business and, for me, I noticed an immediate difference in the caliber of advisor talent and elevated resources at the Pro-network level. As I move towards taking my business full-full time, I really appreciate that I have my affiliation to Fora for the technology and better monetizing my work, but/and I am interested to see how the brand continues to evolve post series D.

By the way, I DID get rejected on my first application, and I honestly think this is a good practice to ensure those who are re-applying are serious.”

My husband always asks me, “Ok, so what?” after reading my article drafts. He reminds me to add a “TLDR” (too long, didn’t read) to each of my pieces.

I will say that I feel better about knowing more about Fora’s restrictions around self-booking. I’d be interested to see how many violations it takes before an advisor is kicked off the platform for primarily self booking, and will probably follow up with my three clients who decided to become Fora advisors for their own travel in a year or so to see if they are still using the platform that way. To prevent this kind of loss of client, the onus is placed on us as advisors to really step up our game and make sure that we are providing luxury service above and beyond just being a booking portal with access to Virtuoso amenities and preferred partner benefits.

I do think Fora’s mentorship opportunities are better than I had believed, and it sounds like there are opportunities for new advisors to receive support and training, should they wish to engage those services. It does fall on the new advisor to take advantage of those programs, which is a difference between an affiliate agency like ours where we require new Sub ICs to complete training before they are allowed to book anything.

From the sales director side, the sales directors I spoke to during Virtuoso Travel Week were largely happy with the volume that Fora advisors have been sending their way, and they’ve learned to manage the increase in requests. As to the conversion rate of those requests, that’s a question no one was willing to answer, or didn’t have enough data to weigh in on.

Do I think we will see some regulation from the consortium side and the government side? Yes, I believe we will see a push for more official licensing for travel advisors beyond an IATA number, which used to serve as a stand-in for an industry license. It will take a few high dollar mistakes, or perhaps we will see Errors and Omissions policies become more expensive to obtain for host agencies.

On the consortium side, Virtuoso is adjusting.

Virtuoso restructured its membership categories in March 2025, its first overhaul in nearly twenty years,⁵ adding regional, multi-region, and global membership tiers, and created an “Associate Agency” category aimed at large independent contractors and entrepreneurs.⁵ Cheryl Cheney-Bunker, VP of Member Relations, credited three forces for making this change: globalization across the partner and member base, the rise of the independent advisor as an entrepreneur building a larger book of business, and the need to support those businesses through a shifting landscape.⁵

Some framed this as closing “back door entry” into the network, while keeping quality standards intact.⁵ What does “back door entry” entail? I believe they are referring to host agencies providing access to Virtuoso rates and benefits en masse. At Fora, Pro level advisors and above (a portion of the 15,000 advisors among its ranks)⁴ can access Virtuoso rates, amenities, and preferred status through Fora as their host agency.⁷

The Associate Agency category means a high-producing independent advisor can now hold membership directly, which puts their production and their standards compliance in front of Virtuoso.⁵ I don’t think that Virtuoso has necessarily closed that “back door” so much as created a door alongside it for independent contractors to more easily join Virtuoso on their own, without a host agency. The Associate Agency category gives high-producing independents Virtuoso membership tied to what they sell rather than to what host agency they book under.

At the 2025 Virtuoso Travel Week (VTW) opening session in August, Matthew Upchurch still called the problem unsolved.⁶ He asked how you determine quality when advisors sit at different career stages, and he framed it in numbers that anyone who manages a team will recognize: “Is there a difference between an advisor that’s stuck at $50,000 in commission but they’ve been an advisor for 10 years versus an advisor that’s at $50,000 after only 18 months?”⁶ He offered no solution beyond a commitment. “We have to do something.”⁶ Cheney Bunker, by then Senior Vice President, Global Memberships, said Virtuoso is working with its advisory boards “to modify membership standards globally,” weighing sales figures alongside professional stage and commitment to ongoing development.⁶

A year later, and I’m not quite sure how Virtuoso is addressing this, but I know hotels are paying attention thanks to their sales volume. As of that this year’s VTW, Virtuoso had published no thresholds, no timeline, and no mechanism for addressing this further.⁶ Until it does, the fastest route to Virtuoso rates and benefits for new advisors still is by joining host agency like Fora.

Watch what happens to the Associate Agency tier over the next two years. If Virtuoso keeps pulling top producers into direct membership, the consortium access that makes a host agency attractive becomes less of a reason for ICs and affiliate agencies to join a host.

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

• Rosewood’s owner may be selling Rosewood London. Gencom is reportedly in talks to buy the property at a valuation north of $400 million, as Chow Tai Fook Enterprises works to raise cash against the debt load at its New World Development arm. This is through the rumor mill, so TBD on whether this plays out.

• Six hotels made Paris’s Palace list this year, four got cut. Cheval Blanc Paris, Bulgari Hotel Paris, and Four Seasons Resort Megève joined the roster, while Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme, Hôtel Byblos, Hôtel du Palais Biarritz, and Mandarin Oriental Paris lost the designation. (Luxury Travel Advisor)

• Hilton is bringing LXR to Costa Rica. Maravé Manuel Antonio will take nearly 40 acres and 650 feet of Pacific beachfront when it opens in 2029, with branded residences built alongside it.

• Four Seasons put a 25-year company veteran in charge of its Serengeti lodge. Mary Bowens is the new GM of Four Seasons Safari Lodge Serengeti, after a quarter century inside the brand.

• Italy’s luxury pipeline just got a lot more crowded. Cheval Blanc is bringing a property to the Costa Smeralda, Raffles is opening on Lake Como, and Capella, Park Hyatt, and Six Senses are all landing in 2027, on top of two new Mandarin Orientals this year and the Danieli’s reopening.

• Bulgari’s second UAE property has a shape now. The Eagle Hills-developed project will bring around 90 private mansions and estates plus a marina to market by 2030.

• Hotel software just became a bank. Mews (unicorn status, hotel technology company valued at over $2.5B after their series D in January), picked up an e-money license from the Dutch central bank on August 11, putting it in position to run payments and financing for the 15,000 hotels already on its platform, right as luxury rates keep pushing past €3,000 a night with no ceiling in sight. (Jacques Ledbetter, Forbes )

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Sources

1. Dennis Schaal, “Fora Travel the Unicorn: It Raised $60 Million at a $1 Billion Valuation,” Skift, July 16, 2026. https://skift.com/2026/07/16/fora-travel-the-unicorn-it-raised-60-million-at-a-1-billion-valuation/

2. Jamie Biesiada, “LinkedIn again lists travel advisor as a job on the rise,” Travel Weekly, January 19, 2026. https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Travel-Agent-Issues/Insights/Travel-advisor-LinkedIn-job-on-the-rise-2026

3. “How to Get an IATA Number as a Travel Agent,” Fora Travel. https://www.foratravel.com/join/resources/how-to-get-iata-number

4. “Fora Announces $60M Series D at $1B Valuation,” Fora Travel newsroom, July 16, 2026. https://www.foratravel.com/newsroom/fora-announces-series-d-funding

5. Anne Majumdar, “Virtuoso tweaks membership categories to halt ‘back door entry,’” LATTE, March 18, 2025. https://latteluxurynews.com/2025/03/18/virtuoso-tweaks-membership-categories-to-halt-back-door-entry/

6. Matt Turner, “Virtuoso could crack down on independent contractors,” LATTE, August 16, 2025. https://latteluxurynews.com/2025/08/16/virtuoso-could-crack-down-on-independent-contractors/

7. Markus Busch, “Fora is inside Virtuoso, and just raised $60 million at a $1 billion valuation,” Hospitality.today, July 17, 2026. https://www.hospitality.today/article/fora-is-inside-virtuoso-and-just-raised-60-million-at-a-1-billion-valuation

20. The Upgrade | Weekly – How Do You Evaluate Risk in Travel?

Travelers,

I’ve been in the luxury travel industry professionally for 18 years. My colleagues used to joke that I had the worst luck, as the small group trips I was assigned to run at two luxury destination clubs would invariably be the trips that encountered emergencies. While stressful, these early experiences in my 20’s managing evacuations, extreme weather, lost passports, etc taught me how to stay calm in just about every situation abroad, and gave me an interesting perspective on evaluating travel risk.

Today, as an agency owner and advisor, I am still the person handling those emergency calls. Every few months, I open my news feed and know my day is about to be highjacked by hurricanes or other news.

That is the nature of travel - we leave our safety zones and venture out into a world where we don’t have as much control over our environment.

In today’s The Upgrade Weekly, I evaluate various risks we take in luxury travel voluntarily, and the ones out of our control.

Happy travels!

Anne Marie

Yours truly, taking a helicopter to land on a glacier in New Zealand

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

Helicopters, Bush Planes, and Hurricanes

Two helicopters carrying travelers went down within about 48 hours of each other this week, leading me to ruminate on risk in travel.

On August 17 a Bell 206 JetRanger crashed near the Greek island of Sifnos, killing Marie Ebert, 30, and Alexander Cromie, 31, a British couple on their honeymoon, along with their pilot, Giorgos Raikos, 53, a former air force officer everyone described as highly experienced. Greek investigators are examining a possible tail rotor failure, and the civil aviation authority pulled Bell 206s from service pending review.¹ ²

Two days later, a Eurocopter EC130 B4 operated by Lady Lori Helicopters went down in the foothills of Mount Ololokwe in Samburu County, northern Kenya. It was carrying six guests of luxury safari company &Beyond from Loisaba Conservancy toward the Ewaso Nyiro area.³ Seven people (including the pilot) died, five of them Americans.⁴

Evaluating risk and creating a game plan in the form of a “worst case scenario handbook” was part of my job at Exclusive Resorts and Inspirato. Over my career in the luxury travel industry, I’ve had to deal with just about every sort of disaster. I’ve evacuated a chartered cruise of 400 clients in the middle of Greek austerity riots, found an emergency dental surgeon on an island when a client knocked his teeth out, rescheduled chartered flights in the Galapagos when volcanic ash clogged the air, and repatriated the body of a client who suffered a stroke in Antarctica.

Let’s talk about how to assess risk, the likelihood of encountering an emergency, and how to cover your bases so you are as prepared as possible should you experience one while traveling.

There are risks outside of your control, like weather or political violence, and then there are risks you choose, such as your mode of transportation.

I want to like helicopters – they seem like an adventurous choice and often, the easiest route to get from point A to point B. But, for as many times as I’ve flown on them, I’ve never felt comfortable.

From a business standpoint, I’ve always been concerned when a client books one, and in my previous two companies, we were not allowed to include them as part of any client itinerary. As I’ve gotten older and had children, I’ve started evaluating the risks I take differently. I’ve flown in four helicopters in my life, and I think the one we flew on in Kenya last January was the last one I will take.

Many of my clients are fearful of the small bush planes used to get from safari camp to safari camp. Are they riskier than helicopters, or about the same?

Both the EC130 and the Bell 206, the helicopters involved in last week’s crashes, have one engine. The working pilots who weighed in after the Kenya crash in a Reddit thread on ChubbyTravel kept noting that fact, along with the following information.

An airplane that loses power still has wings and becomes a glider, buying the pilot some time to seek a potentially safe landing spot. A helicopter that loses power enters autorotation, using airflow through the falling rotor to keep the blades turning and somewhat soften the landing. Autorotation is helpful, though it is a demanding maneuver with a very short window, and its success in saving lives depends on altitude and terrain.

One commercial pilot in the Reddit thread said he can lose both engines on a jet and still land safely, but that he does not want anyone he loves in a helicopter for any reason. Another kept returning to the number of moving parts in a rotor system, and said what he trusts least is maintenance he cannot verify in a country whose oversight he does not know.

In a typical year, the US records 95-130 civil helicopter accidents, with between 17 and 30 of them causing fatalities.⁵

Non-commercial fixed-wing airplane accidents came in at 5.67 per 100,000 hours in the most recent full AOPA (Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association) analysis, with 0.87 fatal.⁶

NTSB data, via AOPA’s Air Safety Institute (formerly the Nall Report), shows helicopters have a higher accident rate than fixed-wing GA.

Here’s the apples-to-apples comparison between helicopter accidents and small, fixed wing airplane accidents for 2023, the most recent complete year, non-commercial category for both:⁷

• Non-commercial fixed-wing: 3.86 accidents per 100,000 flight hours (0.65 fatal)

• Non-commercial helicopter: 4.86 accidents per 100,000 flight hours (0.69 fatal)

That’s about 26% higher for helicopters on total accidents. In 2022 it was 4.30 (fixed-wing) vs 6.48 (helicopter). In 2021, 4.28 vs 6.75.⁷ Separately, NTSB data cited by TorkLaw puts general aircraft at 7.28 crashes per 100,000 hours vs 9.84 for helicopters, a 35% higher rate.⁸

How about Hawaii?

In the US, one of the most dangerous places to take a helicopter is Hawaii, where I was born and raised. Thousands of tourists a year take helicopter rides in Hawaii, and every year as I grew up, we would see a crash make the news.

The Islands have recorded 38 tour helicopter accidents since 2000 and 45 deaths, 25 of them on Kauai, while tour flight volume climbed roughly 67 percent since 2010.¹² This past March, a Hughes 369D built in 1979 went down off Kauai’s Na Pali Coast, killing three people.¹³

Now, let’s compare that to the odds of dying in a car crash.

• The National Safety Council puts lifetime odds of dying in a motor vehicle crash at 1 in 101.

• Lifetime odds of dying in an air or space accident, general aviation included, are around 1 in 5,051.⁹

• Death by lightning odds are roughly 1 in 79,746.

• Being killed by a shark: about 1 in 4.3 million.¹⁰

  Comparing Africa to the US

It’s hard to find much clean data for bush flight crashes in Africa, so treat this with a grain of salty skepticism, but it gives us a place to start.

Between 2015 and this month, I count five fatal accidents on light fixed-wing aircraft carrying tourists in sub-Saharan Africa, killing 33 people¹¹.

Over the same period, I count two fatal accidents on helicopters carrying tourists, killing 12.

OK, how does this compare with the volume of flights?

Wilson Airport in Nairobi handles about 120,000 aircraft movements a year. Maun logged 46,747 in 2023, Kasane another 11,042, and Arusha 27,050 in 2024. Those four hubs alone generate over 200,000 light fixed-wing sectors annually, even before counting any camp airstrip-to-airstrip legs.

There are far fewer helicopter flights. Kenya’s entire civil helicopter register held about 67 aircraft as of 2020, most privately owned, with just a handful flying tourists.

Therefore, based on the volume, helicopter accidents are somewhere between three and eight times more likely than small fixed-wing aircraft per flight in this setting.

The accident databases typically undercount, excluding aircraft under six seats and leaving helicopters out almost entirely, and crashes that kill only local nationals draw a fraction of the coverage of Western tourist deaths.

Now that we’ve covered helicopters and bush planes, let’s zoom out and talk about general risk. In my masters program at Darden (UVA), we discussed the role of biases in decision making. I see two biases play out as my clients evaluate risk around their travel plans.

Recency bias weighs whatever just happened far more heavily than everything before it. When my clients have just read about a helicopter crash in the African bush, they are more likely to believe this will happen to them should they go on a safari.

Vividness bias (aka availability heuristic) judges likelihood by how fast an example springs to mind. Vivid, recent, emotional examples arrive instantly. For example, if you just read an article about a horrific shark attack, you’re more likely to think sharks are a greater danger than getting struck by lightning.

Flight disruption

It’s completely reasonable to be worried about your flight being cancelled or delayed, and missing part of your trip. This is probably the likeliest travel risk of all.

In a normal month, about 1% of scheduled US flights are canceled and roughly 76% arrive on time.¹⁴ This year has not been normal.

The Iran conflict that began in late February and the subsequent disruption to the Strait of Hormuz interrupted the global oil supply, raising the cost of jet fuel by 31% in a single month. US airlines spent $2B more on fuel this March than in March 2025.¹⁵

Faced with rising costs, airlines shrank their routes and in May alone pulled 2 million seats out of global schedules to conserve fuel.¹⁶

What happens when your flight is cancelled? Fewer flights reduce rescheduling options. Travelers who used to get rebooked within hours now wait a day or two because the empty seats that absorbed them last year have evaporated.

How likely are storms to interrupt your trip?

The Atlantic and Central Pacific hurricane seasons both run June 1 through November 30.

The Atlantic season peaks around September 10, with the highest likelihood falling mid-August to mid-October.

Looking specifically at Mexico, a major hurricane makes direct landfall on the Yucatán Peninsula roughly once every four to five seasons, and Cancún has taken only two major direct hits in the history of modern tourism.

In April, the Colorado State University forecast for 2026 predicted 13 named storms, six hurricanes, and two majors (Category 3 and higher) that might affect the Cancún area, below the 30-year averages.¹⁷

This summer, Hawaii got hit hard by back-to-back Kona Low storms in the spring and, less than two weeks ago, a hurricane (Lala). As I write this, another tropical storm (Moke) is expected to affect the Islands.

In more than 70 years of reliable records, only three hurricanes have made direct landfall on the Islands, all on Kauai: Hiki in 1950, Dot in 1959, and Iniki in 1992. Iniki arrived as a Category 4, killed six people and damaged or destroyed about 14,000 homes.¹⁸ I was 7 when Iniki blew in. I remember leaning into the wind on our seawall (on Oahu, which got off lightly) and being held as if in suspension.

Three landfalls in seven decades is a very different exposure from one every four or five years. Hawaii’s realistic weather risk is heavy rain and high surf, but rarely an entirely spoiled trip.

With rising temperatures across Europe, fire danger has become a true summer travel risk.

So far this year, France has experienced widespread fires. Spain has seen more than 350,000 hectares burn. Portugal evacuated three districts, and a single Coimbra fire disrupted over 2,000 kilometers of road. France also experienced massive wildfires, and over on this side of the Atlantic, Canada counted 1,747 wildfires by June 10.¹⁹

On February 23, Mexican authorities killed the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The cartel’s retaliation shut down parts of western Mexico. The US embassy told Americans in Jalisco to shelter in place, roads to the Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara airports were blocked, four major carriers suspended flights, and cruise lines canceled port calls.²⁰

I had a lot of clients in Puerto Vallarta or heading there for spring break. I fielded multiple requests for cancellations, rebooked people for Hawaii or San Diego, and stopped taking any new bookings for other clients the entire week. People worried about putting their children in harm’s way for a vacation by traveling to an area they saw as suddenly unsafe.

When they asked my opinion about whether they should still go, I told them that I’m not the best barometer for risk. Because I’ve worked in this industry for so long and seen (and dealt with) so many emergencies abroad, I just have a much higher risk tolerance for certain things than others. I also have a flexible job that I can do from anywhere, so flight disruption doesn’t bother me much. I still took my family to Punta Mita for spring break.

As much as my client would like to believe I have a crystal ball, I can only provide information and context.

Let’s examine the actual risk profile.

No violence was reported at major Mexican resorts. While taxis stopped and the military patrolled the beaches, guests stayed on property with amenities running. Cancún, Tulum and Los Cabos were untouched, and within days airlines were flying again. The worst my clients experienced while there was an extra day – comped by their hotels.

Events like this tend to be local, short, and experienced as a logistics problem.

The largest risk here was flight disruption, not violence affecting tourists. However, that means little coming from me when my client is worried about their children getting hurt on vacation – that’s the vividness bias rearing its incandescent head again. No one can tell you to spend your money on a vacation to a place you are going to feel uncomfortable in.

You cannot lower the odds of a hurricane, a fire, or political unrest. The fact is, that you can experience travel emergencies just about anywhere in the world. People often overestimate how close incidents are to the areas they will be traveling, and the news thrives on sensationalizing such events. If there’s a shooting in New York, does that mean you won’t travel to New Jersey?

I’ll bet the people planning to travel to Minnesota this spring hardly imagined that clashes with police and ICE might interrupt their trips when they were booking their flights.

However, there are ways to protect against the costs of disruption when you do experience it.

Cancel For Any Reason Travel Insurance (CFAR)

I will not book travel insurance for my own travels without this policy coverage. CFAR raises a policy’s cost by 40 to 50 percent and reimburses 50 to 75 percent of prepaid, non-refundable trip cost. You must purchase it within 14 to 21 days of your initial deposit (depending on the plan), insure 100 percent of your prepaid cost, and cancel at least two to three days before departure.²¹

I recommend this for any trip whose cost is larger than a client is comfortable losing, especially when the trip hinges on one nonrefundable element like a villa or a mobile camp, or when we book hurricane season. For a $3,000 trip on flexible rates, it’s not worth it. $15K? Absolutely.

Storms

Standard policies cover weather, with one catch: once a storm has been named, it becomes a known event, and coverage for it can no longer be purchased. Good Caribbean and Mexican resorts publish storm policies covering closure or evacuation during your dates. Ask for one before you plunk down your deposit.

Buffer days

Book one night in the departure city ahead of anything you cannot miss, like a cruise departure. It’s the cheapest protection money can buy.

Evacuation coverage, especially for Antarctica and Africa

In East Africa, AMREF Flying Doctors membership covers air evacuation to Nairobi, and I encourage clients to carry Global Rescue or Medjet on top of it. Standard travel insurance often will not pay for a helicopter lift out of the bush.

I tell my clients that if they are going to be stressed out about the level of risk they imagine they are taking during their trip, it’s not a vacation. However unlikely a small plane crash, cartel event, or natural disaster is to affect your trip, it matters little if you aren’t going to enjoy the experience because you’re terrified the entire time.

Even if you are aware of cognitive biases and know there is little likelihood of an event impacting your trip, you should still recognize that perceptions of risk can feel powerful.

However, if you can be calmed by data, be aware that major disruptions are extremely rare and with good planning your experience will be fairly smooth.

Personally, I do not mind risk. Travel carries risk. But so does driving to the grocery store.

What I will not do is put clients on a helicopter. That is a choice they have to make themselves.

🗝️ The Lobby Bar

Hospitality updates, promotions, gossip, and the occasional pun

• United is adding Denver to Paris. Daily 787-9 service to Charles de Gaulle starts March 27, 2027, which makes Paris the fifth nonstop European city out of DIA behind London, Munich, Frankfurt, and Rome. (9NEWS) I’m forever a United girl, so this makes me unreasonably excited.

• Black Tomato’s founders sold 75% of the company to their own staff. Altruistic move or liquidity play? The deal closed in early July and employees found out August 24, with Tom Marchant and his co-founders holding 25% through a new share class that keeps decision-making with them, so an operator that posted £3.09 million in operating profit in 2024 stays out of private equity hands. (Tasmin Lockwood, Skift)

• Investors are buying tired hotels and fixing them. US hotel sales rose 28% in the first half of the year as owners who will not fund renovations sell to buyers who will. (The Wall Street Journal)

• Rosewood strung four of its Mexico properties into one eight-day trip. Guided by Rosewood Mexico moves you through Mayakoba, Mandarina, San Miguel de Allende, and Las Ventanas al Paraíso with cenote swims, artisan workshops, and desert dinners, and there is no published rate, so every itinerary gets priced on request. (Paula Conway, Forbes)

• The resort behind “Dirty Dancing” is coming back. Don’t put Baby in a corner. PPG Development, a Florida firm that paid $14.75 million for the overgrown Grossinger’s site in Sullivan County in June 2025, wants a year-round luxury resort and residential community on the old Borscht Belt property. Family summer camp? Sign me up! (Times Union)

• Travel Substacks are pulling readers away from the glossies. Colin Nagy argues a newsletter with 10,000 subscribers who book trips is worth more than a feature seen by millions, with the catch that the writing only holds up when the person has stayed in the room. (Colin Nagy, Skift) As a bonus, listed The Upgrade in his Substacks to read! My little publication keeps chugging along. Thanks for reading it.

Sources

1. Mechanical issue suspected in Greek helicopter crash that killed honeymooners, pilot, UPI, August 18, 2026

2. Sifnos Helicopter Crash Kills British Honeymooners; Tail Rotor Failure Probed Amid Greek Safety Gaps, Tech Times, August 18, 2026

3. Seven killed in EC130 helicopter crash during Kenya safari flight, AeroTime, August 2026

4. Seven people, mostly foreign tourists, killed in helicopter crash in Kenya, Al Jazeera, August 19, 2026

5. FAA Rotorcraft Accident Dashboard, U.S. Helicopter Safety Team, FY2025

6. Nall Report, Non-Commercial Fixed-Wing, AOPA Air Safety Institute

7. McSpadden Report figure view, AOPA Air Safety Institute, https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institute/accident-analysis/richard-g-mcspadden-report/mcspadden-report-figure-view

8. TorkLaw

9. Odds of Dying, National Safety Council Injury Facts, 2024 data

10. Annual Risk of Death During One’s Lifetime, Florida Museum, International Shark Attack File

11. No survivors in Mombasa Air Safari Grand Caravan crash in Kenya, AeroTime, October 2025

12. Tour Helicopter Crashes, And Flights, Have Escalated In Recent Years, Honolulu Civil Beat

13. NTSB releases preliminary report on Kauaʻi helicopter crash, Maui Now, April 19, 2026

14. Air Travel Consumer Report, U.S. Department of Transportation

15. Jet Fuel Shortage 2026: Flight Cancellations, Surcharges and Your Passenger Rights, AirHelp

16. Airlines Cut 2 Million Seats Worldwide in May Alone, IBTimes UK

17. Cancún Hurricane Season 2026: Forecast, Risk and Smart Travel Tips

18. Hawaii Hurricane Season 2026

19. Wildfires 2026 and Travel Disruptions, Riskline

20. U.S. Embassy Issues Shelter-in-Place Order for Travelers in Puerto Vallarta Amid Cartel Violence, Travel Market Report

21. Cancel For Any Reason Insurance Is Having a Moment In 2026, Squaremouth via PR Newswire, March 2026

18. The Upgrade | Weekly – The Great Beige-ification of Hotels

Travelers,

I am writing this week’s The Upgrade from the air-conditioned conference rooms of the Bellagio hotel, where I am consuming copious cups of mediocre coffee, getting the latest news from hotel partners around the world, and not sleeping enough.

Nothing other than Virtuoso Travel Week - one of the largest conferences in the travel industry - could send me to Las Vegas in the middle of August.

Sanchita has written about When Minimalism Becomes Boring and whether you can Scale Individuality. I am decidedly not a minimalist. Give me a castle with threadbare furniture in Ireland, a ranch house where you can still smell the sap in the pine walls in Colorado, a chateau filled with antique plates and tapestries.

As we are seeing this boom of historic hotel renovations, I have been wondering what is driving the tale of a split hotel development trend - on one side, we have these opulent, gorgeous restorations of old palaces. On the other, we have the mass market consolidation of the Marriotts and Hiltons that have become completely indistinguishable from each other the world over.

My guest for this piece is , who has sourced furniture for hotels that have won awards around the world. As usual, check out the Lobby Bar section for some hospitality gossip and travel industry news.

Happy travels!

Anne Marie

Your truly, a maximalist, in Paris with my daughter

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

The Great Beige-ification of Hotels

As a rejection of my mother’s opulent 90s house, filled with trinkets, framed photos and stuff, I developed a modern/organic millennial taste in interior decorating for a hot minute. My kitchen renovation took place at this time, when I was watching Studio McGee and Chip and Johanna Gaines transform homes into modern farmhouse castles of emptiness. Ah, to have a clear, white cabinet, a clean wall, a perfectly placed tree branch in a handmade pot!

My kitchen is now all white and has a shiplap wall (I can feel my future self cringing when I sell the place). The rest of my house did not undergo the same transformation, as my mother died shortly thereafter, and I inherited her house full of stuff.

My mom, the OG maximalist

Faced with her absence and 11,000 square feet filled with things she cherished, I looked more carefully at the craftsmanship of her “fragile things,” the detail of her framed floral prints, the quality of her Waterford Crystal and Spode China. I began filling my house with memories of her, and slowly, my white home grew more maximalist, more eclectic, more … her and me.

I believe this is why my taste in hotels has evolved in my 30s and now 40s. When I posted about historic hotel renovations on Reddit, many younger readers commented that they prefer modern decor to opulence. Perhaps they will experience the same renaissance of taste that transformed my home.

We’ve entered the great hotel beige-ification era.

You walk into a lobby in Hong Kong, New York, or London. White walls, linen-tone furniture, a piece of abstract art in a muted frame. Velvet pillows rest on a modern sofa, curving like a semicolon as if to say, “We are edgy!”

I stayed at the newly renovated Delano Miami recently, a temple of modern, white furniture. It reopened in 2026 after a complete renovation by Elastic Architects, Ennismore’s go-to firm. They also designed Delano Dubai. The “Delano-white” aesthetic harkens back to the white curtains and pale minimalism that were Philippe Starck’s creative vision. I found it a bit soulless.

Like all things, beige-ification comes down to money. Roughly 65% of luxury hotels worldwide are now run by global chains like Hilton and Marriott ¹. At that scale, replicating design details is as much cost control as brand consistency.

The hotel industry runs on FF&E (Furniture, Fixtures, and Equipment) procurement. Selections are standardized so every property reflects brand identity while minimizing sourcing, design, and shipping costs.

Let’s take a look at the players in this FF&E value chain.

FF&E Procurement

FF&E procurement companies buy and coordinate delivery of everything that goes inside a hotel room and public spaces. Think beds, chairs, lighting, art, casegoods, linens. They are engaged by hotel owners, and negotiate with approved vendors to hit brand standards, budget, and opening deadlines.

Benjamin West, the world’s largest FF&E purchasing firm, spends roughly $1.5 million per day on behalf of its hospitality clients and serves over 1,000 Marriott-flagged hotels and 350 Hilton properties ². It also works for IHG, Hyatt, and Four Seasons, sourcing from overlapping approved vendor pools. If you have ever renovated a house, you know what decision fatigue feels like. Imagine that on an astronomical scale - and you can start to understand why a hotel might outsource this decision making process to these guys.

Manufacturing

The furniture comes from an equally concentrated supplier base. Kimball Hospitality, owned by HNI Corporation since its $485 million 2023 acquisition, has supplied hotels since 1985 and counts Marriott, Hilton, MGM, and IHG among its clients ³. Chinese manufacturer SUNSGOODS operates 12 automated production lines with over 3,000 in-stock styles and serves clients in 80+ countries.

At the luxury European end, three dominant Italian manufacturers, Poliform Contract, Molteni&C, and B&B Italia, supply many brands. Poliform has furnished the Mandarin Oriental Milan, Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Taormina, and Hotel Lutetia in Paris. Molteni&C’s portfolio includes Four Seasons Hotel at the Surf Club Miami, 45 Park Lane in London, Aman Canal Grande in Venice, and the Waldorf Astoria New York.

B&B Italia’s list spans Bulgari, Mandarin Oriental, Aman, Grand Hyatt, Peninsula, W Hotels, Kempinski, The Connaught, The Berkeley, and Four Seasons. Its 25-year relationship with Bulgari alone spans properties in Milan, London, Beijing, Shanghai, and Paris ⁴. Pieces at this level are custom-specified, preserving some distinctiveness.

In sum, the supply chain is narrow.

Design firms decide what the hotel should look like in terms of concept, layout, color palette, material choices, custom furniture specs, while FF&E procurement firms execute that vision by sourcing and purchasing everything from those designs.

HBA has ranked first in the hospitality category of Interior Design’s Top 100 Giants list for over 25 consecutive years, with a client list spanning Four Seasons, Kempinski, Shangri-La, Hilton, Ritz-Carlton, Hyatt, and JW Marriott ⁵. Yabu Pushelberg’s roster adds St. Regis, W Hotels, Park Hyatt, Mandarin Oriental, and Peninsula Hotels. AvroKO topped the most admired list in 2025.

To paraphrase Churchill, never have so many hotel interiors looked so alike thanks to so few major designers, all constrained by brand standards.

In business school, everyone learns about vertical integration, which means a company owning or controlling links in its supply chain over outside vendors. Instead of buying furniture from an independent factory and hiring an independent design firm, a vertically integrated hotel company owns factory, FF&E procurement company, and design firm, (or any combination thereof).

• Backward integration moves toward suppliers. Example: a coffee shop chain owning a coffee plantation.

• Forward integration moves toward customers, such as a shoe manufacturer operating its own stores.

The point is control and increasing margin by reducing dependence on outside vendors, capturing their profits, and coordinating links in the chain. The tradeoffs of consolidation are capital intensity, less flexibility, and the risk of getting locked into your own supply chain despite better outside options. And there are pesky antitrust laws to think about as well.

HNI’s acquisition of Kimball International created a combined company with roughly $3 billion in revenue, further entrenching North America’s largest hospitality furniture supplier in brand-standard contracts ³. In interior design, HBA was acquired in 2020 by Suzhou Gold Mantis Construction Decoration Company, one of China’s largest interior decoration conglomerates, deeply tied to the manufacturing supply chain that produces HBA-specified furniture ¹⁰. Everybody is getting in bed together.

Vertical integration and Mckinsey-style operational efficiency aside, why would a hotel opt for beige-ifciation? Outside of the public spaces, neutral interiors are easier to clean.

For bedding and towels, white/near-white linens can be washed hotter and bleached without fading. Washing whites together without color sorting keeps a red towel from ruining a load. Colored linens require separate loads and faster discards because bleach damages dye. This doesn’t work for a hotel turning hundreds of rooms a night.

White and beige also add the illusion of size to small rooms, feeling “light and airy” rather than “heavily opulent.”

Yet, beige and white show marks and dirt more readily. As a parent of young children, I’ve learned white chairs and couches are an absolutely terrible idea.

COVID accelerated the flattening. Laminate flooring replaced carpets and accent rugs, and tile showers pushed bathtubs aside. Both are easier to clean. The design consequence: less texture and warmth.

A hotel arrives at beige thanks to global scale, procurement efficiency, cost control, and risk-averse design committees.

In a 2016 essay for The Verge, writer Kyle Chayka named this phenomenon AirSpace ⁶. He described how an affluent, mobile class moving through spaces linked by technology had spread particular sensibilities till distant places began resembling each other: minimalist furniture, reclaimed wood, industrial lighting, the same aesthetic from Portland to Prague. His 2024 book Filterworld extended the argument to algorithms, which reward the same visual language because it performs consistently in feeds ⁷.

In the Instagram era, social media also influences hotel design. White and beige photograph cleanly and look calm on a small screen. Bold cobalt walls or aggressively patterned fabrics are less universally palatable, and no hotel wants to gamble a seven-year development on a fabric that’s dated by opening day.

Hotel design timelines are lengthy. A new luxury hotel, from land acquisition to opening day, typically takes four to seven years.

FF&E procurement starts 12 to 18 months before opening, with custom casegoods (hard furniture) requiring 16 to 22 weeks in production. FF&E represents 12 to 15% of total development budget, and poor procurement management causes nearly 60% of project delays ⁸.

Custom orders mean delayed timelines. For hotels, every opening delay hemorrhages money.

The mechanism that produces identical rooms across a portfolio is called the room matrix. Procurement platforms source from approved vendor lists. A 20-week lead time punishes all who deviate from that room matrix. While owners wanting a custom piece from an Oaxaca artisan may miss an opening date, incurring a cost overrun, owners ordering from approved catalogs open on time.

Beige is also a safe bet that cuts soft refurbishment costs.

Luxury hotels run soft refurbishments every three to five years and hard refurbishments every seven to ten. A hotel that opened in 2018 with an interior conceived in 2015 is running on a decade-old design vision. For a brand managing hundreds of properties that cannot refresh rooms every four years, it’s an asset-management strategy as much as an aesthetic one.

One emerging counterforce is tariffs. Section 232 tariffs imposed in late 2025 put a 25% duty on upholstered wooden furniture from China, and anti-dumping duties on Chinese wooden bedroom furniture now exceed 200% ⁹. Vietnam and India are growing alternative sources. Whether this produces more design variety or simply shifts the neutral catalog to different factories remains to be seen.

Back to the money. , Nadine Choe, one of the hospitality industry’s most quoted critics, spent years structuring $7 billion in development capital for hotel projects before founding The Stanza. In a July 2026 Beyond Luxury interview, she argued that the reason so many hotels feel interchangeable results predictably from how their capital is structured ¹². Investment committees outsource taste to architects and consultants because they never developed their own. The proven template clears, quarterly reporting rewards repetition, and that’s why you can’t tell properties in Milan, New York, and Doha apart.

Her counterexample is Passalacqua on Lake Como, self-funded over 50 years by the De Santis family on patient capital with no time pressure for returns ¹³. That freedom shows up in the details: Murano glass in every room, a full set of Dyson tools in each bathroom. To her, such details reflect a hotel that thinks about guests before they arrive. Patient capital buys the freedom to notice what guests might want.

Despite the consultant-driven efficiencies of consolidation and value chain collapse, we are seeing an incipient, commercially driven distancing from beige. Properties commissioning local artisans, sourcing regional materials, and letting the destination shape the design report better guest satisfaction and longer stays. Research from DLR Group links authentic-design storytelling with higher guest satisfaction scores, and Preferred Hotels & Resorts has identified the rejection of neutral sameness as a defining movement in luxury travel ¹⁵.

The architects doing hospitality’s most interesting work, including Gathy, Kerry Hill Architects, Kengo Kuma, AvroKO, and Rockwell Group, all share creative autonomy. They are building to a philosophy, working outside the catalog.

My take - the beige hotels that allow for good unit economics across consolidated brands like Marriott and Hilton are going to become the de facto, non-risky choice for the upper middle and lower upper class travelers. They may stretch for a Four Seasons on occasion, but they will exercise their loyalty to predictably neutral hotels. The luxury and ultra luxury hotel brands are going to have to really focus on true differentiation as the wealthy traveler seeks a departure from the semblance of ubiquity, and craves storytelling in their hotel choice.

In Africa, hotels often have a social contract with local tribes to hire tribal members and use their art and decor when possible. This leads to a positive externality that creates truly unique camps with a true sense of place. I’d like to see more ultra luxury properties embrace antiques, storytelling, and the incorporation of local artisans in a similar fashion.

🗝️ Industry Insider Interview: Carolina Ramirez Herrera

I believe we’ll see character and maximalism returning to both boutique and super-luxury historic hotels (like the ones taking over old palaces, though the Danieli Four Seasons opened recently with disappointingly beige rooms, at least their public spaces are gorgeous). is one of my Substack friends who agreed to lend her insider expertise to my article.

What is your background and current role sourcing furniture for hotels

For over a decade, I’ve consulted across brand, marketing, PR and development for luxury hotels primarily in Africa and the Middle East and co-founded Happy Go Lucky, a hospitality design studio specializing in concept development, interiors, and FF&E sourcing and procurement with a knack for giving spaces soul and “making magic happen” - their words, not ours.

What have you seen change in the last 5-8 years in the world of hotel FF&E?

COVID was a huge reality check for the industry. One of my clients had furniture and materials stuck in China and Mexico as supply chains completely froze, forcing hotels to rethink their reliance on a small number of global suppliers. It accelerated a shift toward sourcing locally and working with regional makers and artisans—which, honestly, is how it should be. Beyond being more resilient, local sourcing gives a hotel a much stronger sense of place and makes the guest experience feel far less generic.

Have you seen consolidation amongst large hotel chains or luxury level properties on the FF&E and design side?

I tend to work with smaller, independent hotels, so I haven’t experienced that consolidation firsthand. But from the outside, you can definitely see more of the same suppliers, designers and pieces being used across different properties. It might make sense from an efficiency and cost perspective, but it’s also why so many hotels are starting to look and feel the same. (please no more millennial pink…)

What is something you wish people knew about decorating and sourcing for hotels?

This is really for ownership groups and the people controlling the budgets and timelines: if you want the character and craftsmanship that comes from working with artists and artisans, the budget and schedule have to respect their process. You can’t ask for something handmade, one-of-a-kind and steeped in history, then expect 25 identical pieces to arrive yesterday at an Amazon price and speed.

On one project in Morocco, we found an artisan with these incredible vintage doors he had collected and hand-painted over many years. The client loved them, but then wanted 25 immediately. That disconnect between the creative vision and the realities of producing it caused so many unnecessary issues. You either value the artisan process or you don’t; you can’t have it both ways.

I also wish people understood how much research (and how many missions!) sit behind a single object. Once you pull off one impossible project, word travels quickly, and in 2021 we were brought into Habitas AlUla as essentially the special-ops team, with only eight weeks until opening. Saudi had only recently opened to tourism, and this was the first luxury hotel in AlUla. We took around 25 flights across the country in those eight weeks, searching for artists, artisans and makers who could help us bring the property to life.

One of those missions took our all-women team to Dammam and then Al-Ahsa to find a specific potter whose family had kept these vessels for generations. His jaw dropped when we said we wanted his entire stock. My business partner and I just looked at each other like, “I can’t believe this is our real life.”

And yet, guests now see a terracotta pot at the entrance; they don’t see the mission behind it.

Where do you see industry trends going in terms of how hotels appear? More minimalist? More maximalist? Something else?

Maximalism is definitely making a comeback, but I think the larger shift is toward specificity. You hit the nail on the head, people want to feel like they are somewhere, not in the same beige lobby transplanted between Milan, New York and Doha.

The Middle East has always understood this because more is more, and I love it. Raffles Doha is a great example: it’s theatrical, opulent and completely over the top. I literally gasped when I walked in because it was so unapologetic and fing cool.

In Africa, hotels often have to source locally because of budget, timing and logistical constraints, but that necessity produces some of the most beautiful craftsmanship. Batoka’s Zambezi Sands in Victoria Falls features incredible locally made baskets, while Gorgeous George, a Design Hotels™ property in Cape Town designed by Tristan du Plessis, was a true labor of local love from the tiles and furniture to the art. Those properties couldn’t simply be dropped into another city, and that’s exactly what makes them memorable.

What are your top three favorite hotels?

Oof, hit me where it hurts! My top three are constantly changing, but right now I’d say Bvlgari Hotel Roma, The Imperial New Delhi and Rosewood Hong Kong. Bvlgari Roma is still one of the most beautifully designed hotels I’ve ever visited, from the monogrammed Nespresso machine to the chic but incredibly thoughtful gym. The Imperial is the perfect example of preserving a hotel’s history while updating it with modern luxuries; hello, Dyson vanity! And Rosewood Hong Kong? I had quite literally no notes.

🗝️ Industry Insider Interview: Emily Mattucci

This week, we are lucky enough to hear from two industry insiders who operate in this space.

What is your background and current role sourcing furniture for hotels

I’ve spent the last several years in the commercial furniture industry, and today I work with RH Contract, partnering with hospitality designers, purchasing firms, developers and ownership groups to source and specify furniture for hotels and other commercial projects.

What have you seen change in the last 5–8 years in the world of hotel FF&E?

There’s been a much bigger focus on creating spaces that feel residential and welcoming rather than traditionally “hotel.” At the same time, clients are under more pressure around budgets, lead times and durability, so there’s a constant balance between creating something distinctive and finding products that can actually meet the practical demands of a hospitality project.

Have you seen consolidation amongst large hotel chains or luxury-level properties on the FF&E and design side?

Yes. We’re seeing more centralized decision-making, particularly with larger ownership and management groups, and more emphasis on preferred vendors, purchasing partners and repeatable standards. There are obvious efficiencies to that approach, but I think the challenge is maintaining enough flexibility for each property to still feel specific to its location and guest experience rather than overly standardized.

What is something you wish people knew about decorating and sourcing for hotels?

How many competing factors go into selecting a single piece of furniture. It isn’t just about what looks good- you’re considering durability, cleanability, lead times, inventory, budget, code requirements, scale and how the product will perform with hundreds of different guests using it. The best hotel spaces make all of those decisions feel invisible.

Where do you see industry trends going in terms of how hotels appear? More minimalist? More maximalist? Something else?

I think we’re moving away from both generic minimalism and maximalism for the sake of maximalism. Guests want spaces with personality, warmth and a sense of place. I’m seeing more layered materials, natural woods, texture, warmer colors and residential influences, but paired with pieces that feel intentional rather than overly decorated. The most interesting hotels feel collected and specific to where they are.

What are your top three favorite hotels?

I love the bunkhouse group! I used to work with them in Austin before they were purchased by Hyatt.

🗝️ Room Report

If you prefer hotels with character, these are some maximalist properties that are eclectically decorated.

I recently stayed in London with my kids at Firmdale’s Covent Garden Hotel. The building dates to the 1890s, originally a French hospital whose bones remain visible in the brickwork. Kit Kemp, who cofounded Firmdale with her husband Tim in 1985 and has personally designed all eleven of their hotels, filled it with rich patterned textiles, a collision of modern and traditional art, and furniture that appears chosen by someone with actual opinions ¹¹.

Le Négresco, Nice. A 1912 Belle Époque landmark on the Promenade des Anglais, Le Négresco remains independently owned. Jeanne Augier ran it for over five decades and refused every chain offer. When she died in 2019, she left the hotel to the animal-welfare foundation that runs it today. The interiors reflect her lifetime of taste, with over 6,000 pieces of art across five centuries.

Inn at the Five Graces, Santa Fe. Ira and Sylvia Seret spent decades in Central Asia and the Himalayas, collecting textiles, tiles, and antique doors. They built interiors around what they found. Each of the 24 suites combines Rajasthani mosaics, Tibetan rugs, Turkish tiles, and Southwestern adobe.

The Fife Arms, Braemar, Scotland. This Hauser & Wirth hotel features tartan carpets, taxidermy, actual Picassos and Freuds on the walls, and a stag-skull chandelier by Louise Bourgeois. Probably today’s most aggressively maximalist luxury hotel.

Blakes Hotel, London. Anouska Hempel opened Blakes in 1978, and it remains the reference point for personality-driven hotel design. Rooms have individual themes. White linen drapes the Corfu Room, deep red fills the Cardinal Room.

Palazzo Margherita, Bernalda, Italy. A 19th-century Jacques Grange-designed property in Basilicata, the hometown of Francis Ford Coppola’s family. Its nine rooms, all different, have hand-restored frescoed ceilings.

Suján Rajmahal Palace, Jaipur. A maharaja’s former residence restored by Adil Ahmad, its rooms feature peacock wallpapers, pink and turquoise saturation, and hand-painted murals.

Hotel Costes and L’Hotel, Paris. Jacques Garcia designed both properties, and both are drenched in deep red velvet, gold, and brocade. This hotel is the opposite end of the aesthetic scale from Delano-white. L’Hotel has the added distinction of being where Oscar Wilde died.

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

• Oops - A superyacht crushed a WWII wreck off the south of France. The 220-meter Orient Express Corinthian dropped anchor in Les Lecques Bay in mid-July and destroyed a Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter resting 38 meters below, prompting French authorities to open an investigation and push for permanent mooring buoys at protected wreck sites.

• The Peninsula is putting $268M into Hong Kong and Tokyo. Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels committed HK$2.1 billion to renovate both flagships, a signal that luxury demand in Asia is holding up and a heads-up to plan 2027 and 2028 Asia itineraries around construction phasing.

• Russian hackers are targeting hotel Wi-Fi. Microsoft warned that state-backed actors are running credential theft campaigns at hotels, airports, and conference venues using fake login pages and phony update pop-ups, so use a VPN and treat every hotel network notification as hostile.

• Utah shut down the drinking water at Sorrel River Ranch. A Tier 1 “Do Not Use” order took effect July 31 after inspectors found an uncertified operator, failed chemical pumps, and staff washing dishes with pool water.

• Amanyara may be deflagged from Aman. Mortimer Sackler's CR Hotel Ltd. has told Amanyara villa owners it plans to terminate Aman's management contract over Vlad Doronin's decision to build an adjacent Janu-branded resort, with the split potentially taking effect as early as September or extending to April 2027 to protect the $19,000-a-night high-season bookings.

• Paul Gauguin and Ponant are running a $1,000 shipboard credit on French Polynesia sailings. My clients get up to $1,000 per stateroom on any 2026 or 2027 departure aboard the m/s Paul Gauguin, plus select Le Jacques Cartier voyages that reach the remote Gambier and Austral archipelagos on top of the usual Society Islands, Tuamotus, and Marquesas, for new bookings deposited between August 1 and October 31.

• The Six Bells is offering murder weekends. August, November, and December, a miniatures workshop retreat September 23-25, and buzzer trivia every Thursday night.

• Collegio alla Querce in Florence has three offers on the table right now. Book connecting rooms and get 50% off the second through the end of 2026, book three nights and get the fourth free through September, or book two nights and get the third free through December 18

  ---

  Sources

1. Bloomberg, on the share of luxury hotels operated by global chains.

2. Benjamin West company data on daily FF&E procurement spend and brand-property counts.

3. HNI Corporation press release, 2023 acquisition of Kimball International for $485 million.

4. Poliform Contract, Molteni&C, and B&B Italia hospitality client portfolios (company references).

5. Interior Design magazine, Top 100 Giants list, Hospitality category rankings.

6. Kyle Chayka, “Welcome to AirSpace,” The Verge, August 2016.

7. Kyle Chayka, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, Doubleday, 2024.

8. Hospitality Net and industry procurement data on FF&E timelines, budget share, and delay causes.

9. U.S. Department of Commerce, Section 232 tariffs on wooden furniture from China, 2025.

10. Suzhou Gold Mantis Construction Decoration Company, acquisition of HBA, 2020.

11. Firmdale Hotels company biography, Kit Kemp design portfolio.

12. Nadine Choe interview, Beyond Luxury, July 2026.

13. Passalacqua, Lake Como, De Santis family ownership history.

14. Cain International and Saudi Public Investment Fund investment in Aman Group, $900 million financing round.

15. DLR Group research on authentic design and guest satisfaction; Preferred Hotels & Resorts trend reporting.

17. The Upgrade | Weekly – Macro and Micro Economics Driving Shifts in the Luxury Travel Market

Travelers,

I’ve spent the last few weeks putting my MBA hat back on and reading a bunch of wonky economics articles. I’ve been searching for what is driving my client behavior, which has shifted dramatically from five years ago. I’ve been in the luxury travel industry for over 18 years now, and I’m trying to understand why this year feels so different.

After a week in the French Riviera and watching many of the places like Le Geurite just print money, I read Nadine’s The Stanza article on the economics of Euro Summer and wondered how the larger economic trends – macro and micro – are shifting luxury travel behavior.

The US stock market has been on a tear, minting new millionaires by the thousands. Where are these travelers going? How are the luxury markets absorbing their travel?

Wealth concentration, a bifurcated hospitality market, global politics, an $84 trillion wealth transfer, fuel volatility from the Iran conflict, and a booking window that keeps shrinking have all reshaped what luxury travel looks like in 2026.

Read on for my economics report and what it means for hospitality professionals, travel advisors, and luxury travelers.

This week's Lobby Bar covers the Four Seasons Danieli's Venice opening, why luxury is the only chain scale really running hot, the fading World Cup bump, hotel brands redrawing status and fees, Hyatt's bigger India expansion plans, Marriott's nine-hotel Egypt deal, and Mexico's $115 million sargassum plan.

Happy travels!

Anne Marie

Yours truly at Il Sereno, in Lake Como, with my husband,

because what says luxury travel more than this background?

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

The Forces Reshaping Luxury Travel: A Macro and Micro Economic Look

I co-own Alpenglow Travel, one of the top luxury travel agencies hosted under Coastline Travel. The past five years in luxury travel include two distinct chapters: a post-pandemic surge built on pent-up demand and emotional spending, followed by a structural reset driven by wealth concentration, supply constraints, and a fundamental shift in what affluent travelers are searching for.

Wealth Concentration

The most important macro factor is that the wealthy have become significantly wealthier, and their travel spend has kept rising.

The net worth of America’s top 1% reached a record share of nearly 32% of total US wealth in Q3 2025.¹ In 2024 alone, the US added over 379,000 new millionaires, bringing the total to 23.8 million and representing roughly 40% of global millionaires.^4,5

That means that the number of millionaires in the US is roughly half the size of Spain’s entire population – ortwo out of every five millionaires on the planet!

Moody’s Analytics found that spending by the top 10% of US households grew 62% between Q3 2020 and Q3 2025, far outpacing every other income group.² The top 10% of US earners accounted for nearly half of all US consumer spending in 2025, a historic high.²

Where are these newly minted millionaires spending their travel budgets?

Let’s say your net worth is $3-5M, and your annual travel spend is $60 - $100k. You want to blow it out with a $30k trip to the French Riviera. There are only so many luxury hotels in the French Riviera, and you want to stay at Airelles. The remainder goes to beach clubs, dining, and incidentals.

The French Riviera – let alone Airelles – can only absorb so many of these new millionaires, so hotels and beach clubs raise prices. Booking windows become longer. It’s no longer about having the money, it’s about connections and waitlists. In other words, luxury today = access.

The K-Shaped Economy Is Structural

Everyone is talking about the K-Shaped Economy, a decades-long pattern of uneven economic trends showing a downward pattern in wealth for the lower middle class and an upward growth trend for the wealthy.³ This is particularly visible in the bifurcation of the hospitality industry, where hotels targeting the middle class are seeing lower occupancy, but the luxury and ultra-luxury sector seems to see no softening of demand, despite increasingly sky-high ADRs (average daily rates).¹¹

Through August 2025, the luxury hotel segment posted year-to-date RevPAR (revenue per available room) growth of 5.3%, while the economy segment shrank 1.8%. Luxury and upper-upscale were the only two chain scales to post positive RevPAR growth, with ADR up 5.0% year over year.¹¹

The K-shape is also playing out within the luxury hospitality sector itself. Suites are selling out at record rates while opening categories sit empty. Properties are responding by converting smaller rooms into suites to follow where the money is concentrated.¹²

My experiences tell me that this is likely a reflection of more families traveling together with their children and childcare providers, needing larger rooms or connecting suite configurations. The new signal of wealth is no longer taking the ultra-expensive anniversary trip, it’s bringing your children and nanny along with you for a three-month Euro summer.

Airlines are capitalizing on this trend, converting cabins to make space for more business class passengers. Delta’s main cabin sales dropped 7% in 2025 while business and first-class rose 9%, with premium tickets surpassing economy sales for the first time ever.¹³

Intergenerational Wealth Transfer Is Accelerating Demand

The other figure I’m seeing thrown around is the $84 trillion intergenerational wealth transfer to the millennials in the US.⁹ Multi-generational travel has grown significantly in the past two years, and many of my millennial clients are paying for their boomer and Gen X parents to travel with them.

Bain and Altagamma identified the rise of “inheritourism,” in which wealthy families travel together and Gen Z adopts the (expensive) travel preferences of their parents.^7,8

Properties with multi-bedroom configurations, private pools, and flexible programming are capturing that demand. My clients are requesting more suites and staffed villas, but eschewing Airbnb, which they view as no longer a trusted source of luxury home rentals. Distrust and scams are driving more people to work with trusted advisors.

Goods vs. Experiences: A Structural Reordering

Bain and Altagamma’s annual Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study found a persistent global shift favoring experiential spend over conspicuous consumption as the new marker of status.⁶

My millennial clients don’t want a Birkin. They want a week at Hotel Du Cap-Eden Roc, reservations at Le Guerite, and a day-charter yacht.

Among top 1% travelers, 54% now prioritize private tours and immersive activities over hotel upgrades or fine dining.⁸

The number of my clients sending me a very specific ask or Instagram link to a private forager in Umbria, a particular beach club seating, a recommended guide in the Maasai Mara, etc. has been growing.

International Inbound: A Headwind for US Hotels

The United States is projected to have lost $12.5 billion in international traveler spending in 2025, a 6.6% drop from 2024, driven in part by perceptions of the current US political environment.¹⁶ Canadian visitation fell 23.7% year-to-date through June 2025.¹⁷

U.S luxury properties that depend heavily on European or Canadian guests are absorbing that directly as their occupancy rates plummet.

However, my US clients are also changing their travel patterns. Many of them are steering clear of Mexico following the Puerto Vallarta cartel incident this past spring and opting for Hawaii or Europe instead. I’m also seeing a large increase in requests for Japan, which is seen as politically neutral and safe for Americans.

Destination Patterns

Overtourism, crowds, and heatwaves across Europe are changing where people go. LHW (Leading Hotels of the World) bookings for “coolcation” destinations, including Patagonia and UK and Irish countryside, grew nearly 40% over two years. Nordic bookings are up 45% year over year; Alpine bookings up 15%.¹⁵ In my own pipeline, interest in the Dolomites and broader Alpine region has surged.

Clients are swapping out famous cities for lesser-known ones in the same region. For example, clients heading to Greece are no longer requesting Santorini and Mykonos, but shifting to Paros and Milos. Slovenia, Sardinia, Corsica, Albania, and Montenegro are also trending thanks to social media and the perpetual search for the “next hidden gem.”

Traditional travel media and tourism boards are also launching campaigns to try spreading tourism away from the most popular locations and toward lesser-known places.

Booking Windows Are Compressing

Clients are booking closer to travel dates as they watch the news for anything that might affect their travel plans. In May, I received close-in requests for parts of Spain, Ireland, Scotland, and the South of France - trips that previously would have been booked six months in advance. A reservation at Le Guerite in Cannes for the 3 pm seating is just not possible with a three-week lead time. This has been a stressful shift for me as a travel advisor.

This shorter booking window is also creating pressure on availability at top properties, which are often sold out ever-further in advance. My relationship with sales directors has become even more valuable. Knowing which properties hold space, which have waitlists that adjust, and which release inventory according to a specific cycle is becoming the mark of an expert advisor, separating the veterans from the less experienced.

My advice for luxury travelers is to fight the urge to book close in. The surge in wealthy travelers means less availability at the places you hope to go, so book your Euro summer a year in advance. May 2027 is already too close in. Many places in Lake Como were sold out half a year ago. Why scramble for scraps?

Geopolitical Risk

The Iran Conflict Is Reshaping Routing, Costs, and Risk Tolerance

Geopolitical disruption has always been part of travel planning. Over my career at Exclusive Resorts and Inspirato running experiential travel groups for their membership, I saw cancelled private charter flights due to volcanic ash, Greek austerity riots rerouting a cruise ship, airport closures, pandemics and outbreaks, natural disasters, you name it.

The Iran conflict and the resulting fuel volatility and airspace restrictions are impacting routing, connections, and logistics for many of my clients.’

In terms of routing, the Iran conflict has exposed the vulnerability of Middle Eastern hubs for Gulf carriers. As of mid-2026, EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency) has toughened advisories warning airlines to avoid airspace over Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, and the Gulf of Oman, with separate extended warnings for Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon.²²

For travel to Africa, a connection through London, Paris, Amsterdam, or Frankfurt feels less exposed to sudden airspace closures than one through a Gulf hub.

The most direct impact of rising fuel costs is on private aviation. Charter quotes absorb higher jet fuel prices, longer routings around restricted airspace, elevated insurance costs, and aircraft-positioning problems when demand suddenly shifts.

Safaris are tied to fuel costs through logistics via bush flights, helicopters, game-drive vehicles, camp generators, and supply deliveries. I am starting to see industry-wide standardized surcharges across African operators as charter companies and DMCs (destination management companies) are now passing those increases through. 2027 rates are starting to incorporate higher transportation costs.

If you want to go to Africa next year, book NOW. Rates will keep climbing.

Yachts are absorbing the same fuel pressure. On most crewed luxury charters, the advertised weekly rate does not include fuel; operating expenses reconcile against the APA (Advanced Provisioning Allowance - APA stands for Advance Provisioning Allowance, deposit around 20-30% of the base charter fee that you pay upfront to cover all the running expenses during your charter) at the end of the charter. OPIS (Oil Price Information Service) reported that marine gas oil in Rotterdam rose by $724 per metric ton between late February and the end of March 2026, virtually doubling to $1,448 per metric ton in just a month!²¹

Clients Want Flexibility

Flexibility itself has become a luxury product. That means flexible air tickets, hotels willing to move dates, operators with strong local logistics, and advisors more frequently called in the middle of the night to help with flight reroutes or cancellations.

I’m seeing more clients purchasing cancel-for-any-reason coverage plans in travel insurance.

Traveler Wants Have Changed

In 2026, luxury clients are prioritizing privacy, wellness, and unique experiences.¹⁹

My clients aren’t satisfied with taking their family to Rome. They want to see all the major sites with private access or early openings, are looking for unique experiences like a golf cart tour (for those older clients or those with mobility issues - would like me to note that golf carts are not recommended for those who can walk easily) that sweeps them through side streets, or a gladiator class (no real swords or tridents!) for their kids. They don’t want city orientation tours but prefer a cooking class in a local home.

Among top 1% travelers, 34% are planning a trip primarily for health and wellness in the next 12 months, up from 23% previously.⁸ Travelers are looking for places that are far enough off the grid to keep them from being reached by email.²⁰

My clients are also moving away from big chains and searching for independently owned boutique hotels with character. The Leading Hotels of the World reported 15% year-over-year revenue growth in early 2025. Independent and boutique luxury properties are capturing disproportionate market share relative to their footprint.¹⁵

The structural conditions in this market favor travelers who know what they want and book with intention at least several months in advance. A one- or two-month booking window isn’t going to cut it for European destinations in the summer.

The aspirational middle of the luxury market is getting squeezed by rate increases and suite conversions. A $1,000-per-night hotel room is now table stakes for a lower-tier five-star hotel; more likely you’ll see $1,200 and above.

Travelers in the luxury market are spending more per trip, booking with more specificity, and choosing properties more carefully. They are seeking flexibility, access, and reassurance.

🗝️ Substack Writers You Should be Reading

In lieu of the Room Report this week, I’m including a list of some of my favorite writers on Substack in the travel, hospitality, and culture space.

These are the writers that you’ll see consistently top the charts - they have significant followings already and for good reason.

Colin Nagy: A writer and brand strategist (Skift, Monocle, FT, Meta) who co-writes Why is this Interesting?, a daily newsletter on culture, design, travel, and the ideas shaping how we live. Colin is a gem, he’s so encouraging and takes the time to highlight other writers. He’s also an excellent writer, and I gobble up all his Skift articles - worth the subscription on Skift alone.

Marissa Klurstein, Happy Hoteling: Marissa writes a lot about Italy, and was kind enough to let me interview her for an article about finding smaller hotels that are not on GDS (global distribution systems). covering the world’s best hotels, destination guides, and the little details that separate a great stay from a forgettable one.

Whitney Haldeman, The Heart of Travel: A luxury travel advisor (Blonde Atlas) sharing an insider’s view of the industry, destination inspiration, and honest advice on how to travel well. I got to meet Whitney in London this summer. There are few travel advisors I admire more in our world than her.

Nadine @ The Stanza: The publication I read absolutely every time it comes out. Nadine offers smart, sharp take on hospitality and culture through a business and investment lens, covering hotels, restaurants, and the brands defining modern taste. Her interviews with hospitality leaders are excellent, and I love her finance-focused articles on such things as the economics of Euro Summer.

RPS by Carson Griffith: Buzzy cultural intelligence on wealth, taste, and status; how elite worlds actually operate. Carson makes me laugh, and she’s an excellent real-world writer with her work consistently in several large publications. This is what I read with my coffee. She was also my source for my article on membership clubs attached to hotels.

Hotel Espresso by Brandon Berkson (HAP): ok, even though Brandon didn’t include The Upgrade on his list of hospitality writers you should read on Substack, I’ll forgive him and acknowledge that The Upgrade is only 17 issues deep - let’s give him time to catch on and maybe I’ll make the next list! In all honesty, Brandon offers sharp takes on boutique hotels, must-know stays, and insider hospitality news.

Leah Nanpei, Imperfect Process: A designer and hospitality brand founder writing an honest, after-hours look at building hotels, with interviews of the developers and architects behind the lodging worth traveling for. If I’m a soft product expert in hotels, Leah is the hard product one.

Emma Näpänkangas, The Philosophy of Hospitality: Positioned as "the internet's first grand hotel," a thoughtful, essayistic take on what hospitality means and how it works. I just adore Emma. I think we would be best friends if we ever met in real life. I’ve quoted several of her articles for EHL on here.

Bean Checks Out: Ryan Bean’s candid, sharp reviews of luxury hotels and hospitality with a critic’s eye, tagline “luxury hospitality, under review.”

Emily @ Elevate Hospitality: A newsletter on retreat strategy, wellness programming, and experiential hospitality for people building the next generation of resorts and hotels.

Hotel History Podcast, The CHECK-IN: Stories behind legendary properties, from ancient inns to the Mayflower.

Luxe Ledger: Jacques Ledbetter’s trade-focused newsletter for luxury travel professionals, offering candor, context, and industry analysis on advisors, hotels, and market trends.

Tricia @ Global Travel, The Literary Itinerary: Pairs destinations with the books worth reading before you go, for readers with “more time, better taste, and less patience for bad travel.”

Kay Walten: A hospitality veteran with 35+ years in tourism (much of it in Mexico), sharing memoir-style stories about the leaps, life changes, and adventures behind a life built abroad.

The Elevated Escape: Courtney Brown’s take on luxury travel, with hotel “Checking In” reviews (Blackberry Farm, Montage Los Cabos, Southall) and destination guides done properly.

The World According to Stacey Ray: Stacey Ray, founder of a global community for solo women travelers, delivering no-BS insights on destinations, culture, and how to actually travel the world.

John @ Affordable Travel: John B’s newsletter on adventure, budget, and group travel, focused on food, culture, and connecting with people over polish.

Architecture Atlas: Mary’s illustrated newsletter on real places that feel like fantasy. Her drawings are extraordinary. This is not a talent I have.

Eva Ducruezet, And So What: Personal essays on travel, food, and lifestyle with a casual, self-aware voice.

Very Bonjour: Literary travel done right; explores the real destinations behind the books she loves. Set Jetting as a substack.

Sara Hildreth, Fiction Matters: Sara and I went to college together at Colorado College and were in several English classes together. She was a teacher for a while before starting Fiction Matters and Novel Pairings, her newsletter and podcast. I’m a huge book nerd, but she blows me away with how much she reads and her thought comp-lit comparisons. If you love to read, this should be a paid subscription.

A. Natasha Joukovsky, Quite Useless: Deep thoughts on art, desire, and superficiality; smart and approachable writing on aesthetics and culture. Natasha and I met when I was at business school at UVA, and I think she’s one of the smartest people I know. When she’s not a high-powered, badass consultant, she is casually writing bestselling novels such as Portrait of a Mirror and Medium Rare. Her prose is gorgeous and complex, and I could talk to her over a beer at the Virginian for hours. She’s also hilarious.

*If I have not listed your substack in this list, please don’t take offense, I will be including these highlight lists frequently, and I’m already out of word count…

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

• Four Seasons opened the Danieli in Venice on July 30, converting the 200-year-old former Marriott Luxury Collection property near St. Mark’s Square. The hotel spans three buildings dating to the 14th and 19th centuries and will grow from 120 to 176 keys by 2027, with a rooftop restaurant, the lobby’s Bar Dandolo, and a spa with sauna and hammam. Rooms start around $2,700 a night. (Upgraded Points

• It’s earnings season, and luxury is the only chain scale really running hot right now. Marriott’s Q2 luxury RevPAR grew more than 9% against a 3.4% systemwide number, and Hyatt and Hilton both pointed to luxury and upper upscale as their strongest segments. (Hotel Dive, Hospitality Net)

• The World Cup bump is fading fast. Hyatt’s host cities saw group RevPAR up more than 13% in June, and Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt all cited the tournament as a driver of Q2 strength, but Marriott’s CFO is already flagging a small negative hit in Q4 tied to the midterms. (Hotel Dive)

• Hotel brands are shaking up fee structures. Hilton is cutting owner-side fees even as its own management and franchise fees rose 6.4% year over year, and Marriott is building an airline-style upsell system where elite members now bid for suites they used to get free. (Skift, Upgraded Points)

• Hyatt’s expansion plans in India just got a lot bigger. The company is targeting a roughly fivefold increase over the next five years, up from 56 hotels across nine brands today and a 100-property pipeline already in motion. (Skift)

• Marriott signed a deal for 9 hotels and branded residences across Egypt, over 1,500 keys spanning Ritz-Carlton, Luxury Collection, and Autograph Collection projects on the North Coast, in Cairo, and at Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea. (Upgraded Points)

• Mexico is spending $115 million to fight record sargassum levels in Quintana Roo, funding specialized collection vessels, offshore barriers, and monitoring systems meant to intercept the algae before it reaches shore. Hotels have already cut rates by up to 40% this summer. (Skift)

  If you enjoy the Upgrade, consider booking your travel with Alpenglow Travel - AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com

Sources

¹ Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts. “Shares of Wealth by Wealth Percentile Groups.” Q3 2025. federalreserve.gov

² Moody’s Analytics. “The Concentration Conundrum.” Reported via The Washington Post, January 2026.

³ U.S. Bank Economics Research Group. “The K-Economy in 2026: Same Story, New Amplifiers.” usbank.com, July 2026.

⁴ Grand View Research. “U.S. Luxury Travel Market Report.” 2025. grandviewresearch.com

⁵ UBS Global Wealth Report. Cited in AltexSoft, “Luxury Travel Market: Key Trends, Players, Destinations,” November 2025.

⁶ Bain & Company and Altagamma. “Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study.” Annual report, cited in CNBC, June 2026.

⁷ CNBC / Robert Frank. “Luxury Spending Now Driven by Experiences and Inheritourism.” June 25, 2026. cnbc.com

⁸ StyleRave. “Experience Ultimate Luxury: How Indulgence Changed in 2026.” July 2026. stylerave.com

⁹ Cerulli Associates. “U.S. High-Net-Worth and Ultra-High-Net-Worth Markets Report.” 2024. cerulli.com

¹⁰ Hawaii Tourism Authority / DBEDT. “Visitor Statistics: Japanese Market Recovery.” 2025. hawaiitourismauthority.org

¹¹ STR / CoStar. Cited in PwC Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2026. pwc.com

¹² JLL Research and STR/CoStar. Cited in Travel Weekly. “Luxury Hotels and the K-Shaped Economy.” January 13, 2026. travelweekly.com

¹³ Morning Brew. “The K-Shaped Economy Is Trippin’.” May 24, 2026. morningbrew.com. Citing CNN and Delta Q4 2025 earnings.

¹⁴ China Outbound Tourism Research Institute. “China Outbound Travel Recovery Report.” Cited via Skift Research, 2026.

¹⁵ The Leading Hotels of the World. “The Luxe Report.” April 2025. lhw.com.

¹⁶ World Travel and Tourism Council. “Economic Impact Report.” May 2025. Cited in PwC Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2026.

¹⁷ Tourism Economics. “International Arrivals Forecast.” June 2025. Cited in PwC Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2026.

¹⁸ Ministry of Tourism, Government of India. “India Tourism Statistics: Departures and HNWI Travel Intent.” 2024. Cited in Skift Research 2026.

¹⁹ Deloitte. “2026 Travel Industry Outlook.” deloitte.com

²⁰ Emma Ponsonby, CEO, Satopia Travel. Quoted in StyleRave, July 2026. stylerave.com

²¹ OPIS. Marine Gas Oil Rotterdam Price Data. March 31, 2026.

²² EASA. Safety Information Bulletin, Middle East Airspace. July 2026.

²³ Reuters. “Syria Records 12,000 Aircraft Transits in May as Gulf Airspace Rerouting Continues.” June 2026.

²⁴ Mastercard Economics Institute. “Travel Industry Trends: GCC Traveler Spend.” 2025. mastercard.com

²⁵ Skyscanner and GCC Board of Tourism. “GCC Outbound Travel Forecast 2024-2034.” 2024.

Issue 16 · Succession: The Millennial Heirs in Hospitality Families Stepping up the Plate

In The Upgrade this week:

1. Pre-Departure – An interview with Ian Swain II on taking over his parent’s company, Swain Destinations. Other millennials taking the helm.

2. The Room Report – Naviva, Four Seasons Punta Mita

3. The Lobby Bar – This week: Hoshinoya opens inside a 1908 prison in Nara, Fouquet's plants its first flag outside France on Paraga Beach in Mykonos, and Explora Journeys becomes the first luxury cruise line to join Hilton Honors. Also - a list of 2026 luxury hotel openings

By Anne Marie Brown | Alpenglow Travel

Travelers,

Luxury hospitality is built on legacy. Our own family successfully passed the hotel company my grandfather founded, Outrigger Hotels, to my father and his sisters, then to my brother-in-law and my half siblings, before we sold the company in 2016 to private equity firm KSL.

The properties with the most devoted guests tend to be family-owned, with ownership structures that take a stewardship view rather than a transactional one. Right now, the generation tasked with inheriting those foundations has moved into the chair, and I’m watching my millennial peers that I grew up with step into leadership roles at their family companies.

Across luxury hotels, safari companies, and high-end travel brands, millennial leaders are running businesses their parents or grandparents built.

In The Upgrade this week, I sit down with my friend and new CEO of Swain Destinations, my go-to tour operator for Alpenglow Travel clients in New Zealand and Australia. As soon as I saw his announcement on LinkedIn, I reached out to interview him.

Yours truly, a millennial, via ChatGBT. There are some things AI is good for.

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

Millenial Succession:

A Conversation with

Ian Swain II of Swain Destinations

Ian Swain II

Ian Swain and I grew up in parallel corners of the travel industry. His parents built Swain Destinations, a luxury FIT (free independent travel) tour operator for Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and the Middle East. My dad ran Outrigger Hotels. The two of them were friends, part of a generation of founders who launched international leisure travel for Americans. They sat on the board at WTTC (the World Travel and Tourism Council) together, and Ian and Linda flew out to attend my father’s funeral when he passed away. Ian II and I are the same age, and both come from large families with a veritable basket of other siblings. We could probably field a soccer team.

Ian II and I talked about family succession, the pressure of a founder’s shadow, what luxury means to our generation, and the legacy we hope to pass to our own kids.

Ian: Swain Destinations is a luxury FIT tour operator. We build itineraries customized for North Americans to Australia, New Zealand, Africa and the Middle East. The company is about forty years old, started by my parents. My father is Australian; my mother is American. They met, fell in love, and decided the path forward was to bring Americans to my father’s homeland. They have been selling travel and building it ever since. I am one of six kids in a big family.

Ian: As a kid, you look up to your parents, especially when they’re building a company. The dinner time conversations are often about the business. It is a different dynamic than most children are exposed to because you are hearing about growth problems and strategic decisions being made as if it is a normal family conversation. Maybe that’s where it started.

Even before I worked here, just traveling with the family, I’d watch my mother and father go to Australia or New Zealand, and they already knew people everywhere. That’s this industry. You build colleagues and friends all over the world, so anywhere you are, there’s someone to say hi to. The industry itself is what drew me in.

As I got older, I realized how impactful travel is. It changes your world and how you see things. Being part of a company that does that is inspiring. Now I get to help steer where it goes next, and doing that alongside this team is what I love.

Ian: My siblings all have their own lives and careers. I was the one actively pursuing it. It was a private conversation between my parents and me. I approached them and we talked it through over a few months. Once it started to feel real, we moved down the path as best we could. When it was announced, all my siblings were genuinely excited and happy for me. I’ve been with the business the longest, and only a couple of the others have worked at Swain. It was organic in a way, but it was something I went after.

Ian: : I am very fortunate to live close to my father, and our relationship has a large business component, which I like. Between working for the company and traveling with him for years, he’d been preparing me without either of us realizing it, or at least I didn’t.

The best thing he did was build such a great team. We have some industry legends at Swain, people who’ve been here for decades and know everything. Coming back after a few years in other industries, I’ve leaned on them constantly. Some of them have known me since I was a kid, so there’s a real familial feel here.

He’s all still here supporting through the transition. We talk business every day, and we have complementary skill sets. A forty-year-old company has a lot of ways it works and flows that take time to learn, even having been here before. Building the right team and keeping them is absolutely the best thing he’s done.

Ian: Stop waiting. If you’re holding yourself back and there’s a path, pursue it. If you want it, go after it.

If it’s not time yet, don’t sit still. Build your skills, inside or outside the brand, and keep a pulse on the business. And when you are ready, and they are ready, make sure you really want it. Emotion is a huge part of this. Everything is personal, and no matter how objective you think you are being, it hits you emotionally. You must be ready to weather that.

Ultimately, go for it. There’s so much opportunity in being the child of a founder, so much to learn and build. Not everybody gets that. Take advantage of it..

Ian: The hardest part back then was proving myself. Being the second Ian Swain to an Ian Swain founder, you carry a self-imposed pressure to show people you’ve earned your place and you’re not just there because of the name. In a strange way, that pressure helped. It built my work ethic and my focus on executing, because I wanted to prove I could do it myself.

After you execute enough, you get more confident and you stop worrying about what people assume. As you get older, you have your family, your team, your clients, and everything else becomes noise. If someone questioned whether I belonged here today, I’d say okay and move on. There’s enough real work to focus on. When I was younger, that pressure created the work that got me where I am, so I don’t resent it at all. It pushed me to grow.

Ian: I left for some time to work outside the company . Before I did, I did not realize how valuable it would be. Going outside and back gives you a completely different perspective, and was one of the most valuable educations I’ve had.

Ian: Australia and New Zealand are where it all started. I truly believe our travel consultants are the most knowledgeable about our destinations and the most invested in the trips they plan. They have traveled there or lived there, and it’s personal to us. Every trip matters to everyone on the team. We try to create something effortless that takes care of you the whole way through.

The knowledge runs deep. We have product team members who’ve been with us for decades and been a part of the change of the industry. As a family company, we care about our travelers and advisor partners, without question.

Swain sauce is a funny term, but it’s referenced a lot. My parents are outgoing and they love traveling, networking, and relationship building, and all of that is part of the Swain sauce. How do we get past the client relationship to a friendship, where we’re helping you see the world a little differently? That’s the mindset.

The Swain sauce is staying. I have no intentions of changing the brand. Our focus now is to grow it deliberately, open it up to more people, and keep delivering the same level of service without losing quality. That’s something that can slip in an acquisition, so it is a significant focus of mine.

Ian: The simplest way I describe millennial luxury is experiential. Older generations leaned toward the white glove, the “sir,” the “madam.” I haven’t seen millennials value that as much. They want the unique tour, the speakeasy down the alley, or that sunset view you can only see if you know the right person. Rare experiences and stories they can’t wait to tell people about. That is the millennial luxury, the undiscovered place or experience.

For me, luxury is being able to take my family somewhere new and not worry about a thing.. Moving seamlessly through the transfers, the flights, the hotels, the experiences, so that my only focus is enjoying the time with my family in these new worlds. That’s luxury to me.

Ian: My kids are the most important things in my life. When my wife and I were deciding whether to buy the company, they were the biggest factor. We knew it would take our time and affect them, that they’d see a different side of us in a business setting.”

I didn’t do this thinking about them taking over. I hope they will share my passion. I hope I can give them the opportunities I was given. If they decide they want to pursue the business, I’ll happily teach them what I can, but they’ll have to earn their spot. We have an incredible team here, and we’ll bring on more incredible people over the years. Maybe one of them takes the baton and leads the brand into the next generation after my time.

I’m not going into this expecting my children to take over or putting pressure on them, because the only pressure I had was self-imposed. I hope they are interested and I hope I grow the business big enough where there is opportunity for them if they want it.

I hope they love travel. I really do.

Ian: Curiosity and a sense of adventure. I hope I can impart that on them. When they travel, I hope they can take in different cultures, and I hope they can bring what they learn back to the people around them. Travel changes you in incredible ways. The world could use a lot more of that. It educates you differently than school does and shows you there is a world outside of your own. I hope I can give them that curiosity. That is all I want.

Ian Swain is the incoming owner of Swain Destinations. If you are planning a trip to Australia, New Zealand, Africa, or the Middle East, reach out to me at AnneMarie@AlpenglowTravel.com and I will connect you.

Other Millennial Successors In Hospitality

The baton is being passed to the next generation of leaders in the luxury travel and hospitality industry. Here are a few other examples of millennial leaders.

Born in 1980, Sonia Cheng grew up inside a Hong Kong dynasty. Her grandfather built the Chow Tai Fook jewelry empire and founded New World Development. Her father runs the family’s real estate and hospitality business.

Sonia went to Harvard, worked at Morgan Stanley, and joined the family business at 28. At the same age, I graduated business school and took a mid-level role at Inspirato. Sonia bought Rosewood in 2011 for $229 million and set out to build the “Four Seasons for millennials,” properties with more character and a stronger sense of place.

Since then, Rosewood has grown from 19 hotels to 33 across 21 countries, with another 27 in the pipeline. The portfolio includes The Carlyle in New York, Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, and Rosewood Mandarina in Mexico.

Barrière goes back to 1912, when François André opened a luxury resort in Deauville combining hotels, casinos, restaurants, and recreation. The company passed to Diane Barrière in 1990 after her father’s death. A 1995 plane crash critically injured Diane, who remained involved until she died in 2001.

Her children, Alexandre and Joy, are the fourth generation. In 2023, they bought out a 40% outside stake and took full control as co-chairs. Fiscal 2025 revenue hit €1.5 billion across 21 hotels, 33 casinos, and nearly 200 restaurants and bars. Fouquet’s Mykonos opened in 2026.

“They think quarter to quarter. We think generation to generation.”
Alexandre Barrière

The Forte family lost its empire, Trusthouse Forte, to a hostile takeover in 1996. Sir Rocco rebuilt from scratch around local ownership and Italian character. His three children now run large parts of the company. Charles, 32, leads development and plans to double the business in five years. Lydia runs food and beverage. Irene leads spa and founded Irene Forte Skincare, made from ingredients grown at the family’s Verdura Resort in Sicily.

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund took a 49% stake, valuing the group at roughly $741 million. All three siblings worked hotel kitchens and housekeeping as teenagers. That sounds like the internship my dad ran for his kids and grandkids at Outrigger, summers rotating through housekeeping, maintenance, bell, and front desk.

In summary – millennials are stepping into leadership roles at family companies across the hospitality and travel industries.

They are bringing a sense of place, intention, and a vision for designing luxury experiences for a generation that values different things than our parents.

What this new generation of leaders will change remains to be seen, but I’m looking forward to watching as they reshape and redefine luxury travel.

🗝️ Room Report — Naviva, Four Seasons Punta Mita, Mexico

Every travel advisor keeps a bucket list of hotels. These are properties we want to prioritize visiting in the next few years, the ones that make us scroll endlessly through their online galleries and pitch to our clients like evangelists.

Naviva has been at the top of my list since it opened three years ago. I finally made it down here on an impulse, last-minute trip thanks to my angel in laws who agreed to watch my children the day after returning from Alaska, and a husband who has learned it’s best to indulge me in these flights of fancy.

Designed by the architects at Luxury Frontiers , (who also designed Nayara Tented Camp and King’s Pool Camp in Botswana, two of my favorite properties on earth), Naviva stands for “Naturaleza Viva” or “Living Nature.”

Naviva is the adults-only, tented sister property to Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita. It sits on 48 acres and has only 15 tents or “bungalows.” Guests can walk or shuttle over to the main Four Seasons for restaurants, but your all-inclusive rate doesn’t cover meals over there. You do get a room credit if you book through me, your friendly Four Seasons Preferred Advisor. We blew ours by buying overpriced yoga clothes at their boutique since we forgot ours at home.

The tents

These are basically like luxury safari tents. They have canvas roofs, hardwood floors, freestanding tubs, indoor and outdoor showers, a private deck, and a plunge pool that’s kept at a balmy 85 degrees. There are two categories:

• Luxury Tent: about 1,259 sq ft of combined indoor and outdoor space

• Grand Luxury Tent: 1,604 to 1,722 sq ft, most with better ocean or jungle views and larger outdoor decks

Before you worry, every tent AC.

What’s included in the rate

All-inclusive nightly rates typically run from around $3,500 to $6,000+ per tent, per night depending on season and category. Holiday weeks and Grand Tents can get even pricier, and minimum night stays apply during peak periods.

Naviva runs on an all-inclusive model, and your stay includes:

• All meals and premium beverages (top-shelf spirits, curated wine list)

• One 90-minute spa journey per guest, per stay

• A personal guide assigned to your stay who builds a custom itinerary

• Group experiences: guided hikes, snorkel outings, temazcal ceremonies, agave and raicilla tastings, watercolor workshops, yoga, wine tasting, sound baths, Mexican boxing

• Naviva guests enjoy access to all of the Four Seasons Punta Mita resort’s restaurants, beaches, pools, and facilities.

• Guests receive a USD $130 dining credit per person, per meal at Four Seasons Punta Mita restaurants. This allows guests to enjoy experiences such as breakfast at Dos Catrinas, a poolside lunch at Tamai, beachside dining at Manzanillas, or dinner at Aramara, just to name a few. It’s a wonderful benefit for travelers looking to explore a different ambiance while still enjoying the personalized service and intimacy of Naviva.

• Preferred Partners who book through Alpenglow Travel receive a USD $200 resort credit per bungalow. Guests can apply this credit toward airport transfers, private experiences, additional spa treatments, and more.

• Additionally, many special events, including the Naviva Unplugged Concert Series, are included in the nightly rate and are exclusively available to Naviva guests.

Not included: additional spa treatments beyond the first, private excursions, and the Naviva Unplugged concert series (capped at 30 guests, ticketed separately).

Food

I am still getting used to the fact that we can order literally anything here. They don’t have menus, they just tell you the special and you can take it or pick anything else you want out of thin air.

They have one all-day restaurant on property, plus in-tent dining at anytime. We had amazing ceviche by the pool. Beach picnics, cliffside dinners, and jungle breakfasts can all be arranged through your guide at no extra cost.

In terms of activities, we are partaking in the yoga, wine tasting, and temezcal ceremony.

This place is magical. It’s like a safari camp except the animal viewing are little wild pigs and some lizards. The beach feels totally private, and the staff are warm without being stuffy.

There’s an advanced purchase offer through November 30th that offers 15% off, and a $200 resort credit if you book through me. Contact me here: www.alpenglowtravel.com

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

1. Hoshinoya turned a 1908 prison into a hotel in Nara
Hoshinoya opened inside the old Nara prison this month. It’s a red-brick building from 1908, still recognizably a prison from the outside. Architect Rie Azuma knocked down walls between the original cells to make 48 suites, so the century-old masonry sits behind your bed.
Wallpaper*

2. Fouquet’s finally left France
The Parisian brand behind Hôtel Fouquet’s on the Champs-Élysées just opened on Paraga Beach in Mykonos. Sixty-one suites, three villas, Divercity Architects, and a spa with Dr. Barbara Sturm. It’s their first property outside France.
Wallpaper*

3. Explora Journeys joined Hilton Honors
Announced July 22. Explora is the first luxury ocean cruise line to plug into Hilton’s points program, meaning members can now earn and redeem on sailings.
Lifestyle and Tech

4. LVMH just unveiled a Dinner Yacht concept under the Orient Express brand, another piece of its push to turn luxury into infrastructure rather than just handbags. More on the strategy here: https://www.hotel-online.com/news/lvmh-and-accors-orient-express-sets-its-sights-on-new-tech-billionaire-class

1. Goldener Hirsch Deer Valley is offering a third night free for travel through December 13, 2026.

2. Bishop’s Lodge has a stay longer/stay more promotion on guestrooms, save up to 30% when staying 4 or more nights. Suites offer a 20% savings on select dates.

3. Four Seasons Naviva Advanced Purchase 15% off through Nov 30th.

4. Four Seasons Punta Mita:

   5^th Night Free Promo: Thanksgiving and January - April 2027

   4^th Night Free Promo: Now through middle of December

   SPECIAL DEALS:

   Offering 40% off Best Available Rate for 5 of their Beach Homes/Estates and Villas for stays through the month of May. Please click on the hyperlinks for more details on each of these

   Casa Tesoro - 7 Bedroom Estate

   Casa Tesoro Virtual Tour

   Coral Beach Home

   Arena Beach Home

   Sol Oceanfront Villa

   Luna Ocean Villa

5. FOUR SEASONS NEVIS:

Preferred Partner offers and added values:

• BRAND NEW Island Breakaway package

  • 4 night stays from $3120 including tax, service & transfers

    • Oceanside room (after guaranteed upgrade), plus Preferred Partner benefits

• 4^th Night Free open for Thanksgiving & pre-Festive (until December 26th)

  • With triple Preferred Partner credit

5. Luxury hotel openings in 2026:

   A few of the most-hyped luxury hotel openings in 2026, from restored European palazzos to remote wellness resorts.

   • Orient Express Venezia (Venice, Italy): A 15th-century palazzo in Cannaregio with 47 rooms, gilded ballrooms, and an arrival by canal.

   • Corinthia Rome (Rome, Italy): Corinthia’s first Italian property, in a 1914 landmark on Piazza del Parlamento. 60 rooms and a spa built inside the original Bank of Italy vaults.

   • The Cooper (Charleston, South Carolina): Five-star arrival on Charleston’s harbor, with private yacht charters, a full spa, and an infinity pool over the water.

   • The Huntington Hotel (San Francisco, California): Ken Fulk restored this Nob Hill icon top to bottom. 143 rooms, the Big Four restaurant is back, and there’s a three-level spa.

   • Mandarin Oriental, Desaru Coast (Malaysia): 44 suites and villas on 128 rainforest acres along the South China Sea, most with private plunge pools and yoga pavilions.

   • White Elephant Aspen (Aspen, Colorado): The Nantucket brand’s first mountain resort, opened this summer on Dean Street. 26 rooms and suites, private terraces, art, and Hooch, the restaurant.

   • Faraway Jackson Hole (Jackson, Wyoming): Faraway went west with its first Rockies property, minutes from the ski lifts.

   • Danieli, A Four Seasons Hotel (Venice, Italy): The Danieli reopened this summer under Four Seasons after a full restoration. Gothic landmark on the lagoon, original Sala Duca D’Aosta preserved, and a rebuilt rooftop terrace.

   • Park Hyatt Mexico City (Mexico City, Mexico): Opening in August. 155 rooms in Polanco with Chapultepec views, indoor-outdoor spa, and Park Hyatt’s first Mexico City address.

   • Aman Beverly Hills (Los Angeles, California): Aman’s Beverly Hills debut lands later this year on the corner of Rodeo and Wilshire. 40 rooms and 42 residences.

   • Amanvari (Baja California Sur, Mexico): Aman's Mexico debut, opening this summer inside the Costa Palmas community on Baja's East Cape. 18 pavilions and 21 residences on the Sea of Cortez, with the sensory-restrained Aman treatment applied to a desert-meets-water setting.

     Do you have a friend primed for succession? Send them this article. Millennials unite.

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🗝️ The Upgrade | Weekly by Anne Marie Brown

Issue 15 · Why is everyone becoming a travel agent? My take on Fora.

In The Upgrade this week:

1. Pre-Departure – My take on controversial tech company/travel agency Fora

2. The Room Report – The newly opened Delano Miami

3. The Lobby Bar – This week’s Lobby Bar covers a LOT this week. Ennismore is heading toward a U.S. IPO at €3.2 billion with an Airbnb partnership as the potential demand story; Aspen Hospitality launched Nell Hotels with The Nell New York opening fall 2027, and The Little Nell closes April 2027 for a full renovation; and sooooo much more

Travelers,

This week’s The Upgrade is a spicy one. If you’ve chatted with me in the last year, you know I have strong opinions about Fora – the latest disrupter in our little corner of the luxury travel industry. I’ve been part of controversial companies in the past, so I’m equally fascinated by and concerned about this one. I also sit on the board of a VC company, so spend a lot of time hearing pitches from tech startups, and so put on my investor hat to look at the SWOT analysis of this one.

This weekend, I also went to the WORLD CUP third place game in Miami, because YOLO. I stayed at the Delano, so the Room Report is my take on this very swanky, very beige and white, newly renovated hotel.

Happy travels,

Anne Marie

Yours truly at the World Cup Game in Miami this weekend

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

Why is everyone becoming a travel agent? My take on Fora.

I ran into an old colleague last week. We’ve known each other for 18 years, and worked together at Exclusive Resorts, Inspirato, and Coastline, dovetailing each other at the latter two. When I asked what he was doing, he said, “I’m with Fora.” At a recent industry lunch with a sales rep for a new luxury hotel, a fellow attendee said, “This may be controversial, but I’m with Fora.” I received two emails from acquaintances yesterday who are thinking about becoming travel advisors, who both asked, “Should I just sign up with Fora first?”

I’m a luxury travel advisor, (not hosted under Fora), and have built my career first through growing up in a family that owned a hotel company, Outrigger Hotels, and then through helping create the Once in a Lifetime program at Exclusive Resorts and the Journeys and Bespoke programs at Inspirato. I’ve consulted for Airbnb and Under Canvas Adventures (preparing them for sale to KSL), and sit on the board of several hospitality companies. I live and breathe the travel industry.

If you are thinking about becoming an agent, or have recently joined the ranks of Fora, here’s my travel advising 101 guide: Everything You Want To Know About the Travel Advising Industry

Fora is a host agency, meaning it acts as an umbrella organization under which independent travel advisors build their businesses. For those of you wondering how one becomes a travel advisor, there is no official test you must take. An IATA number – a travel company’s registration with the International Air Transport Association – serves as a form of licensing. It is the way that hotels track and pay commission via systems like Onyx.

Getting access to an IATA number used to require letters of recommendation, demonstrated sales volume, and executive background checks. Now it’s as simple as joining a host agency, which handles your commission tracking and payments in exchange for a cut of your commission.

For $299 a year and no sales minimums, anyone can join, complete training, access Fora’s supplier relationships, and start booking travel for commissions.

According to Fora’s statements to Fortune and Forbes (July 2026), and their “About Us” page, 97% of their 15,000 advisors had never sold travel before joining. 86% are women. Co-founder Henley Vazquez, a former Virtuoso agency owner and Travel + Leisure A-Lister, has publicly described the opportunity as “the new real estate” for women looking for a career change or additional income.

The short answer is “yes,” with a caveat. Travel advising is typically an “eat what you kill” job, and for most advisors new to the industry, building a book of business takes time and financial investment.

Commission splits start at 70/30 with Fora taking 30, moving to 80/20 once an advisor hits $300,000 in annual bookings, and 90/10 at $2 million. The $299 annual fee covers access to the platform, training, Fora’s IATA number, and supplier partnerships including Virtuoso, Four Seasons, and Rosewood Elite.

These Preferred Partner programs, as well as Virtuoso, provide clients who book through agency members with benefits, such as upgrades, late check outs, breakfast, and resort credits. Every major host agency has access to these programs. Fora calls them “perks”, Coastline calls them “benefits.” It’s a major selling point of working with one of these agents.

These commission splits mirror those of other major host agencies such as SmartFlyer, TravelEdge, and Coastline. The difference is that you are on your own. You have access to Fora’s training docs and their tech, which is arguably the best I’ve seen in the business, but you don’t have a mentor or senior advisor giving you leads or helping you create relationships with suppliers.

When your commission from a hotel is 10%, and your host agency is taking 30% of that commission, you are making $7,000 annually if you book $100,000 in travel. That’s decent ancillary income to subsidize a travel budget for your average family, but it certainly doesn’t replace a full-time job.

Travel Weekly’s data notes that among advisors who have been in the business two years or less, 74% earn under $25,000 annually. At three to five years, that drops to only 47%.

I remind new sub-ICs (i.e., agents in training) that the learning curve is steep regardless of where you start. I spend most of my year traveling personally, meeting with hotels and destination management companies, and attending industry conferences for training and connections. The advisors who excel at this job, whether they’re at Fora or anywhere else, tend to have put in real time learning, traveling, and researching.

The first group attracted to Fora appears to be social media influencers

Frankly, I should have realized something like Fora was coming. A few years ago, I said that influencers were the next set of travel advisors as they looked to monetize their platforms.

One of the hardest things to solve for in the luxury travel space is the top of the sales funnel, and social media influencers who post about travel already have that piece in place. Being able to earn commission from their content is a logical next step, which is why we see Tik Tok’s new partnership with Booking.com or platforms like Stay22 becoming popular with influencers.

However, a great content creator does not necessarily make a stellar travel advisor – they are distinct skillsets.

The second group is women looking for additional household income

The pandemic shifted work habits, and as companies are now calling people back to the office, many women are saying “Hell no, I won’t go.” Everyone has friends who travel. What if they booked with you and you made some money off that side hustle? Many of these moms are the ones who handle their own family’s travel plans, so planning travel for others looks like a natural outgrowth of that experience.

We are approached weekly by people wanting to work on our team at Alpenglow Travel, and we turn many of them away. To join us, we require a new advisor to have an established network, experience booking travel or experience in a travel or another hospitality role, and the drive to book more than $100,000 annually, which is our breakeven point for carrying the cost of hosting a sub-IC.

Several of the people who approached us about being sub-ICs were already Fora agents. Naturally, I asked about their experience with Fora. The resounding response was that they loved the technology, but with some caveats.

These agents expressed that they felt like they were on their own under Fora. They had access to all this information, but no one to help them navigate it. They also seemed to feel slightly less respected as a Fora agent among other industry professionals.

On the industry side, hotel sales directors I have known for years expressed frustration to me at the flood of Fora advisors requesting FAM trips (familiarization trips that suppliers and hotels put on to show off their services or property to a group of agents), or agent rates, which are discounted rates that hotels offer to travel agents.

I do think they are actively trying to address the issues mentioned above.

With a $1B valuation and 15,000 advisors on its platform, Fora has become hard to ignore. They seemed to have taken the “move fast and break stuff” approach, much like Uber and Airbnb did in their early days, to gain enough volume to strong arm their way into the industry.

The traditional path to becoming a travel advisor is slow by design and is usually something of an apprenticeship model. You come up under a senior agent, spend years learning supplier relationships, build a book of business gradually, and earn your independence over time.

Fora compresses that training timeline significantly, and does not pair new agents with an established travel professional. I am not trying to gatekeep here and if it sounds like I’m a snob about new agents creating their own companies, that’s not my intention. My concern comes from the feeling between Ai platforms and Fora, the agency world is becoming the Wild West of booking.

An experienced advisor’s skill set takes time to develop, and even then, mistakes happen. I made one last week that cost me $3,000. Newer agents just don’t have that kind of financial backing to make it right if they mess up. One point I do find interesting – all Fora advisors are covered under the company’s errors and omissions policy, underwritten by Berkshire Hathaway, with a $10,000 deductible and a $3 million overall limit. The coverage applies to claims brought against Fora in the United States, and advisors must maintain clear Fora affiliation in their marketing to remain eligible. So, if something goes wrong, the claim runs through Fora, not the advisor directly.

However, the policy is explicitly designed not for routine mistakes, but for significant errors or liability exposure. So, my $3,000 error would likely not have been covered. As an affiliate agency hosted under Coastline, we are required to hold our own E&O policy that covers all our sub-ICs.

The proliferation of inexperienced advisors means more errors, more escalations, and more strain on hotel sales teams that are already managing high volume. Henley Vazquez, one of Fora’s co-founders, has addressed this directly. Her counterargument is that suppliers want bookings, and Fora is delivering net new demand that wasn’t previously coming through the trade channel. This sounds suspiciously like the OTAs (online travel agencies, e.g Expedia and Booking.com) argument. I don’t think this approach works in the luxury sector, where higher dollar amounts require higher attention to detail and more experience.

However, Vazquez is correct that the model is working at scale.

For a small boutique hotel, the argument of scale is attractive. Rather than forking over 25% to an OTA like Expedia, a small, independent hotel can have access to a large network of agents via Fora’s plaform for just 10% commission.

The question I have for travelers is: What does it mean to book a $30,000 trip with someone who joined Fora six months ago because they loved planning their own vacations? Do you trust your friend enough to hand over that kind of money to someone with close to zero training or licensing?

In talking with my friend yesterday, it seems that Fora is now trying to take a step back and address some of the original issues I noted above. Are all 15,000 advisors on their platform full-time advisors looking to make a career out of being a travel agent? Hardly likely.

Fora has not publicly released how their sales volume is distributed across their 15,000 advisors. They have disclosed that their top 100 advisors and agencies generated more than $200 million in 2025, with approximately 40 of them booking more than $2 million each (https://www.foratravel.com/newsroom/fora-announces-centum-2026-honorees).

That’s 0.26% doing meaningful booking volume.

In contrast, Coastline, the host agency that we are under, hosts around 450 advisors, and 50 are booking more than $2M annually, which is 11%.

My friend posits there are probably a few hundred Fora agents booking more than $1M annually, which is typically the baseline benchmark in our industry of a decently successful advisor.

However, there are likely thousands booking $100,000 or less in gross sales.

Fora has instituted a tiered system for advisors, defining the tiers as Classic, Pro, and Fora X. This was introduced at some point after Fora’s 2021 founding, likely as a response to industry criticism about inexperienced advisors accessing supplier perks without production requirements.

FAM trips, travel agent rates, individual Virtuoso login, IATA card, and CLIA membership (Cruise Lines International Association) are now all gated behind Fora Pro status, which requires $100,000 in annual commissionable bookings, 10 unique clients, and five client reviews. New advisors do not have access to any of those benefits from day one. Pro tier advisors can only access 3-5 agent rates a year, and no property they haven’t booked before.

The problem with the gap in training and mentorship is that external, predatory players are trying to fill that role. Every day, there are courses and coaches popping up like mushrooms promising to train these new agents in aggressive sales tactics. Some of them are straightforwardly predatory, structured more like MLMs than professional development programs. When you see a proliferation of courses promising passive income through travel, that’s usually a sign that someone has figured out how to monetize aspiration. Just try posting on a Reddit travel forum and you will be flooded with direct message requests asking if you’d like to work with a travel advisor.

Fora is not in that category. The founders have industry credentials, the supplier relationships are legitimate, and the technology is better than most of what exists in this space. Their AI assistant, Via, handles destination research, itinerary drafting, and proposal generation, which frees up advisors to spend time on the relationship side of the work.

I’m hoping to meet some of the Fora folk at Virtuoso travel week because I’m fascinated by their disruption in the industry.

Putting on my investor hat, here’s my take. They just raised a $60M series D yesterday and, as noted earlier, have a $1B post-money valuation. To put that in perspective, Outrigger sold for roughly the same number after our family spent close to 100 years building the company.

Total funding is now at $138M, backed by Thrive Capital, Insight Partners, Forerunner Ventures, Heartcore Capital, Tactile Ventures, and (oddly) Amy Schumer. Their advisors have collectively booked $3 billion in travel since launching in 2021. It took three years to reach the first billion. The third billion took five months.

I’m an investor in a handful of VC funds in the travel space and I sit on the board of Denver Ventures. Am I just slightly jealous that I didn’t think of this concept or invest in it early? Absolutely. Amy Schumer bested me there.

However, I think their business is likely more vulnerable to being replaced by Ai platforms than the traditional host agencies, at least at the lower levels.

As AI becomes more sophisticated, a newbie agent without much experience becomes relatively interchangeable for one of these platforms that a client can self-service, with less risk involved. As an investor and a board member of a VC fund, that would give me pause.

However, Fora is a tech company that operates a travel agency, not a travel agency that happens to have developed good technology. One obvious pivot is for Fora to offer AI-assisted planning directly to the consumer, or to license their tech to other agencies. I think these potential opportunities is what is driving their valuation.

The $1 billion valuation is also partially built on advisor volume and platform growth, which creates pressure to keep the top of the top of the funnel wide, welcoming as many new agents as possible.

The result is an industry with more advisors than ever, significant variance in quality, and travelers who may not know the difference until something goes wrong.

Just like working with an Edward Jones advisor for your investing, it’s hard to go wrong with a straightforward hotel booking. Hotel platforms are relatively ubiquitous across Virtuoso agencies that have developed these skins sitting on top of GDS (global distribution systems) that tie into hotel reservations.

If you’re booking a relatively easy trip, a Fora advisor who specializes in your destination and has a track record of bookings can absolutely deliver. Ask how long they’ve been booking travel, what their volume looks like, and whether they have specific experience with the properties or region you’re considering. A good advisor, at any agency, will have direct answers to those questions.

For complex, high-value itineraries, treat finding your travel advisor the same as you would interviewing financial advisors. Look for someone with years of experience, direct experience traveling at the level you travel at, and supplier relationships they’ve built over time. Interview past clients who aren’t their friends and family.

Are you just booking for yourself and friends and family? If yes, then absolutely join Fora. It’s low cost and their tech is great.

Are you willing to do a lot of your own research for training? Join Fora and sign up for all the trade publications, like Travel Weekly. Become an ASTA (American Society of Travel Advisors) member and take their training courses. Listen to Tique Talks and sign up for their Niche program. Don’t fall for other training courses -- most are a scam and will spew word salad at you without any real understanding of the industry.

If you want to make a serious career out of this, find a host agency and ask them what affiliate agencies are taking on new Sub ICs. Smartflyer and Coastline are probably the largest ones with the newest tech and younger millennial agents who are adapting to the world of AI the fastest.

The industry will eventually respond to the volume of new entrants with some form of standardization or credential requirements. It will take a few years of consumers reporting agents to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), or a handful of lawsuits.

I was asked in an industry publication interview yesterday whether I am anti-Fora.

The answer is no, I do think they have a role that needs to be filled. There is clearly a market for people who want to book travel at the hobbyist level, but don’t want to make a career out of it. Fora is the perfect entrance into that market, letting people get their feet wet before they decide if they want to be a serious advisor. (Yes, I am aware there are some Fora advisors who take the job very seriously and do quite well in their own right, just not the same percentage as you see at other host agencies).

My problem is more with their market positioning, their broad stroke approach to giving people access to book travel for others without much training, and what seems like a lack of support for newer advisors.

🗝️ Room Report — The Delano, Miami Beach

This weekend, my husband and I YOLO’d our way to the World Cup third place game in Miami to watch England and France more goals than I thought possible in a soccer game. When deciding where to stay, naturally I chose the newly-opened Delano, Miami. After watching Nadine @the Stanza’s interview with Jonathan Goldstein of Cain Capital, I wanted to go check out this renovation project myself.

The Delano opened in 1947 on Collins Avenue, designed by Robert Swartburg as an exercise in post-war optimism. For decades it sat alongside the rest of the Art Deco district, which by the 1970s and ‘80s had seen most of its sophisticated clientele migrate to Europe and the Caribbean.

Ian Schrager bought the building in 1995, hired Philippe Starck, and reopened it as something Miami had never seen. Starck designed the interiors as a series of “living rooms” assembled from the furniture and objects of a specific childhood memory, mismatched on purpose and scaled for comfort rather than formality. The billowing white curtains at the entrance became a signature of the hotel, and could be why the entire place is white today. Madonna celebrated her birthday at the Blue Door restaurant, which she co-owned.

The property closed in March 2020. Eldridge Industries acquired it and brought in Ennismore (the hotel collective owned jointly by founder Sharan Pasricha and Accor) to reopen it. Because it’s a Sharan property, there’s a membership club aspect, like Estelle Manor.

The reopened property has 171 rooms across standard categories, poolside Bungalow Suites, and Penthouse Suites. The renovation outlay was roughly $100 million in capex. Elastic Architects restored the original terrazzo floors, hexagonal lobby columns, and the vertical paint banding on the facade.

My take:

I almost never send clients to a hotel in its first year of operation because there are bound to be hiccups. As a hotelier, I fully expected to encounter some during my stay, and I definitely did.

I stayed in an Ocean View King room for $755 per night, and it felt like a bargain for South Beach standards. However, the room did feel small. The first night, our AC wasn’t fully functioning, but they had it fixed the next day. The service elevator was….not in service for the entire weekend. This meant that not only were housekeepers and other staff using the elevators, which meant it took forever to get anywhere, but they also were moving furniture in to the higher level suites and penthouse units over the weekend, so moving crews were hauling boxes through those same elevators. I would probably have rescheduled that move if I were the GM.

I did spot Sharan walking around with other executives – they were there for the World Cup. That was an exciting moment for me as I wore my Estelle Manor cap all weekend.

The pool and restaurant spaces are lovely and feel more like a Pasricha property than the rest of the hotel. The all-white décor in the penthouse units I found felt a little soulless, (and I’m working on an article about the beige-ification of hotels as suppliers source all their FF&E from the same companies), but it could just not be my vibe. I’m more maximalist British mansion than “Clean Girl” aesthetic any day.

I will take a moment to acknowledge the staff, who were exceptionally warm and every single person went out of their way to ask how our stay was. We befriended the French bartender and met up with him at the World Cup Game. The concierge, Jelena, was a delight and took time to show me the penthouse and the rest of the property on one of her busiest days.

Ennismore is actively expanding the brand globally, with Delano Dubai open since October 2024 and Maison Delano Paris since April 2023.

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

• Ennismore is heading toward a U.S. IPO at a valuation of roughly €3.2 billion, the floor of the analyst range, because investors are pricing it as a hotel collection rather than a demand platform; Rafat Ali argues in Skift that a distribution deal with Airbnb is the move that closes the gap, and if it happens, it changes how properties like The Hoxton, Mondrian, and 25hours reach travelers.

• Aspen Hospitality has launched Nell Hotels as a standalone brand, with The Nell New York opening fall 2027 inside Rockefeller Center as a Relais & Châteaux property; more immediately, The Little Nell closes April 2027 for a full renovation and will not reopen until the 2027/28 ski season, per the Aspen Times.

• Aman and OKO Group are in permit review for an 81-room hotel at the base of Aspen Mountain, part of a 320,000-square-foot Lift One corridor redevelopment that city officials call potentially the most complex build in Aspen history, with no groundbreaking date confirmed, per Aspen Journalism.

• Kygo’s Palm Tree Crew acquired River Valley Ranch Golf Course in Carbondale in partnership with Major Food Group and 8K Capital, with plans to add MFG dining and cultural programming to the 187-acre course roughly 30 miles down-valley from Aspen, per the Aspen Times.

• W South Beach closes August 20 and reopens late 2027 as Waldorf Astoria Miami Beach, with Reuben Brothers converting all 348 suites, the pool deck, spa, and food and beverage program after paying over $400 million for the property in 2024, per Hotel Dive.

• Aman appointed Victor Clavell as Chief Operating Officer, a scale hire with a resume spanning Ritz-Carlton, Bulgari, EDITION, W, and Rosewood, timed to Amanvari opening in East Cape Mexico next spring and Aman Dubai targeting 2027, per Hospitality Net.

• Delta’s premium cabin out-earned economy for the first time, with first class and premium tickets generating $6.92 billion against the main cabin’s $6.85 billion in Q2 2026, part of a record $17.67 billion quarter, per CNBC.

• The World Cup did not lift international arrivals to the U.S. in June, with overseas visitors down 1.8% year-over-year despite match-driven surges from the UK, Ecuador, and Colombia, while Germany, Argentina, South Korea, and Canada all fell by double digits, per Skift.

• The DOT officially restored the 2011 standard on airline fee disclosure, rolling back the 2024 rule that required upfront transparency on baggage and seat fees after the Fifth Circuit vacated it earlier this year, per ASTA.

• Patina Osaka scored a rare 100/100 to take the top spot in this year’s Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards, with Castiglion del Bosco winning best hotel in Italy and The Fifth Avenue Hotel taking best in New York City, per SmartFlyer.

  Thanks for reading The Upgrade ! If you have a friend who is thinking of joining Fora, send them this article.

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🗝️ The Upgrade | Weekly by Anne Marie Brown.

Issue 14 · Sonnwies and What Family Hotels Do Differently

In The Upgrade this week:

1. Pre-Departure – Sonnwies, an interview with owner Anna Hinteregger, and Kinder Hotels

2. The Room Report – Merged with Pre-Departure - Sonnwies

3. The Lobby Bar – This week's Lobby Bar covers Hilton's new points partnership with Explora Journeys, Oetker Collection's US debut at The Vineta in Palm Beach, the opening of Hotel Palacio Bellas Artes in San Sebastián, the Winter 2026 debut of Lily of the Valley Courchevel, and Skift's read on the "barbell" hotel market where ultra-luxury and extended-stay pull ahead while the middle stalls.

   ---

Travelers,

This week, Pre-Departure and the Room Report will be rolled into one – a deep dive on Sonnwies.

I have long been fascinated by family hotels in the Swiss/Austrian/Italian Alps. When I was a child, my family spent two summers in Gstaad, where we hiked through Sound of Music scenery to high-altitude playgrounds, ate fondu, and made flower crowns. Gstaad in the early 1990s was a bit different from the glitzy destination it is now, but it lives in my memories as it used to be. I wanted to give my own children a similar experience and came across Sonnwies in Italy’s Dolomites.

As a luxury traveler and co-founder of a travel agency, I’m constantly on the hunt for hotels that provide a true luxury family experience. I’m not talking about hotels that might have a nice kids’ club, colored pencils on check in, and child-sized robes, but then not allow kids in the pool for most of the day. I’m thinking of hotels where families not only feel welcome at the luxury level, but where the hotel also eases – not exacerbates – the stress of traveling with children.

We had the most wonderful stay at Sonnwies, a Kinder Hotel in the Dolomites, this June, and I don’t think I have ever truly felt that relaxed.

I was lucky enough to meet one of the owners, and have included an exclusive interview with her in this week’s The Upgrade | Weekly.

Subscribe now

Happy travels,

Anne Marie

Yours truly with my Bougie Bunnies on a Sonnwies Land Rover picnic

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

What Kinder Hotels Do Differently

Many readers of The Upgrade are savvy hospitality professionals or travelers who know the typical categories of hotels – select service, lifestyle, resort, boutique, all inclusive, etc., but Family Hotels or Kinder Hotels are their own category, typically specific to Europe.

There is a certification program, primarily in the German-speaking Alpine markets – Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy’s South Tyrol. Hotels are rated on a point system across categories like:

1) Kids’ club programming and hours

2) Baby and toddler equipment

3) Family room configurations

4) Childproofing

5) Dining (kid menus, meal timing, allergy awareness)

6) Outdoor play space

7) Staff training for children

The Capex for these properties is extraordinary and they are a complex model to run. I did some research into the financials for the category for this week’s Master Key. Many of these hotels have long been family owned and operated, but are transitioning away as family members of younger generations are no longer interested in the grind. The family that owns Sonnwies is not one of those families. They have fully committed to family ownership, and it shows.

Sonnwies is a luxury, 5-star Kinder Hotel located about an hour from Bolzano airport, in Italy’s Dolomites. The property sits in Luson, a village of 1,500 people 12 kilometers from Brixen. Family-friendly hikes such as the Woody Walk at Plose are just 20 minutes away. The hotel has a farm with 30 animals, and kids can feed them, gather freshly laid eggs and eat them for breakfast, ride horses, take alpacas for a walk, and pet the bunnies. They also design everything with kids in mind, from hand rails on the stairs that are kid height to a kid-sized buffet, even stairs up to the front desk so kids can talk to the front desk agents.

When we vacationed there just two weeks ago, our children, (and we), were in heaven.

Kids’ Club

Sonnwies’ rates include kids’ club programming from 9 am to 9 pm most days. (Sunday hours are more limited.) Kids receive wrist bands that are either red (they can leave the club only with an adult) or green (they have full run of the property). By day three, we felt comfortable giving our kids green wrist bands and letting them explore on their own. That sort of independence is a unique experience for five and seven year olds.

Food is all-inclusive “soft.” All alcohol is a la carte. Anything ordered by the pool is also a la carte. Kids’ club hours are scheduled to allow parents to enjoy a proper dinner while the kids eat earlier with staff or to easily dine as a family.

Dining

Aside from the excellence of the childcare situation, Sonnwies really pulls ahead with its dining. The meals are designed as tasting menus with farm-to-table ingredients, and dinners are exceptional. Kids always have access to a pasta bar and can order chicken nuggets etc., but by the third day, my kids were eating fresh veggies, local cheeses, and duck. Outside of dining hours, food is available a la carte for an additional charge.

You are assigned the same table for all meals.

The Rooms

Entry-level studios run 40 square meters (430 square feet) with a pull-out sofa bed and a proper mountain-view balcony. The top four-room suite stretches to 130 square meters (1,400 square feet) with a freestanding bath and a separate children’s bedroom.

They have four room categories:

· 22 Studios

· 18 Suites

· 37 Luxury Suites

· 3 Forest Villas

Rates start at around €620 for studios, €830 for suites, and €925 for luxury suites, depending on the season. Full board with childcare is included. In the same tier, Cavallino Bianco in Ortisei starts at €456 and Quellenhof in Passeier at €400. The Sonnwies premium charge is justified by the product.

Interview with the Owner – Anna Hinteregger

This week, I’ve written an edition of Master Key for paid subscribers discussing our experience at Sonnwies, as well as the economics of Kinder Hotels, but for the purpose of this week’s Upgrade, I was lucky enough to meet and interview Anna Hinteregger, one of the siblings who own the property.

Coming from a hospitality family myself (for new readers, my family, the Kelleys, owned and operated Hawaii’s Outrigger Hotels for three generations until 2016), I enjoy discussing the unique challenges of family legacy in hospitality.

1) AMB: Your family bought the property as a farm in 1983. What inspired you to create a hotel specifically for families?

Anna: My mother was a teacher, and my father owned a construction company. In 1999, my parents opened a small guesthouse with just 17 rooms, laying the foundation for what Sonnwies has become today.

In 2002, my youngest brother was born, making us a family of four children of very different ages. When the youngest was a newborn my older brother was ten, I was eight, and my sister was six. As a family, we experienced firsthand how difficult it was to find accommodations that truly catered to families with children of different ages.

That experience shaped our vision. We wanted to create a place where families genuinely feel welcome and every generation can enjoy their holiday together.

Having grown up on a farm ourselves, it was equally important for us to keep nature at the heart of the experience. To this day, activities such as butter making, pony riding, feeding the animals, crafting with natural materials, gardening, and cooking together are part of our daily program. We want children to connect with nature while creating memories that will stay with them for a lifetime.

2) AMB: What sets Sonnwies apart from other luxury hotels in the region?

Anna: We are completely dedicated to families with children. Everything we do is designed around their needs while maintaining the highest standards of comfort and luxury.

Our architecture and interior design are timeless and of exceptional quality. Wherever possible, we collaborate with local artisans and use natural materials from the region. At the same time, the entire hotel has been thoughtfully designed so children can easily find their way around and feel at home from the very first moment.

For us, luxury is not only about beautiful spaces – it is about creating a place filled with warmth, nature, and meaningful family moments.

3) AMB: How are responsibilities divided within your family today?

Anna: Two years ago, my brother Lukas and I took over the business. He is responsible for the strategic development of our company, future projects, expansions, and marketing.

I oversee day-to-day operations with a strong focus on our guests, our team, and ensuring that every detail of the guest experience reflects our values.

Our parents continue to play an important role. My mother still supports us with financial administration and shares her invaluable experience whenever we need advice. My father remains actively involved in our construction projects, and our youngest brother supports the accounting department. Our sister Eva currently lives in Milan and is not involved in the family business.

4) AMB: As a family business, what are you most proud of?

Anna: I am especially proud that we have continuously invested in and developed Sonnwies over the past 25 years.

Even more importantly, I am proud of how well we work together as a family. Each of us contributes our own strengths, and together with our wonderful team – many of whom have been with us for many years – we have built something that goes far beyond a hotel.

5) AMB: What is something about running a family-owned hotel that people outside the industry often don’t understand?

Anna: Running a family-owned hotel requires an enormous amount of passion and dedication. The line between family life and work is often blurred because the business becomes part of everyday life.

Working with your own family is not always easy. Discussions can become emotional, but we also know each other incredibly well. We try to ensure that everyone takes responsibility in the areas where their strengths lie.

I believe that this is one of the greatest advantages of a family business. When everyone shares the same vision and contributes their best, there are endless opportunities to keep growing and improving together.

For me, there is nothing more rewarding than working in a place where other people create some of the happiest memories of their lives.

6) What does your all-inclusive concept allow you to do that a traditional à la carte model cannot?

Anna: We deliberately chose not to offer a traditional all-inclusive concept. Instead, we created our own hospitality concept that gives our international guests maximum flexibility.

Every morning, guests enjoy a generous South Tyrolean farmhouse breakfast buffet, while specialty coffees and freshly prepared egg dishes are served individually at the table.

Since we welcome guests from all over the world, dining habits and daily routines vary greatly. We wanted to create a concept that adapts to those different needs rather than asking guests to adapt to fixed schedules.

Serving regional, authentic, high-quality cuisine is very important to us. Many of our ingredients come from our own gardens at Sonnwies and Lake Garda, while others are sourced from trusted local producers with whom we have worked for many years.

Reducing food waste is another priority, so we have carefully designed our dining concept to combine flexibility with sustainability.

Children can enjoy their favorite dishes from the buffet whenever they are hungry after a day of playing, while adults – and children who prefer table service – can choose at any time from a menu featuring around twelve freshly prepared dishes that change daily.

This allows us to combine flexibility, exceptional quality, and sustainability.

7) AMB: What is the greatest challenge in operating a hotel where children are just as much your guests as their parents?

Anna: Although our focus is clearly on families and children, we never wanted to compromise on design or quality.

All our playhouses, family spa areas, and children’s spaces have been built using premium natural materials. The architecture was designed to encourage children to explore freely while creating a calm, elegant atmosphere where parents can relax.

Our philosophy is very simple: When children are happy, parents can truly relax.

8) AMB: How do you maintain consistently high-quality childcare as you continue to grow?

Anna: Our Kids’ Club is one of the most important elements of Sonnwies. Today, we have a team of more than 20 dedicated childcare professionals.

We invest continuously in training and professional development, meet regularly to exchange ideas, and constantly refine our programs. This ongoing collaboration enables us not only to maintain our high standards but to improve them year after year.

9) AMB: We’re excited about your expansion plans. Can you tell us about them?

Anna: Three years ago, we took our first step beyond South Tyrol by opening Borgo Tre on Lake Garda. This beautifully restored historic borgo (Italian for hamlet), overlooking the lake, has become one of our favorite retreats. It currently offers luxurious apartments, and we have exciting plans for its future development.

This autumn, we will also open our new adults-only property, SAN SONNEA Lodge Dolomites, located on the Zanser Alm in the heart of the Dolomites.

The five-star property will feature only 24 suites, each offering breathtaking views of the Geisler Peaks. Here, our focus is entirely on adults seeking tranquility, nature, and refined luxury in the mountains.

• SAN SONNEA will become our new umbrella brand.

• Sonnwies will be renamed SAN SONNEA Family Dolomites.

• Our Lake Garda property will become Borgo SAN SONNEA Lake Garda.

• Our adults-only property will be called SAN SONNEA Lodge Dolomites.

Each hotel will maintain its own unique identity while becoming part of the SAN SONNEA collection.

10) AMB: Could you ever imagine opening a property like this in the United States?

Anna: At the moment, our focus is on the exciting projects we are currently developing in Europe.

Of course, we are always open to new ideas and opportunities. Where the future will take us remains to be seen, but for now our priority is to continue bringing our vision to life here in Europe.

11) AMB: Who is your typical guest today compared to ten years ago?

Anna: Our guest profile has changed significantly over the past decade. Ten years ago, most of our guests came from neighboring countries and Italy. Today, we are delighted to welcome families from all over the world.

This international growth is incredibly rewarding and confirms that our concept resonates well beyond Europe.

12) AMB: Our clients are primarily American families. What do you think makes Sonnwies especially appealing to them?

Anna: I believe many American families are looking for something that has become increasingly rare: genuine connection – with nature, with each other, and with a slower pace of life.

Here in South Tyrol, we are fortunate to be surrounded by untouched nature, the majestic Dolomites, fresh mountain air, crystal-clear spring water, star-filled skies, farm animals, and authentic Alpine architecture.

To us, that is the true definition of luxury.

Sonnwies is about much more than beautiful accommodations. It is about creating meaningful family experiences, spending quality time together, and allowing children and parents alike to reconnect with nature. I believe that is exactly what makes our destination so special for international families – and especially for our American guests.

I am thrilled that our company, Alpenglow Travel, is building a partnership with Sonnwies.

We had an extraordinary stay there. Our kids loved the waterslides, animals, and friends we made. We loved the food, the chance to really relax while our kids were happy, and the hiking. The Dolomites are stunning. I haven’t felt that relaxed on a trip with our children in years. I’m already planning a return trip.

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

• Hilton x Explora Journeys partnership launches — Hilton Honors members can now earn and redeem points on Explora’s ultra-luxury ocean voyages (MSC Group), with a 5% discount and tier-specific onboard perks. Launched July 9. Read on Luxury Daily

• The Vineta Hotel opens in Palm Beach — Oetker Collection’s first US property (the group behind Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc and Eden Rock St Barths) debuts in the heart of Palm Beach. Read on Wallpaper*

• Lily of the Valley Courchevel confirmed for Winter 2026 — The Saint-Tropez wellness brand extends into the Alps with a 575 sqm ski-in/ski-out chalet by architect Charles Zana. Six bedrooms, private cinema, gym, pool, hammam, sleeps 14. Read on The Opening List

• Hotel Palacio Bellas Artes opens in San Sebastián — Isabel López Vilalta transformed a 1914 Beaux-Arts cinema into a Curio Collection by Hilton hotel, leaning into cinematic references and Basque cultural heritage. Read on Business Traveller

• The luxury/extended-stay "barbell" market — Extended-stay demand hit a four-year high (up 6.2% YoY in May vs. 0.7% for conventional hotels), while ultra-luxury holds firm and mid-tier upscale stalls. Relevant context for why clients are paying up at both ends. Read on Skift

Issue 13 · Is the 40^th Birthday The New Bachelorette?

In The Upgrade this week:

1. Pre-Departure – Is the 40^th Birthday the New Bachelorette?

2. The Room Report – Hotel Regina Louvre, Paris

3. The Lobby Bar – Louis Vuitton Will Open a Hotel, Coolcations, and another large hotel chain enters the Safari lodge game

Travelers,

I am sending out The Upgrade a bit late this week, as I’m flying home for our big Euro Summer trip. With a three-hour delay leaving Paris, we will land in Denver around midnight, if all goes according to plan. To be honest, the delay was the only travel hiccup we encountered on a 3.5-week trip through England, Italy, and France with a 5- and 7-year-old in tow, so I’ll count that as a win.

My husband has had the patience of a saint as I conducted site visits and meetings at every stop of our trip, because let’s face it, travel advisors never really vacation but rather balance work and travel simultaneously in a constant tug-of-war. The Travel Dispatch this week for paid subscribers will be the full details of our trip.

This week, I’m reflecting on milestone birthdays, particularly 40^th ones.

Happy travels! Anne Marie

Yours truly in Paris, on our balcony at the Regina Louvre, with the 40th Birthday Girl

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

Are 40^th Birthdays the New Bachelorette Trip?

Bailey Quin (McCarthy) is dressed in pink Dolce & Gabbana in Paris, surrounded by friends and people in pink poodle costumes. The next day, she posts elegant shots of herself and her guests in “tweed and tipple” dress aboard the British Pullman train.

Her trip, outfits, and themes are fabulous – ushering in her next decade with a fanfare that puts our boomer parents’ “over the hill” fetes to shame.

I devour each of her posts and message about them to a friend, gushing over how incredible each day is.

Bailey Quin, who is infinitely cooler than I am

I am writing this on a flight home from celebrating that particular friend’s 40th birthday on the French Riviera. She rented a villa and filled it with our family and another one for a week of beach clubs, pool time, Sancerre, hotel tours (because it’s me), and incredible food. At nearly 40,000 feet, I am now digging through photos and reflecting on an incredible week.

A year ago, I took five of my closest girlfriends on an epic trip through the British countryside. We galivanted in the gardens of Cliveden House, indulged in martinis and caviar in the Lanesborough bar in London, drove Ineos Grenadiers off road on the grounds of Estelle Manor, and played croquet in our best crisp whites at Four Seasons Hampshire. And oh yes, we dressed in 1920s garb and boarded the British Pullman murder mystery train. (If you’d like to recreate this trip, send me an email at AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com).

I was, admittedly, not the first woman to celebrate my 40th in style abroad with “my girls.” Also, Bailey’s birthday trip was likely much higher in budget, larger, and included more poodles.

We were, however, all part of a greater trend of women celebrating our fourth decade not with a whimper, but a bang.

These trips often include smaller groups, more curation, zero penis straws or “tribe” hats, and significantly more luxury hotels or villa rentals.

As my millennial clients turn 40, I’m sourcing villas in Mallorca, Irish castles, Mediterranean sailing yachts. There’s not the “everyone has to agree on a restaurant and hotel” discourse of our bachelorette days gone by. These are trips where you are given an agenda and show up, frequently treated by the birthday girl to the accommodations and at times, to much more of the trip.

On my trip, some of our favorite moments were true reflections of girlhood. We became hilariously lost on a forest walk, attempted to film Downtown Abbey reenactments at Highclere Castle, tried to solve the mystery on the Pullman in terrible British accents, and went to bed each night after dinners full of meaningful discussions about such things as private vs public schools for our kids and what the rules of croquet actually are.

I haven’t laughed that hard or stayed up that late in years.

Each day, we gave ourselves permission to fully dress up. (Our luggage was excessive, but that was the point.) I wanted the trip to be filled with the opportunity to take up space and stop apologizing for being a group of dynamic women wholeheartedly ourselves, having a blast.

As a travel advisor, I could have easily booked all this myself, but my birthday gift to little old me was to use another travel advisor to handle the logistics for me, and it was such a treat! For once, I was the designer but not the executor. I set down my mental load and giggled my way through this milestone. My friends took that mental load on for me, and I got to relax.

This year, in addition to spending the week in France for the aforementioned 40th celebration, I traveled to Rwanda to celebrate another friend’s 40th with gorilla trekking. I’m off to Charleston – much closer to home – for yet another later this year.

My Instagram feed continues to yield more examples of what Brittany Allyn dubbed a “Me Moon,” or what Carrie Bradshaw called her “self wedding.” Influencers are cresting 40 with fervor and pizazz.

Millennials are coming into our own as the “Great Wealth Transfer” begins. While for many, that transfer may not be a reality, my cohort is hitting the point in their careers where they have the salary to spend on meaningful travel and the seniority to take the time off.

We have ridden an early adulthood filled with student debt, global instability, pandemics, economic upheaval, and for many, bidding the dream of owning a home as nice as our parents’ place goodbye.

While new social media platforms pop up at the speed of prairie dogs, Instagram continues to reign supreme in the millennial female zeitgeist. Most of my travel inspiration begins with Instagram, and many of my clients find me there or through Reddit. When I ask what they are envisioning for a trip, they often send reels or posts. These big celebrations are a chance to curate that vision for our closest friends.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the rise of women’s retreats, and I believe these 40^th birthday trips are a continuation of that larger trend.

It’s not just women. My husband spent his 40th birthday heli-skiing with some of his closest guy friends and traveled to the Masters to celebrate the 40th of another friend this past spring.

Hotels and experiences are once again, the forefront of these celebrations, and should embrace the trend. The hotels that make group bookings for rooms, upgrade the birthday girl or guy, smooth the process of transfers and restaurant reservations, these will be the ones that end on Instagram. Of course, they should also avoid my check list from “What Luxury Hotels Get Wrong.”

Forget “thirty, flirty, and thriving.” We are now “Forty, fabulous, and fleeing the country with our friends.”

🗝️ Room Report — The Hotel Regina Louvre, Paris

Our trip ended with a last-minute extension to Paris. Realizing our flights would be cheaper flying out of CDG than Nice for our dates, we called an audible about a week before we left for our Euro Summer and booked three nights at the Regina Louvre.

I’ve mentioned this hotel a few times on this Substack, mostly because I feel like it’s not one of the most well-known hotels, but it does punch above its weight for the price point. I have typically stayed in the Marais at my other favorite little boutique hotel - the Pavilion de la Reine - and have also stayed at Le Meurice, The Relais Christine, La Reserve, and others. My clients are typically at the Rosewood or Bristol, with an occasional Four Seasons George V booking thrown in.

Keys: The hotel has 98 rooms and 32 suites, restored to 19th-century style.

Room we stayed in: The Eiffel Tower Suite - our kids were on a sofa bed with a separate door between our room and theirs. We had one bathroom, and a small balcony overlooking the Touleries Gardens and the Eiffel Tower.

Rate: 1800 euro per night (included breakfast and a $100 credit due to being in our Preferred Hotels network partnership)

History:

The Regina Louvre is owned and run by the fourth generation of the founding Baverez family, 125 years after they first purchased it.

The building sits on the site of the former Royal Stables of the Palais du Louvre, where Kings Henri III, Henri IV, and Louis XIII learned to ride horses.

• Named after Queen Victoria as a nod to the then-new friendship between Britain and France

• Opened for the 1900 Exposition Universelle, which drew 50 million visitors to Paris

• In 1919, representatives from the U.S., Britain, France, Italy, and Japan sat down inside the Regina and created what became the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The organization now serves 160 million people. It was born in this hotel.

• Appeared in The Bourne Identity, Kiss of the Dragon, La Femme Nikita, and a dozen other films

Good Parts:

I’m a sucker for a classic, elegant hotel that feels like it's right out of the Belle Epoc. Relais Christine has beautiful wood interiors and ceilings, without feeling stuff. The lobby bar was a cozy spot filled with red velvet chairs for late night cocktails. Breakfast was solid, and the included breakfast could also be taken in our room, so we could watch the sun come up over the Eiffel Tower.

Our suite was on the 6th floor, and it’s always been a dream of mine to see the Eiffel Tower from a hotel room. This room delivered.

The location is excellent for shoppers who want an easy walk to the luxury stores of the Place Vendome area, or visitors who would like to be near the Louvre.

Drawbacks:

Our room and our friends’ room were not cleaned our first morning there until 4 and 5pm, respectively. That is likely the latest I have ever had a room turned in my life. I requested that housekeeping come the next day at 10am and they did deliver on that, but really, a 5pm turn is now just a missed cleaning. This is abysmal for a 5 star hotel.

I also was seriously bummed about the shower situation. For 1800 euro, those suites need a real shower, not a bath with a detachable head that’s not even high enough to go over my 5’6’’ frame. Showers were a challenge, but for three nights, it was livable. I wouldn’t book this room for a longer stay due to that issue. Our friend’s Junior Suite did have a real shower with a glass door and a separate bath. Choose wisely.

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

Louis Vuitton is opening a hotel on the Champs Elysées. In another example of retail dipping their toes in the waters of the hotel world, Paris will soon welcome a Louis Vuitton hotel. The Paris property is shaping up to be one of the highest-profile openings of the year, with interiors and programming built around the house codes. If you collect Objets Nomades or plan trips around a Vuitton exhibit, start thinking about booking your stay.

Air France added La Première to Houston on July 5. Texas clients heading to Europe finally have a first class option out of IAH. The same aircraft carry Air France’s new business class with doors, so the buy-up crowd benefits too.

Wealthy travelers are trading August in Positano for Arctic lodges. Instagram is serving me tons of “coolcation” videos in the midst of the European heat wave. Apparently, I’m not the only one. New data from Global Travel Collection shows European summer bookings down 10 percent while fall is up 25 percent. Greenland and the Faroe Islands have begun to appear in my request folder, and more of my clients are picking Croatia, Montenegro, and Albania over the Amalfi Coast.

PUBLIC West Hollywood opens July 15. Ian Schrager’s third PUBLIC hotel puts 137 rooms on the Sunset Strip. It’s the right hotel for a design-conscious couple who want to walk to dinner. It’s the wrong one for a multigenerational family that needs connecting suites and a pool deck; stick with the Bel-Air or Beverly Hills Hotel.

JW Marriott is opening a safari camp on Solio Game Reserve. Because every hotel chain now wants to get in on the safari camp world, JW Marriott is opening a camp in Laikipia, Kenya, where you can spend your Bonvoy points with less controversy than the Ritz Carlton camp in a migration crossing.

Issue 12 · Finding Hidden Gem Hotels that aren’t on the Global Distribution System

In The Upgrade this week:

1. Pre-Departure – Finding Hidden Gem Hotels that aren’t on the Global Distribution System

2. The Room Report – Le Negresco, Nice, France

3. The Lobby Bar – Global tourism has officially recovered to pre-Covid levels, FAA brings AI into the control tower

Travelers,

I’m writing The Upgrade | Weekly in Nice, France, this week. A heat dome has driven temperatures up into the mid 90s here and they cancelled the Ironman. We’ve spent two nights bouncing from poolside to beach clubs, just trying to stay cool. We drove here from the Dolomites, where we passed five nights at Sonnwies, a family hotel, which looked straight out of The Sound of Music. Sonnwies will be the subject of next week’s The Upgrade Weekly and Master Key. It’s an incredible property, and a great example of the independent hotels that aren’t on GDS and don’t usually work with travel advisors, which are the subject of this week’s article. We are signing a partnership with them and will become one of the first few agencies they work with as they expand their US market presence. I’m thrilled about the partnership after our stay and can’t wait to send them my clients.

Marissa Klurstein, @mklurstein on both TikTok and Instagram, is my guest on this week’s The Upgrade. She writes Happy Hoteling on Substack and is an expert on hidden gem hotels. I wanted to go straight to the source and share her knowledge with my readers since not every hotel is a Four Seasons, and many are worth a stay. The fact that advisors don’t receive a commission shouldn’t keep us from booking them (a subject I discuss with Marissa below) at rare finds like these if that’s the kind of experience a client is seeking.

Happy travels! Anne Marie

Yours truly in Nice with my Bougie Bunnies, trying not to die of heat stroke. Follow along on our Euro Summer on Instagram, @AnneMarieBrown7

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

Hidden Gem Hotels With of Happy Hoteling –

When Independent Properties Aren’t On GDS

For The Upgrade readers who are not in the travel industry, GDS stands for Global Distribution System. It’s the digital marketplace that connects travel sellers – like agents and booking sites – with airlines, hotels, and rental car companies, letting them check real-time availability and pricing and book it all in one place. Sabre, one of the largest GDS platforms, was born in the late 1950s as a joint project between American Airlines and IBM to automate the airline’s reservation system. It then grew into the independent global booking network that powers much of the travel industry today.

By using GDS, travel advisors can pull rates and attach our IATA numbers to bookings, which tells hotels how to pay our commission. Many travel agencies have developed booking portals that also pull from Sabre.

While long-time agents with extensive personal travel experience – like my Alpenglow Team – typically recommend hotels based on our own travels, a large portion of the travel agent industry uses GDS or consortiums such as Virtuoso to research which hotels to recommend.

For hotels, the upside of GDS is wide distribution through the agency network. For travelers, the downside is that not every hotel, particularly smaller, independent hotels in Europe, is on Sabre.

Marissa Klurstein of Happy Hoteling here on Substack is one of the experts at finding these smaller properties that are worth a stay.

I interviewed her for The Upgrade to tap into this enormous fount of knowledge.

A: Can you tell me a bit more about your background and how you got into the hospitality business?

M: It was not a linear path!

I’m a very fortunate only child with an older dad who took me to Capri every summer as I was growing up. Staying in the same room at the same hotel every year, I was obsessed with being a version of Eloise. I never liked to play “house” growing up, but I spent lots of time playing “hotel,” dreaming up the most out-there and unique places that I wished existed. I traveled extensively throughout my childhood and it was the hotels that most stuck in my mind. However, I tucked away my little kid dream of somehow working in the world of travel and instead, after college, began my career as a creative strategist and copywriter at a New York agency that worked with fashion, luxury, beauty, and lifestyle brands. I was always the idea girl of the office who had a way with words and a strong intuition about how people dream instead of how the data suggested they should dream.

In my 20s, I traveled a lot with one of my best friends from high school, and she would give me full rein to plan the trip. We would end up at these little gem hotels that still fit our age bracket’s budget, and her mom would always say that I should really do something with this knack I had. I never knew how that might come to be until I took a big splurge of a 30th birthday trip and stayed at the Ritz in Paris. The Delta strain of COVID had just hit, so rates were at an all-time low and AmEx had a special. So I stayed at a place I had long dreamed of and then started dreaming about how to make this a part of my real life. I wanted Hotel Marissa and Real Life Marissa to interact year-round.

I had the nugget of an idea to start posting about hotels on TikTok, and one day I decided to just go for it and committed to posting every day for a month to see where it would go. It turned out to go very far very fast. People on the internet trusted my taste just as my office colleagues did. I decided to turn my video sign-off, Happy Hoteling, into my brand name, which was available as a .com URL. As someone who has named many a brand in my career, I knew that green light was golden.

I started by making a comprehensive guide to the place I was so fortunate to know both as a tourist and a local, Capri. Then I broadened it to Rome hotels, Tuscan countryside hotels, and then all of Italy. I was still working as a freelance strategist and copywriter, but my heart was increasingly moving to travel. I decided to try working as a travel advisor to earn a living despite my gut telling me that my strength was not in anything that required attentive email checking.

I was incredibly fortunate to never have to search for clients, as they immediately appeared through TikTok, but I was eager to find another outlet to share my perspective and knowledge. So, on another late-night whim, I started a Substack and immediately shared it with my online community, which gave me the responsibility to actually stick with it. That was three years ago, which is nuts! When I hit the top 10 of the travel leaderboard I decided to give it a full-time go, and step away from what I didn’t love which was the travel advisor route. And now we are here!

A: Tell me about your publication on Substack.

M: Happy Hoteling is a home for “Good People with Good Taste.” It is a repository for the most extraordinary hotels around the world, with full, deeply-researched hotel lists for many of the most-traveled countries in the world – Italy, France, the US, Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean, the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Greece, Croatia, Japan, Sri Lanka, China, Morocco, South Africa, Central America…you get the gist. And then, for Founding Members, I offer a Google Map to every single Happy Hoteling-approved hotel across the globe, called “Happy Hoteling Around the World.” I’ve tried to build a single destination where any Hotel Person from anywhere can find a hotel that is much more than a place to lay your head, not a soulless structure, anywhere in the world. My archive is a kind of evergreen resource.

My deepest specialty is Italy – hotels and itineraries specifically. This is one big arm of Happy Hoteling, especially now that I live in Florence. I know this country extensively and deeply, both on and off the typical tourist track, and I take great pleasure in sharing it with the world. The goal is to help readers discover places they didn’t know existed, including hotels that are woven into the cultural fabric of their location, and return home with great memories and a deeper understanding of our world.

Happy Hoteling is also a place for my ideas and opinions – I have lots of both – and somehow I got lucky enough to discover that people are interested in them.

A: You were a travel advisor briefly. Tell me what you learned during that stint and what you wish other advisors knew?

M: Oh gosh, there’s a lot, but most importantly I wish advisors were more conscious of their role in over-tourism and the erosion of local culture and quality of life by sending clients to the same places over and over again. Advisors have a huge influence on where their clients travel, and there’s immense opportunity in and appetite for guidance on hotels and destinations that are not packed with other Americans.

The other thing, which is controversial but I don’t think should be, is that advisors have a great opportunity to encourage clients to travel in a way that allows for spontaneity, getting out of their comfort zone, and learning something about local culture even if they think they don’t want to. Advisors can curate wonderful cultural immersions that don’t feel like a chore or a box to tick. Too often, however, they focus primarily on creating a seamless experience.

M: I’m big on the concept of a planning fee to compensate for non-commissionable properties. Travel advisors work hard and spent so much time on planning every trip. That time should be properly compensated, but I don’t feel it has to come from the hotels themselves, or at least not from every hotel on a multi-stop itinerary. Creating access to these smaller hotels that are not on the GDS is where I hope Happy Hoteling creates value because it takes a great deal of time to find these places.

Consortia like Relais & Chateaux aim to bring small, independently owned hotels to the marketplace through various channels, like advisors. What do you think of them? Are there any smaller consortia you know of that do a good job of creating awareness of these properties?

Relais & Chateau is the absolute best for this, without a doubt. To me, it’s the most trusted name for hotels that are soulful, character-filled, and part of the culture they inhabit. I particularly respect them as they have still not partnered with a mass distributor like a Marriott or IHG, which is where I think these consortia start to lose their appeal and level of taste.

Leading Hotels of the World and Small Luxury Hotels are two others I respect, and I think they have bridged a huge gap in the independent hotel space, but they are often properties that can also be found through Virtuoso or AmEx Fine Hotels and Resorts, so they tend to become more American-heavy than R&C for example.

Tablet is not the same, as it is an OTA (online travel agency), but it probably has what I would consider the biggest inventory of independent hotels worldwide that it makes commissionable.

Smaller consortia like Pretty Hotels and Room + Wild are great for discovery, but at the end of the day they have their own advisors. This is to say there is immense white space – it would be my ultimate dream for Happy Hoteling to become something of the sort.

A: How do you go about finding these “hidden gem” properties, and how do you propose solving the marketing challenge if they aren’t willing to pay commission to advisors?

M: Oh man, so many ways! First, I have been “collecting” hotels since I was a kid, and I have a strangely good memory so I remember where that well-dressed family from Germany we met when I was twelve vacations, and I have pored over legacy travel publications throughout my life. When I worked with some of the world’s biggest and greatest luxury brands, I always paid attention to where the clients with the best taste traveled, and I’d hunt down where they stayed as if there were a prize for finding it.

The biggest paths of discovery for me are the most labor-intensive, and honestly they require zooming all the way in to a particularly wonderful part of the globe on a Google Map and then looking at every single hotel in the area, searching for gems. Because I love historic hotels, I often go through the deep inventory of listed buildings in any country or destination of interest and look for the ones that are hotels and which of those seem worth staying at. It involves some stalker-like behavior too, like looking through the thousands of accounts that some of my favorite legacy fashion editors, photographers, tastemakers and creatives follow on Instagram. Hotel owners and concierges with great personal style and taste, too.

For a travel advisor, I see it much like the reason I have a paywall. Readers who want to discover these hotels should realize that when an advisor goes deep into research to find these gems it’s reasonable to charge a planning fee for all that work. If people want to stay at a hidden gem, they should pay for the effort to discover it.

A: What are some of your favorite off-the-beaten path properties that you’d like people to know about?

It’s so hard to choose! Nearly everywhere I stay sits in this category. La Minerva in Capri is top of mind, even though it’s certainly on the beaten path – it’s a family-run business that makes every single guest feel like the most important one, and staying there is purchasing a path to the heart of the island that many never find. I have sent some of my most picky and successful friends there and they love it as much as they do the Belmonds of the world. In the same vein, La Minervetta in Sorrento, Palazzo Niccolini al Duomo in Florence, and Castello di Potentino in the Tuscan countryside – all destinations on the beaten path but they all have an off-the-beaten path feel.

When a hotel is in a location that’s off the beaten path, I usually don’t really want that many more people to know about it because I’m so conscious of protecting locals’ quality of life. There has to be some barrier to entry, to ensure it won’t become a hotspot where rates triple and the local culture changes. Verana, in Yelapa, Mexico, which can only reached by speedboat and a hefty hike up through the jungle, is a truly special place. In Northern California, where I’m from, the Inn at Newport Ranch on the Mendocino Coast is another – and luxury is served with true authenticity. Grandhotel Giessbach on Lake Brienz in Switzerland, where I went with my dad as a kid and then returned a year and a half ago is a near-perfect hotel in my mind. It’s totally from the past but so comfortable for today. In Italy hundreds come to mind as so much of the country is wonderfully off-the-beaten-path for the American audience at least. A couple to share are the Wes Anderson Grand Hotel Bagni Nuovi in Bormio in the Dolomites – for the most insanely wonderful spa experience and grand dining room – and Terre di Sacra in Maremma on the Tuscan Coast.

A: What do you look for in a hotel that makes it worth recommending?

M: A point of view, a sense of place, and an opportunity to leave with an understanding of the place the hotel is in! More specifically, family-owned properties, historic places handed down for centuries, and a hotel that cannot be compared to any other because it is simply one of a kind. A big name means nothing to me if offers a cookie-cutter experience, or all rooms look the same, etc.

A: What are some expectations that American travelers have that they should leave at the door when staying in smaller properties in Europe?

M: It depends where, but all the amenities that come with a well-known property. They might not have room service or even a TV in the room (a huge plus for me), but they have so much to offer in ways that matter for the memories that stick with you for a lifetime. Another thing to leave at home is the expectation that everyone will always speak English, and that it is a requirement for being able to stay somewhere. As English-speakers we are so blessed that our language is an international one, but for most every other country around the world this is not the case. With a translation app and the understanding that a smile is universal you can stay anywhere, language barrier be damned.

In general, I would encourage people to stay in places that don’t tick every single box on their wish list. When I was a travel agent, the least rewarding itineraries were for the clients who had the longest criteria checklists.

A: “Slow travel” is trending online, but the reality is that most US travelers have limited vacation time and are constrained by school schedules. If a couple with kids were to come to Italy, what route would you recommend for them? What do you think of the slow travel trend and the reality?

M: In theory, slow travel is the dream, but as you said, for most Americans it’s not realistic, and there shouldn’t be any shame in that. I’m wary of sharing any one route as THE route because it’s the antithesis of how I view travel. I’d encourage families to think of Thanksgiving, December, Presidents Day and spring break as great times to visit Italy simply because they’re not summer. Cities are especially hard for kids to enjoy when it’s so hot and seeing the sights comes with long lines that are no fun for anyone. I’d also encourage parents to take their kids where the adults want to go, not to a specifically family-friendly destination or hotel, as long is there no age requirement. I don’t subscribe to the idea that there has to be a lot of kid-specific infrastructure in place for kids to have fun. Fun can be had anywhere, and grown-ups who are interested in the world are the most likely to create fun for kids by exposing them to new things without expecting 100% comfort 100% of the time.

I encourage people to go where their own families’ interests lie. Do your kids really like tennis, for example? Make an itinerary out of hotels with great courts. Or maybe you’re a hiking family – take to the many places you can hike, from the coast of Liguria to the coast of Tuscany, to Valle d’Aosta, or the Aeolian Islands of Sicily. Hiking doesn’t need to equate to the Dolomites alone, just as a beach vacation doesn’t need to be restricted to the Amalfi Coast.

If you are traveling in the summer, it’s lovely to remember that Italians really take advantage of their country on their time off, so kids can be found nearly everywhere and they don’t need to speak the same language to hunt for seashells on the beach together.

One way I like to lean into slow travel is a longer game – returning to the same destination multiple times to really get to know the place and its people, even if you can only stay for a few days at a time. Tradition is so powerful in travel!

🗝️ Room Report — Le Negresco, Nice, France

During my stay in Nice, I had the chance to tour the iconic Le Negresco Hotel. You may recognize the hotel’s iconic pink dome from many postcards and renderings of Nice’s sweeping, angel-wing coastline. Henri Negresco, the son of a Romanian innkeeper who worked his way up from confectioner to casino director, opened the hotel in 1912 and wanted it to pull in the richest travelers on the Riviera. World War I decimated his business, and the building became a military hospital. Negresco died nearly broke in 1920.

The hotel’s second life started in 1957, when a local businessman named Mesnage bought the run-down property and handed it to his daughter, Jeanne Augier. She ran it for the next sixty-two years, until her death in 2019, and she treated the place as one long collecting project. She bought furniture, paintings, and objects across France until the collection passed 6,000 pieces, spanning the 17th to the 20th centuries. When you stay here, you are sleeping inside a private museum.

The Salon Royal, under the dome designed by Edouard Niermans’ who also designed the Moulin Rouge in Paris, holds a Baccarat chandelier of 16,800 crystals. Tsar Nicholas II commissioned a matching pair for the Kremlin, the Russian Revolution cut the order short, and the Negresco ended up with the one that never shipped east. A few steps away sits Niki de Saint Phalle’s bright yellow Nana, so 17th-century portraits and pop art share the same room.

The hotel runs 102 rooms and 28 suites across five categories.

Exclusive and Deluxe rooms give you the traditional French look: rich fabrics, antique pieces, warm colors, with views over either the sea or the city. The suites are where Augier’s taste really shows as each one is built around a person or a period. La Marie-Antoinette leans on period furniture and silk, La Pompadour does 18th-century wood paneling and Regency pieces, there’s a Chanel-themed room, and the The Empire suite, one of Augier’s own favorites, comes with eagles, griffins, and a swan-neck bed that nods to Empress Josephine.

Augier had no children, so she set the hotel up to outlive her on her own terms. Rumor has it that Bill Gates once offered a blank check and told her she could name her price to sell him the hotel, but she refused. Instead, in 2009 she created FDMAN, the Fonds de Dotation Mesnage-Augier-Negresco, and willed the hotel to it. That fund owns Le Negresco today and directs the proceeds toward four causes Augier cared about: helping people in need, improving life for people with physical disabilities, fighting animal cruelty, and preserving French culture. The money from your stay feeds those causes.

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

Global tourism returns to pre-COVID levels

Global tourism recovered to pre-Covid levels in 2024, according to UN Tourism, reports Associate Editor Rashaad Jorden.

About 1.4 billion people traveled internationally last year, up 11% from the year before. That increase was driven in part by substantial growth in visitors to Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. Tourism to Asia-Pacific was boosted by China easing visa requirements, with the country seeing a significant jump in tourist arrivals during the first three quarters of last year. UN Tourism projects that 2025 international tourist arrivals will grow 3% to 5%.

Hotel demand is climbing, and not only at the top

US hotel demand is rebounding across every tier, Skift reports. RevPAR rose 6.7% year over year on a trailing 10-week average through June 13, then accelerated to 9.7% for the week ending June 20. Luxury led the field, up 17.4%, with upscale higher by 9% and mid-market up 3%. The gains cluster Monday through Thursday, which points to business travelers coming back rather than weekend leisure deals. If you’re watching rate trends before locking in fall bookings, keep this in mind.

Travel keeps growing, but the pace has cooled

International travel is still expanding, though more slowly than forecast. UN Tourism reports 307 million international trips in the first quarter of 2026, about 6 million more than the same period last year, a 2% increase. That sits below the 3% to 4% the agency had projected, with the slowdown tied in part to disruption in the Middle East in March. For all of 2025, arrivals finished up 4%, reaching an estimated 1.52 billion.

FAA brings AI into the control tower

The Federal Aviation Administration is moving AI from talking point to working tool, TravelPulse reports. The agency is testing technology built to reduce runway incidents and flag conflicts before a plane leaves the gate. Three firms, Palantir, Thales, and Air Space Intelligence, competed on the SMART program, with Air Space Intelligence winning the contract to deploy the system. It could be operational in some form later this year. Former NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt told Politico the technology can sharpen the FAA’s awareness of safety risks, while warning against over-reliance: human judgment remains essential for now. For your clients who watch the headlines on air travel safety, this could be worth pointing out.

Issue 11 · World Cup Fever In America

In The Upgrade this week:

1. Pre-Departure – The World Cup Showcases America, Have Our Hotels Benefited?

2. The Room Report – Covent Garden Hotel, London

3. The Lobby Bar – Stop Guzzling Ranch, Marriott Bets on Wellness, Hotel Investment is Heating Up

Travelers,

I’ve spent the last week in England, staying at Estelle Manor and the Firmdale Covent Garden Hotel in London with my Bougie Bunnies. (To follow along on my IG stories, go to @AnneMarieBrown7 on Instagram). Between juggling bedtimes, museums, a near-constant search for fries for my five-year-old, and meetings with hotels and other advisors (and Substack friends!), I’ve also spent a shocking amount of time consuming World Cup content on Instagram. I can’t seem to get enough of the Europeans and others experiencing small-town culture in America. From Japanese tourists chowing down on Texas BBQ, to Scottish fans waking up the Boston suburbs with bagpipes, and Rock Chalk Algeria, my feed has become a happier place than it’s been in months. Experiencing all this from abroad while the world, in pubs down the street, focuses on my home country feels rather surreal.

In The Upgrade this week, I am taking a detour from my planned articles and jumping on the World Cup bandwagon to discuss how the numbers have played out in the hospitality world.

Happy travels! Anne Marie

Yours truly at the Neal’s Yard area next to the Covent Garden Hotel, where I’ve watched the World Cup from abroad. Monty Python, (one of my heroes), lived here.

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

I Can’t Get Enough of the World Cup Social Media

I co-own a company with enormous depth of special event experience. We have run groups to the Masters, Kentucky Derby, Wimbledon, Final Four, Super Bowl, and US Open for years. So I was surprised to find we had very few clients who would be traveling for the World Cup.

Did our client experience indicate a larger dearth of demand?

The 2026 tournament expanded to 48 teams and 104 matches across 16 host cities in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and FIFA reported more than 5 million tickets sold. Early booking data as of December 2025 looked promising. For stays around the July 19 final at MetLife Stadium (just across the Hudson River from New York), booking volumes climbed 102% year over year, with ADR (Average Daily Rates) up more than 72% for that period. For the US opening match at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, volumes were up 80.5% and ADR increased more than 21% year over year.

Hotels built their entire summer strategies around those holds: pricing up, pausing other bookings, turning away regular summer business to protect capacity, and in some cases investing in World Cup-specific renovations and activations.¹

The trouble is that a lot of early “demand” was artificial.

FIFA had made mass room bookings at hotels in host cities, and then cancelled those holds to the tune of roughly 70% of the room blocks they had reserved in Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle.² ³

The AHLA (America Hotel Lodging Association) surveyed more than 200 hoteliers across 11 US host markets in May and found that nearly 80% reported bookings tracking below initial forecasts.⁵ In Kansas City, bookings lagged below normal June and July levels entirely. In Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle, many hoteliers described the tournament as a “non-event.”⁵ About 65-70% of respondents cited visa barriers and geopolitical concerns as the top constraint on international demand.⁵

Sticker shock has also been deterrent. Ticket prices reached record highs, with FIFA’s official listings for the final at MetLife Stadium at $32,970 per seat, more than triple the average Super Bowl resale price from February.

Occupancy Levels and ADR Lift

So, if demand had such a rocky start, how about rates? Was a rate lift seen across the cities hosting matches and teams?

CoStar’s Jan Freitag put it plainly. This is “more of a rate event than an occupancy event.”⁶ Hotels are charging significantly more for the rooms that do fill.

CoStar projects New York RevPAR to grow roughly 16% year over year during June and July, driven almost entirely by a 14% ADR increase rather than higher occupancy.⁷ Across US host cities broadly, rooms on match days are running about 31% higher than on non-match nights.⁸ For context, when the US last hosted the World Cup (in 1994), RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room) rose 6.9% in June and July on a 5% ADR increase. The 2026 number currently sits closer to a 1.7% national RevPAR lift.⁹

What about last minute demand?

The AHLA reported that nearly 80% of hotel bookings across host cities were running below initial forecasts. In Kansas City, bookings lagged below normal rates for June and July.

At the start of 2026, hotels hiked prices and set minimum-stay requirements. By March, properties were facing what one analyst called a “reality check associated with the lack of demand,” and group-stage rates started coming back down.

Hopefully, these heartwarming videos will encourage people to make plans to visit and attend the final matches — an optimistic result that might not yet be evident.

Amex GBT Consulting noted that historically, 70% of accommodations for previous World Cups were booked in the 30 days leading up to matches.¹⁰ Knockout-round bookings are expected to move once fans know which teams are advancing, with markets like New York and Los Angeles better positioned to capture that surge than secondary venues.⁷

Many travelers are making decisions much closer to match day, watching ticket prices and booking only once they know which match they want to attend. The expectation is that as the tournament progresses, social media will amplify demand curves, with fans attending matches creating real-time FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) that drives additional last-minute travel.

The broader national picture is more modest. CoStar and Tourism Economics projected US hotel RevPAR to increase 1.7% year over year during June and July overall, with host markets seeing 12.7% RevPAR growth for those months and 3.8% for the full year. For context, when the US hosted the World Cup in 1994, RevPAR rose 6.9% in June and July, largely on a 5% ADR increase.⁹

Of course, hotels don’t reflect the whole picture. Short-term rental (STR) platforms are faring better than hotels in some markets. Kansas City saw a 44% increase in STR demand from last year, and Mexican host cities are seeing sharply higher short-term rental activity, with Guadalajara up 136% and Monterrey up 125% versus the same period last year. The price differential explains a lot: STR listings in Mexican host cities are running around $100 per night, compared to roughly $300 per night in places like Kansas City, Boston, and Miami.

Honestly, I feel the social media coverage of travelers being warmly welcomed – meeting people from all different walks of life across the US in cities and small towns – has done more for the US tourism industry than any campaign could hope to achieve.

In the meantime, we are watching the games where and when we can, between entertaining our little bunnies and packing/unpacking as we move along on our giant Euro Trip.

🗝️ Room Report — Covent Garden Hotel By Firmdale, London

In the first week of our Bougie Bunny Euro Tour with our kids, ages 5 and 7, we experienced both Estelle Manor in the countryside and the Covent Garden Hotel in London. The space to spread out at Estelle Manor and the grounds to let our kids run wild were amazing after a long flight. I’m glad we spent the first few nights there, despite some activity coordination issues. Overall, they are demanding to return to Estelle in the future.

For anyone who has followed me for a while, you may know that I am a die-hard Lanesborough fan. If I’m traveling through London or booking clients in the city, that’s typically where I put them – not only for the traditional Bridgerton vibes, but because of how well they treat kids, they have a hotel cat named Lilibet, an indoor pool, an ideal location next to the park, and truly impeccable service.

With Royal Ascot overlapping our stay, the rates at the Lanesborough were enough to make me look elsewhere for once, and we settled on Covent Garden. I’ve never stayed in that part of the city before, but it reminds me a lot of a mixture of SoHo and the theater district in NYC.

The little streets of the Seven Dials area specifically, where the Firmdale Covent Garden is located, are dotted with perfumeries and boutiques, small cafes and classic pubs. Yes, it is full of people, but it didn’t feel overwhelmingly crowded by any means.

I loved how close we were to the British Museum, Transport Museum, and theaters.

Fast Facts:

• 58 rooms

• Located on Monmouth Street in Seven Dials/West End

• Room we stayed in: a Four Poster Room connecting with a Luxury Room, total of £1,782 per night for the two rooms.

Firmdale and the Hotel Itself:

Firmdale has 11 hotels across London and New York, all designed by Kit Kemp. Tim and Kit Kemp co-founded Firmdale in 1985. The collection has grown to 11 hotels across London and New York. Kit Kemp, the creative director, holds an MBE and designs every property herself, filling each hotel with whimsical design, rich patterned textiles, and a mix of modern and traditional art of and furniture. It feels like a manor house designed for fairies.

History:

The building dates to the 1890s and originally operated as a French hospital from 1867 to 1948, with the words “Nouvel Hôpital et Dispensaire Français” still visible in the brickwork. The hospital structure, formerly called the Shaftesbury Hospital, was designed by Thomas Verity, an architect better known for designing theatres, in 1899. So the building itself has a theatre architect’s DNA, which is a nice detail given where it sits. After the hospital closed in 1948, the building sat in various uses before Firmdale converted it. The Covent Garden Hotel opened in April 1996

What we loved:

The rooms were huge by London standards. They have very high ceilings and plenty of space to spread out. The lock off configuration for our room connecting to our kids’ room was awesome, and allowed us to breathe while they could leave their toys strewn about with impunity. Let’s be honest, they still played musical beds and came to sleep with us most nights, but the illusion of separate spaces was great.

The Staff:

This is where they really shine. We were greeted by name each time we walked in the door. They really made an effort to make our kids feel special.

When I mentioned on a room tour with the GM that I wish hotels would provide snack baskets for kids so they don’t raid the minibar, a basket magically appeared in our room that evening.

That is service – it’s just the kind of touch that luxury hotels should strive for.

We greatly enjoyed afternoon tea in the drawing room that we ordered through room service, cocktails at Brasserie Max (try the Caper Martini, it was fantastic), and breakfast.

Kids:

They have kid-sized robes and mini slippers in the rooms as well as coloring books and colored pencils. Our kids were thrilled. It’s really lovely to go to a hotel where kids and made to feel like they are welcomed and not to be kept separate.

Downsides:

The only minor complaint I have is that the transfer the hotel arranged didn’t leave quite enough time to make it to Gatwick, and we almost missed our flight to Bolzano, which would have been a huge bummer.

The showers also inexplicably lack a glass panel and the water gets everywhere on the floor, so allocate floor towels accordingly.

Otherwise, I’d absolutely recommend this hotel for families staying in London.

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

The TSA had to remind World Cup visitors not to chug ranch at security. International fans descending on U.S. cities for the World Cup have discovered ranch dressing and, apparently, cannot get enough of it. On the first day of the tournament, the TSA posted on Threads: “If you’re visiting for a very large sporting event & you happen to discover RANCH while you’re here… pls pack it in your CHECKED BAG on the way home.” It only escalated from there. A follow-up post read: “your carry-on wasn’t actually made for 4 bottles of ranch & a taser.” Ranch is a liquid, standard 3.4-oz carry-on rules apply. Pack accordingly. Yahoo!KTLA 5 News

Marriott just bought its way into luxury wellness. On June 10, Marriott finalized a joint venture with the Leali family to bring Lefay, an Italian luxury wellness brand, into its portfolio. Lefay currently operates two properties in Italy and will be bookable through Marriott’s platforms, with Bonvoy integration expected by late 2026. This is Marriott’s first brand dedicated exclusively to wellness, sitting alongside Ritz-Carlton and St. Regis in the Luxury Group. I’m currently at Sonnwies in the Dolomites and it’s parental wellness to the max. If a Dolomites wellness trip is on your list in the next year or two, now is a good time to start paying attention.

Luxury hotel investment is heating up. A JLL report out this week put numbers behind what we’re seeing on the ground: ultra-luxury properties with ADRs above $1,000 have seen RevPAR reach $872 through April 2026, hitting 148% of pre-pandemic levels. Hotel investment activity surged 115% year over year in Q1 2026, with the Four Seasons Orlando and Four Seasons Jackson Hole selling together for a combined $1.1 billion. High-end hotel real estate hasn’t looked like this in years.

The Lotte New York Palace has new management. Lotte spent over $1.3 billion assembling control of its 909-room Manhattan flagship and this week handed operations to Highgate. Lotte stays on as owner.

Sources

4. Hotel Dive — “Hotel bookings, ADR up across 2026 FIFA World Cup host cities” (Dec. 2025): https://www.hoteldive.com/news/fifa-world-cup-2026-booking-volume-adr-increase/808374/

5. Hotel Dive — “World Cup to bring ‘modest’ RevPAR growth to US: report” (Feb. 2026): https://www.hoteldive.com/news/fifa-world-cup-modest-revpar-growth-us-report/812826/

6. CoStar — “Hoteliers’ optimism weakens as US World Cup demand softer than expected” (Mar. 2026): https://www.costar.com/article/1608606242/hoteliers-optimism-weakens-as-us-world-cup-demand-softer-than-expected

7. NPR — “Hotels have a big World Cup problem: Bookings are running far below projections” (May 2026): https://www.npr.org/2026/05/04/nx-s1-5810626/world-cup-hotels-tourism-bookings-visitors

8. Al Jazeera — “Low US hotel bookings paint grim hospitality picture at the World Cup” (May 2026): https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/5/6/low-us-hotel-bookings-paint-grim-hospitality-picture-at-the-world-cup

9. Hotel Dive — “’We’re holding our breath’: What hotels are expecting from the FIFA World Cup” (May 2026): https://www.hoteldive.com/news/what-hotels-are-expecting-from-fifa-world-cup-booking-data/821334/

10. Skift — “Hotels Are Hoping For a Last-Minute World Cup Surge. Will It Come?” (Jun. 2026): https://skift.com/2026/06/11/hotels-hope-last-minute-world-cup-bookings/

11. Front Office Sports — “World Cup Fans Face ‘Significant Sticker Shock’ for Hotels” (Jun. 2026): https://frontofficesports.com/u-s-hotels-still-struggling-to-fill-rooms-as-world-cup-approaches/

12. Lodging Magazine — “Game-Time Decisions Are Reshaping World Cup Hotel Demand” (Jun. 2026): https://lodgingmagazine.com/game-time-decisions-are-reshaping-world-cup-hotel-demand/

Issue 10 · I Love You, But I Won’t Travel With You

In The Upgrade this week:

• Pre-Departure – I love you, but I won’t travel with you. Not every friend is a travel friend, especially when you have kids.

• The Room Report – Reporting Live From Estelle Manor with My Kids

• The Lobby Bar – Four Seasons is coming to Sevilla, the Sagrada Família's completion, Mandarin Oriental's Mallorca debut, a Kerzner leadership move, the World Cup hotel flop, and what's happening at U.S. international airports this summer.

Travelers,

I’m reporting live from Estelle Manor with my Bougie Bunnies this week - read the Room Report to see how it’s lived up to my expectations a year later and with my children in tow this time.

Given the complexities of traveling with my own children, how do I select another family to spend the kind of concentrated time together that travel demands?

The answer is my rubric below. After my 20’s and 30’s spent learning how I travel with others, and what works best for my style of travel, here’s my unfiltered take on traveling with friends

Happy travels! Anne Marie

My little family on a Land Rover experience at Estelle Manor

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

I love you, but I won’t travel with you

After some very number-heavy articles the last few weeks, this week’s The Upgrade | Weekly is more of a personal essay / rant. I’m currently traveling on a 3.5-week trip with my children and husband through Europe, and have observed families traveling together in the wild.

I like to think my kids are great travelers. The truth is, they are kids. Jack is basically Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes and is just as likely to launch a stick at his sister’s head as to agree to wear an adorable suit jacket (see my IG this week). Malia is easily one of my favorite people to travel with, but is in constant need of my 100% attention - which makes it difficult to produce work like The Upgrade or you know, trips that I design as part of my actual job.

From the safety of my sunglasses, I silently judge other people’s children as they throw their spaghetti at each other, while praying my own children won’t do the exact same thing in five minutes. We swear we won’t break out the iPads, and then by day 3 we are so desperate for a meal where no one has a meltdown due to the time change that we cave and we are that family.

We will meet up with another family towards the end of our trip and share a villa for a week. I am certain that after 2 weeks of concentrated time with my own children sans childcare, we will be more than ready for a week with our friends.

We have traveled with these friends several times over the duration of our friendship. Our kids get along great whether we are in the mountains of Colorado or in a villa on Lake Como. They are up for spending similar amounts as we are on things like restaurants, memorable experiences, and hotels, and they keep similar schedules. This is pretty much a unicorn situation.

Friends at home and travel friends are distinct groups, and they do not necessarily overlap.

When you find a fellow travel family who approaches parenting, airport timing, travel budget, and trip pacing the same way you do, hold on tight. Treasure them forever.

Traveling with a mismatched friend or family, on the other hand, can ruin a friendship or relationship.

Over time, I have identified certain things worth discussing before you go overseas with another family or friend. Have these conversations early, (and be honest). It will save the friendship and your sanity.

1. Be Super Clear About Your Accommodation Budget.

This is perhaps the most obvious and yet most difficult discussion to have ahead of time. You need to ask your friends:

“How do you allocate your budget for a trip? Are you looking to maximize your dining experience and don’t care about the hotel? Are you a business-class-only traveler who prefers Airbnbs over dropping $2k per night on hotel rooms for your family? What is an amount that would feel shocking to you to spend on a restaurant bill or an excursion?”

I have many friends that are perfectly comfortable sharing a queen bed with their spouse in an Airbnb. I am not that person. My spouse is like a giant furnace, and queen beds spell disaster for us. Trust me, no one is happy when I don’t sleep.

My travel is precious to me, and I would sacrifice a lot of other comforts at home (or maybe a limb), to have a more ideal experience when traveling.

Table stakes for me include: a king bed for us, a real bed for my kids (not a couch), air conditioning in bedrooms and main area, and good pillows. I undoubtedly prefer hotels to rental homes, but will make an exception and share an Airbnb if I’m traveling with another family that I know and trust will travel the same way we do.

If you are considering travel with other friends, get on the same page about what you are comfortable paying per night for lodging before you book anything.

I have made this mistake before and been out more money than I’d like to admit when a friend changes their mind and I’m stuck with a non-refundable hotel room or rental house that I wouldn’t have booked if it were just my own family.

The bottom line is this: never take the financial risk for accommodations until the other family has confirmed they are 100% in and the day they will pay you by (preferably the same day you pay the deposit).

Get travel insurance – specifically cancel for any reason coverage - in case they cancel, and include it in the total amount of the trip that you split from the beginning.

Also, make sure they have looked at flight pricing before booking anything. A surprising number of people don’t factor in flight costs and then pull out of a trip because the flights end up being too high.

If this is a difficult discussion to have, don’t travel with that friend and move on.

2. What’s better – rental home or hotel?

Rental homes can be great for common spaces and cooking meals in, but they almost always create uneven room situations that nobody wants to negotiate on arrival.

Who gets the Master? Who gets the pullout? The unspoken rule seems to be that the person who books the rental home gets the Master bedroom. However, there may be occasions where one family has a baby that needs space for a pack-n-play that only the Master has, etc.

Different friends may also have a different understanding of dividing costs based on which rooms each person get. I found this was more common in my 20’s on bachelorette trips when budgets were tight, but this disagreement rears its head even today for friends who travel with extended family and are expected to pay the same when they have been delegated to the trundle bed as the cousin/sibling/family who take over two rooms for themselves and their children. At that point, you’re just subsidizing someone else’s vacation. Go with a hotel.

Make sure to discuss room allocations and price per family before anyone books the rental home.

I’m typically team hotel for this reason: everyone gets the room they paid for, and there’s no awkward conversation after a long travel day.

3. Match your pacing and routines.

My children are early risers. I’ve lived an entire lifetime by the time a 10am sleeper emerges. I have some family members that are like this and it drives me crazy on a trip. I find myself asking my kids to tiptoe around in the morning to avoid waking them up, we push activities to accommodate their late starts, and I just end up feeling resentful.

I completely understand if they want to sleep in on a vacation, but that trip will not be with me and my kids.

Have a frank discussion with your friends about daily routines and expectations before you travel together. If you’re a morning lark and they are a mid-afternoon pigeon or a night owl, it’s not going to work.

4. Set a commitment timeline.

I know my travel plans six months to a year in advance. If I ask a friend or another family to join us on a trip, I need a commitment or a “no” as soon as possible.

I am, admittedly, a speedy decision maker. If I bring up a trip with another friend and they say, “Yeah, let’s do it,” I’m going to take that seriously and begin making plans. I have learned that for a lot of people, “Let’s do it” really can mean anything from “I’m in, let’s go on the date you mentioned, I’m ready to book” to “I would like to do that before I die but I can’t believe you took that discussion seriously – how could you be so obtuse?”

Friends, there are other people I can ask, and if it’s going to be just our family, I’ll plan accordingly.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when a friend won’t say “yes” or “no” within 1-2 weeks. Their indecision gums up the planning gears. I have learned to set a deadline and ask for a “yes” or “no” within that time frame.

Yes, I am incredibly privileged to have the financial resources to hire child and pet care if we are going to be out of town. I also co-own a company, so don’t have to request PTO. My parents are no longer alive and my family all lives in another state very far away, so I occasionally have to rely on my in-laws, who are absolute saints.

That said, I’ve never understood people who can’t commit to things quickly outside of those constraints.

Keeping someone waiting while you decide is not a small ask. Clear is kind.

5. Share the mental load.

I plan travel for hundreds of clients every year. I love the initial planning stage: choosing the hotels, selecting the activities. There is a reason this is my chosen career.

However, my vacation is my vacation from work. I do not love being the sole person on a trip who: navigates where we are going on Google Maps, changes restaurant reservations, texts everyone what we are doing the next day because people would rather borrow my brain than pull up the itinerary in their email, herds the group like a kindergarten teacher.

The time for input from the other travelers on a trip is during the early planning process, not mid-trip, not the day before the activity, not when we check in to a hotel. If you wanted to do something else, you should have brought that up during the 20 emails we exchanged 6 months ago.

I am not the tour director on a trip that I am not being paid to travel on.

Everyone should listen to the house or hotel orientation.

Everyone should be willing to look up directions on their phone and navigate, not just the person who decided to pay a data plan.

Everyone should read the itinerary and check it every night, so there aren’t nonstop questions of “Where are we going tomorrow? What are we doing next?”

Share the mental load and don’t just be a passenger princess. If you want to add someone to the dinner reservation, you make the call to the restaurant – you don’t ask the person who made the res to make adjustments because your plans changed.

6. Be responsible for your own stuff.

You did not leave your brain at home. You are an adult. I am not here to remind you to get your passport out of the safe or track down the sunglasses you left in an Uber.

7. Practice time management.

If everyone is waiting on you, that is a problem. If you know you need to use the restroom before a drive, handle it before you come downstairs. Don’t wait until everyone is loaded in the car to disappear. You are not my child and I will leave without you.

8. Read your texts.

A trip requires communication. Pay for international cell service, charge your phone, and bring a battery pack charger out with you each day.

I should not be the only person on the trip with a charged phone and an international data plan. You should not rely on hotel wi-fi for your phone data.

9. Your friends are not your bank.

Split everything or take turns paying for meals. Decide which of these options you will commit to with your friends before you depart.

Use Splitwise and make sure everyone knows how to set it up before you leave so there’s no excuse that they didn’t understand it.

Everybody on the trips settles their Splitwise before you fly home. Don’t make your friends chase you down for payments.

Get enough cash before the trip (if going to a country with sketchy ATMs) that you aren’t relying on other people to be your bank. This seems to be on an ongoing issue we encounter when traveling with friends even in our 40’s, such that I’ve now taken to texting everyone a week before hand and reminding them we are pulling out enough cash for our own family, but everyone should be prepared with enough to tip etc.

Practice all the above and you will have a better time. These are lessons we all have to learn at some point between age 21 and 40, but hopefully this article shortened that learning curve a bit for some of you.

🗝️ Room Report — Reporting Live From Estelle Manor with Kids

It’s rare that I make it back to the same hotel twice in one year. However, I had such a spectacular time at Estelle Manor over my birthday a year ago, that I left saying I wanted to bring my children to experience the hotel.

In an unusual Room Report this week, here is my experience as to whether the hotel lived up to the hype in my head. I will caveat this review with calling out that we had a great a time this week during our stay. Estelle Manor has only been around for 3 years, and does a lot of things really well that drive me nuts at other places with higher ADRs (read my article “What Luxury Hotels Get Wrong” for my punch list). They are figuring out their identity between members club, luxury hotel, and family-friendly resort. This is a difficult task. Since they’ve decided to make the family friendly aspect a priority, my review is an honest report of our family’s experience.

Unit we stayed in: Woodland Cabin

Children are not allowed to stay in the main Manor house, but can stay in the Stable Rooms, Garden Rooms, houses, or Woodland Cabins. The Woodland Cabins are little wooden octagonal homes with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a central fireplace.

Room Positives:

Much more space to spread out than the Garden Room I stayed in last year. Having two bedrooms has been amazing as everyone adjusts to the time zone. We have loved our evenings around the fire, watching the rain from the rocking chairs on the front porch, and letting the kids adventure in the woods out back.

Room Negatives:

There is a surprising lack of clothes storage. Each bedroom has a large wardrobe with two drawers and an area to hang things….and that’s it. If you are a packing-cube evangelist like me, you will need to resort to floor organization. Our situation started out ok… now it’s chaos. No one can find their underwear. We are missing a single shoe. My anxiety is high.

The cabins are very dark. They seriously need more lighting in here - especially the bathrooms. I have completely given up on makeup.

The fireplaces are made of glass, in the center of the room, immediately at little kid height. My son is 5 and the amount of times we say “Don’t touch that!” after lighting a cozy fire in the evenings is…stressful, to say the least.

Dining:

For some inexplicable reason, most dining outlets do not open for lunch until 12. For any parents of young children, this is a major issue. By then, my kids are losing their ever loving tiny minds. You can’t even order from the pool QR code until 12pm on the dot. Give me fries or give me death. If Estelle Manor hopes to develop their kid-friendly reputation, this needs to change immediately as it’s torture. There are grab-and-go sandwiches and a handful of options from the Potting Shed, but they need to add kid-friendly options to this menu.

• The brasserie - one of the better meals we have had with our kids. Service was fast. Breakfast is a simple buffet that’s not blowing anyone away, but it’s included and honestly, my kids mostly survive on a diet of croissants and prosciutto for breakfast during trips anyway.

• The Armoury (Japanese) was as good as I remembered it, but the tables are tiny and my kids dropped their chopsticks about every five minutes.

• The Billiard Room does not allow children - we are eating there tomorrow on a much-needed date night.

• The pool food situation needs help - the menu is small and it takes a long time.

• The terrace would be a better option if it opened earlier.

• The Glass House - this is their casual pizza and burger option. We ate on the patio and that was great so our kids could go explore the garden and make friends at other tables of families also trying to get their children to not throw pasta at each other.

• It is important to note that photos are not allowed inside the Manor House or the restaurants, apparently. This is a shame as they are such beautiful spaces, but thankfully, I have some photos from my last time here.

Activities -

We were looking forward to lead-led horseback riding for our Bougie Bunnies, but the hotel has a different pony that can accommodate kids under 6, and apparently that pony just retired. So, I was left with the choice of watching my littlest lose his mind while his sister rode and he didn’t, or scratching the whole exercise. I chose the latter.

We did the falconry walk in the forest and my kids loved it. I liked that it was different from the falconry displays we’ve done at places like Adare Manor.

Last year, my girlfriends and I did the Ineos Grenadier Off Roading course and that was SO much fun. They have since stopped that activity, sadly. We were able to take a vintage Land Rover out with a guide for a woodland walk and picnic. The kids loved it, and we learned a lot from Mac, our guide, about the flora and fauna in the area.

We rented a James Bond car – My husband and I were the first guests to take out the hotel’s snazzy new Morgan car for a 3 hour spin through the villages of the Cotswolds. I LOVED it. We would have kept it out all day, except we had to be back to pick up our children at the Nook. This is a stellar option to live your Grace Kelley dreams.

Be advised that a lot of the activities have age limits that start at 7 or 8 (archery, ax throwing, ropes courses). I’m going to work with their adventure team to put together a Travel Dispatch guide with the perfect three days for each age group to feature here on The Upgrade.

The pool - in another blow to the family-friendly nature of the hotel, they only allow kids to swim in the pool from 9-11am and from 4-5pm. The British countryside has been freezing at 9am, so my kids haven’t been willing to hit up that first slot. By the 4pm hour, every other kid in the whole resort jumps in for their brief splash time, and I honestly think the funneling of kids into these time periods is making the whole thing worse. To temporarily solve this problem, the hotel has built a play fountain. They do have plans for another pool for kids in the future, but these sorts of projects take a while. We absolutely utilized the play fountain, though our kids required frequent warming up in the little shower beach hut.

The spa - kids are not allowed in the Eynsham baths at all. No one under 18. I would lower this to 15 if it were me, but it just means this won’t be on my mom-daughter hit list when Malia is a teen.

Childcare options:

The Nook is the kids’ club for kids under age 8. They allow you to book for 2 hour increments max, and you have to sign up quite far in advance of your stay. Also important to note that they don’t take the kids outside at all during that time period. My kids love a good craft project, but they are pretty over being inside by now. Babysitters are bookable but also have to be booked quite far in advance. We tried to book one for an additional activity on arrival, and they couldn’t find anyone.

They also have this inexplicable penchant to book massages and activities for the exact moment you are allowed to check in your child to the Nook. The spa is on the opposite side of the estate, so logistically, this just doesn’t work.

Which brings me to pre-planning.

Again, I am a professional planner. I’m highly organized. I love spreadsheets, and make the majority of my travel plans weeks or months in advance. Planning with the Estelle Manor team was a bit of a cluster. I was sent a link to activity options, which I then laid out in an email to the Friends of Estelle team (because I had stayed here before, I was put in touch with these wonderful people). Things started out fine, although they didn’t have some of the activities and dining on the days I requested. Then, it became a “who’s on first” situation where the Adventure Team, Spa Team, and Reservations teams were all copied in and told to respond to me with options for what was available.

This is not a luxury experience. What a concierge or luxury-level hotel pre-planning team should do in such a case is to work with those various teams themselves, have one person own the client communication, and then reach back out to the client with a proposed itinerary that has been reviewed for feasibility and accuracy.

We ended up with activities missing, things double booked on different days, overlapping activities, and about 15 more emails than was necessary.

To the hotel’s credit, the GM did come meet with me on arrival after I expressed my frustration with the process. A lot of how I judge a hotel is not in their mistakes, but in how they recover. And so far, they have done a great job winning me back on this trip.

Overall:

TLDR - Estelle Manor has a lot going for it, and we’ve had a lot of fun with our kids. Some frustrations need to be addressed - the pool hours, the kids club only allowing 2 hour increments and not having any outside time, how hard it is to book babysitters, lunch options not opening until 12pm, not enough options for kids under 7 for activities. The pre-planning situation should be overhauled as soon as possible.

Would I recommend this to clients still? Yes, with a lot more discussion about these restrictions so they know what they are booking. I think the hard product is still lovely and I’d come back with my girlfriends or husband again. My kids would also love to return, if they change the pool hours.

I’ll post some more photos and videos from our stay here over the next couple of days.

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

Four Seasons is coming to Sevilla. Opening in 2028, developed with Spanish investment firm Blasson, the property sits on Plaza Nueva in the Arenal Quarter. 55 rooms across five stories, architecture by Madrid-based Lamela, interiors by AD100 honoree Belén Domecq. Three outlets, a rooftop restaurant and pool, a spa, and skyline views. If Sevilla is on your list, start planning now.

The Sagrada Família is structurally complete. On February 20, 2026, the final piece of the Tower of Jesus Christ was installed, bringing Gaudí’s basilica to its full height of 172.5 meters, now the tallest church in the world. Construction began in 1882.

Mandarin Oriental has opened in Mallorca. Mandarin Oriental Punta Negra is now open on the Costa d’en Blanes peninsula, the brand’s first property in the Balearic Islands. 131 rooms, suites, and bungalows, six restaurants, seven acres of gardens, direct access to two secluded coves, and a seaside wellness retreat overlooking the Mediterranean.

Kerzner has a new head of global operations. Kerzner, owned by the Investment Corporation of Dubai and the group behind One&Only Resorts, Atlantis, and fitness-focused SIRO, has promoted Mattheos Georgiou to oversee all three brands, reporting directly to CEO Philippe Zuber. Georgiou joined Kerzner in 2022 as Global VP of Operations and has been instrumental in elevating service standards across the portfolio. Three very different brands, one person accountable for all of them.

Pay attention to this if you're flying internationally this summer. DHS Secretary Mullin has proposed pulling Customs and Border Protection staff from airports in sanctuary cities, including Newark, New York, Chicago, LA, and San Francisco. Not enacted yet, but the industry is taking it seriously. If you're routing international itineraries through any of these airports, build in flexibility now.

The World Cup hospitality boom didn't materialize the way anyone expected. According to the American Hotel and Lodging Association, 80% of hoteliers in U.S. host cities reported bookings tracking below initial forecasts, with Kansas City seeing nearly 90% of properties running behind normal June and July levels. Visa barriers, geopolitical concerns, and high ticket prices all suppressed international demand. In cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Seattle, survey respondents described the tournament as a "non-event." FIFA also quietly cancelled a large portion of its block-booked hotel rooms across host cities, which had inflated early demand signals. The takeaway for anyone still trying to book: rates in several markets have actually dropped, and availability that looked impossible a year ago is now there.

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Alpenglow Travel | alpenglowtravel.com | AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com |

In The Upgrade this week:

• Pre-Departure – Branded Hotel Residences, Financing or Folly? With an interview with

• The Room Report – Maslina Hvar, Croatia

• The Lobby Bar – Ritz Carlton Yacht is losing money, ResortPass signs a big deal, Expedia is moving ad budget to creators, and free water at a hotel restaurant is apparently not a right

Travelers,

It’s Euro Summer for our family, and we are about to embark on an epic month-long jaunt around England, the Dolomites, and the South of France. 5 hotels and 1 villa, three countries, 6 cities. Two kids ages 5 and 7. Wish me luck.

Check out my packing lists if you want to see what I’m aiming to fit in my suitcase. Euro Summer Packing List, French Riviera Packing List

This week, The Upgrade explores branded hotel residences. I’m talking about the Aman, Montage, and One & Only villas that are privately owned and attached to these luxury hotels. We see pitches from hotels looking for LP investors (Limited Partners), and one of the most frequent inclusions in these pitches as of late is the concept of a branded residence model to finance construction. With prices north of $10M, I began to wonder, who on earth is buying these? Why? While the model may make financial sense to developers, it’s often fraught with inherent tensions that the GM has to sort out, unless it’s designed thoughtfully.

Happy travels! Anne Marie

Yours truly on a speedboat in Hvar with one of my Bougie Bunnies, Jack

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

Branded Residences — Why Luxury Hotels are Betting on Villas

I’ve worked for two of the largest luxury destination clubs, Exclusive Resorts and Inspirato. The pitch at both these companies was the certainty of a hotel experience with the privacy and space of a villa. The hotel industry is now finally catching up to that tempting offer with an explosion of branded hotel residences.

Conduct a site inspection at just about any luxury resort in Mexico today and you’ll hear about their residence product. Families are traveling as multigenerational groups more than ever, particularly my client base, and they want space for the grandparents, nanny, and maybe another family. However, owning a resort residence (i.e., second-home ownership with a more alluring label) comes with maintenance and upkeep. Branded residences aim to straddle this yawning gap.

Branded residences, the private homes sold alongside luxury hotels under the hotel’s flag, have been one of the fastest-growing segments in hospitality for decades. In their current form, they date to The Four Seasons Boston in 1985 and have now become central to how luxury hotels are built in the face of rising construction costs, high land prices, and inflation.

The sector has grown 180% over the last decade. There are now over 700 branded residences globally, with supply expected to double by 2030.^[1] Savills forecasts that 60 new brands will enter the space over the next five years.^[2]Marriott alone has 142 residences with 138 more in the pipeline. And hospitality outsiders Ferrari, Bentley, Fendi, Armani, and Bulgari have all entered the fray as well.

Why Developers Love This Model

As I noted in The Upgrade a few weeks ago about historic renovation projects, building a luxury hotel is a terrible standalone investment. New construction costs upwards of $2 million per key today. So, what’s a development group to do? They can’t all head down to the bank in a trenchcoat hiding cash to bid on a hotel like my grandfather used to do.

Enter: Residential sales. Developers often sell units before construction is complete, with deposits of up to 70% of the purchase price before handover. In essence, residence buyers are the ones financing the hotel.

Marriott’s chief development officer for North American luxury brands said at the 2026 Americas Lodging Investment Summit: Half of Marriott’s new luxury hotel signings now include a residential component because “luxury hotels are hard to build ... residential allows for higher returns.”^[3]

Here’s how the financing for branded residences works:

Hotel brands typically operate under a management agreement and collect fees of 2-3% of property value and rental income, without owning the asset directly. The developer takes the risk. The brand takes the fees and gets the marketing halo.

Additionally, branded residences command a significant premium. The average markup over comparable unbranded properties across the global market is around 33%, rising to 47% in some emerging markets and exceeding 90% in parts of Dubai.^[4]

The developer owns the building, not the brand. There is a licensing agreement in place, and that license can expire or be terminated. Management agreements with hotel brands typically run around 30 years. Buyers who purchased under a specific brand may find their property rebranded if the contract is not renewed.

The inherent tensions branded residences create: Four Seasons Hualalai

The downside of branded hotel residences appears in the tensions they create between the two classes they serve, residence owners and hotel guests. Often, the property GM is left to manage demand for the same resources (restaurant reservations, spa access, pool chairs) between the two groups.

The plaintiffs argued this created a direct conflict of interest: the same company now managed both the hotel and the residential community with a financial incentive to push private renters toward the hotel instead. The resort responded that the fees were permitted under existing agreements. A hotel guest present at the time described what he called an “apartheid experience,” referring to the visible friction between how residents and paying hotel guests were treated. That is an extreme characterization, but the underlying dynamic is not unique to Hualalai.

How much do they cost?

Aman Beverly Hills starts at $20M with an average of $7,000/sq ft (a Southern California record), and the first tower is already 60% under contract. The developer explicitly states that “today’s ultra-high-net-worth buyers seek certainty, homes that are resilient, private, and secure.”

At Aman New York, one unit sold for $64M (up from the $51M the previous owner paid), another recently traded at close to $30M asking, and a Thailand-based investor purchased a unit for $20.7M.

Four Seasons ranges from roughly $1M in secondary markets to over $30M for oceanfront and ultra-prime urban residences, which explains why the averages look depressed when you combine them all.

Who is buying?

These sales are almost always structured through LLCs, family trusts, BVI (British Virgin Islands) companies, and Cayman entities precisely to obscure buyer identity.

Past data for sales of the residences north of $20M include American tech and finance wealth, Middle Eastern family offices (Saudi and UAE specifically), and Southeast Asian buyers (Singapore-based, often ethnic Chinese with Singaporean or Hong Kong residency). Russian buyers dropped off sharply following sanctions imposed after Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Mainland Chinese buyers for US property have also pulled back due to capital controls.

The Aman New York resale market in late 2025 included a Thailand-based investor who bought for $20.7M and flipped it six months later, and an anonymous buyer who paid $35M in 2022 and recently listed at close to $30M.

The Offshore Money Issue

Branded residences sit at the intersection of two things that have historically attracted foreign capital seeking discretion: a globally recognized brand and high-value real estate in prime locations. Like a lot of high-value real estate in cities like New York and Vancouver, these properties attract foreign money thanks to their ownership opacity.

Brookings researchers studying ownership in New York, Miami, and Boston found that the probability of corporate ownership of a residential property exceeds 50% once it is valued at $10M, and exceeds 80% at $100M.^[7]

Shell companies are about twice as likely to be listed as owners of high-value properties. When researchers attempted to measure offshore ownership using only public data, it appeared to be nearly zero, attributing less than 0.3% of NYC real estate value to foreign jurisdictions. That near-zero figure is itself evidence of how effectively opacity works: shell companies registered domestically hide the true owners.^[7]

The 2022 DOJ seizure of Viktor Vekselberg’s properties is a good example. The official register listed only a Panamanian shell company with a mailing address at Madison Square Garden. Vekselberg, subject to US sanctions for years, had held a $70M US property portfolio without detection until investigators pieced together the ownership chain.

A unit purchased through an LLC and placed in the hotel’s rental program can generate income, appreciate in value, and remain legally opaque about its actual owner. Meanwhile, the brand provides legitimacy, and the LLC ownership structure provides cover.

While most buyers are wealthy people who love a hotel and want a turnkey second home without the headache of managing one, the structural features that make these properties appealing to legitimate buyers also make them attractive to those for whom enjoying the spa is a secondary (if that) consideration.

🗝️Q&A: Emma Näpänkangas on Branded Residences

Anne Marie: Where do you think all the money to buy these residences is coming from? Some of these Aman and Montage properties are upwards of $20M.

Emma: There’s definitely an emotional driver when it comes to branded residences, both from the homeowner and investor side. People who buy, say, an Aman residence for $20M are essentially making an identity purchase and opt in on the brand’s philosophy in a more permanent way.

From the investor side, on the other hand, there is most definitely some FOMO (fear of missing out) and scrambling because the premiums on branded residences are simply so high that everyone and their mom simply wants in on the fun. For a development perspective, I recently spoke to Christopher Norton (CEO of Equinox hotels), and he said branded residences are now just a standard part of hotel developments since they are what make the hotel profitable at the end of the day.

Anne Marie: Do you have any branded hotel residence projects that you think have been executed better than others? What makes for a successful integration of residents and hotel guests?

Emma: I’m actually quite wary of naming a winner because I haven’t experienced one as a resident myself, and I think branded residences have enough hype for them from the outside.

What I can speak on, however, is what doesn’t work, and here I think the biggest risk is brand dilution. A branded residence does not need to have the actual brand behind it to carry the name, because a developer can just license it and slap it on the building, and then the brand has nothing to do with a person’s actual experience.

I think this is an extremely risky business for hospitality brands that pride themselves on a certain level of service and brand promise. To give you an example, there is a Nobu residence in Toronto, Canada, which is one of these licensed deals, and the feedback from residents on the quality of the building has been subpar.

Anne Marie: What do you think of the potential for money laundering in these projects?

Emma: The tea surrounding this is so piping hot it’s hilarious. But anyway, I’m a hospitality girl and not a financial crime expert. HOWEVER, I will say this: I think the brand premium that makes branded residences super attractive commercially is entirely dependent on trust, meaning that if branded residences become associated with sketchy/opaque money, those double digit premiums will disappear. Transparency is key.

Anne Marie: Is there anything you think the readers of The Upgrade | Weekly should know about branded residences that I haven’t covered?

Emma: A house of cards I have my eyes on is non-hospitality brands that are entering the space – your car brands (Porsche, Bentley) and fashion houses (Fendi, Armani, Missoni), et cetera (the crystal house Baccarat). Everyone wants to be in hospitality now, but I’m personally dubious about how brands that do not have hospitality savoir-faire built into them can pull it off in the long term.

🗝️ Room Report — Maslina, Hvar, Croatia

Matt and I traveled to Croatia and stayed at Maslina Resort (just off Split on the Dalmatian Coast) in the summer of 2023 with his parents, our kids, and our nanny in tow, which meant we needed the four-bedroom villa. Sitting on the patio at that villa, with the wind rustling the pines, watching the sun set over the Adriatic was a Zen moment I focus on when I try (generally without success) to meditate.

The resort sits on the shore of Maslinica Bay on the island of Hvar, and from the water it’s nearly invisible, the buildings covered in bamboo panels that blend entirely into the pine forest behind them. Maslina means “olive,” and every pre-existing olive tree on the property has been preserved. The whole place operates on a “mindful luxury” philosophy – it’s definitely a wellness-oriented property. There were some Butterfield & Robinson and Backroads groups there during our stay, which usually means a solid hotel with a strong concierge and reservations team.

The villa was spectacular. The décor is modern with tons of light wood and floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the sea. The stairs are a bit challenging for small kids; ours managed to avoid falls.

Each bedroom has king beds, a full living room, and outdoor space that made it feel like a beautiful home that happens to offer resort services. The pool wasn’t heated, which in high summer sounds fine in theory, but my kids and I are wusses and barely dipped our toes in before we chickened out.

The two main resort pools are heated saltwater, one an infinity pool with sea views and the other a larger family pool with a shallow entry platform, so we spent most of our pool time there rather than at the villa. The outdoor terraces and the grounds themselves were where I fell in love with the property. Everything is stone, wood, and sea views.

The kids’ club has a dedicated space with water elements, a climbing wall, and a full range of activities. It’s gorgeous – like the Montessori playhouse I dreamed I’d have instead of the destruction zone that is my basement filled with plastic noise-making dinosaurs and Barbie gear.

The spa, called Pharomatiq, takes its name from “Pharos” (Greek for lighthouse or beacon), the ancient name for Stari Grad (Croatian for Old City), and “aromatic,” a nod to Hvar’s long history with healing plants and herbs. It runs 600 square meters and includes a gym with sea views, steam rooms, saunas, and a cold plunge, and every stay begins with a health consultation where you choose an intent for your time there. I didn’t get nearly enough time in it.

Stari Grad, one of the oldest towns in the Eastern Adriatic, is a short walk away, and Duboković, the local winery, produces bottles shipped across Europe, with small group tastings available on request. Hvar town is a transfer away from Stari Grad if you want the nightlife and the scene, but Maslina sits on the northern, quieter, end of the island, and that’s the point.

Who would love Maslina? Multigenerational families who want a home base that works for everyone. Grandparents who want a spa and good food, kids who need to be entertained, parents who want more space than a hotel room for their families. Budget at least four nights.

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

The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection is losing a lot of money.

The company is running at roughly 50% occupancy, well below its target of 85-90%, and has pushed that goal back to 2029. Marketing spend topped $104M in 2025 alone, and accumulated losses since 2017 now sit at nearly $700M. Its largest creditor agreed to defer $171M in repayments while the controlling shareholders injected another $275M in equity, taking total capital past the $1 billion mark. The rates are excellent ($1,900 per guest per day), but filling three yachts is not like filling one. Four Seasons Yacht I, Aman at Sea, and Orient Express are all coming. Read more.

Hilton just launched its 28th brand.

Undergraduate by Hilton is designed for smaller college towns that its Graduate chain doesn’t reach, with a lower development cost and simpler operating model. Hilton acquired Graduate in 2024 for $210 million and is now building the tier beneath it, with long-term potential for 400-500 hotels. First property expected in 2027. The name is either clever or a little too on the nose, depending on your sense of humor.

Expedia is moving ad budget to creators.

Expedia partnered with YouTube streamer iShowSpeed for a live-streamed trip that reached over 400 million people. Their SVP of brand marketing called him a “Gen Z Anthony Bourdain.” The underlying data: a Skift Research study found that 57% of travelers are comfortable booking high-priced activities directly through social media, with younger travelers leading that shift. Booking and Virgin Voyages are following the same playbook. The longer-term questions are whether TikTok and YouTube can build booking layers on top of their discovery platforms, the way Google built on search, and whether OTAs (online travel agencies) end up being cut out.

Marriott signed a global deal with ResortPass.

The partnership expands the number of Marriott properties offering day access to pools, spas, and fitness centers without an overnight stay. Marriott already had over 500 properties on ResortPass before this agreement, so this formalizes and accelerates what was already happening. The question worth watching: does selling pool chairs and spa access to day visitors improve revenue, or does it crowd out paying guests at peak hours? Worth keeping an eye on at properties where you have clients booked. Full story at Skift.

Tap water.

Italy’s Supreme Court ruled that hotels are not legally required to serve tap water. The case started at the five-star Hotel Sassongher in the Dolomites, where a guest staying over New Year’s 2020 was told only bottled mineral water was available at dinner, at €7 a bottle. She sued on the grounds that water is a universal human right and lost at every level, including Italy’s Court of Cassation. France requires a carafe of water with every meal. Spain has required free drinking water at bars and restaurants since 2022. Italy has no such requirement. File under “things to know before you go.”

Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian gave an interview to the WSJ worth reading.

He covered the World Cup’s impact on hotel demand in host cities, the challenge of paying housekeepers wages that reflect what the job actually costs now (the article refers to salaries soon reaching $100,000+ in some markets), and his view of the “K-shaped economy” — the widening split between travelers spending more than ever on luxury and everyone else. His framing of Hyatt’s positioning tracks with what we’re seeing on the booking side. Read it here.

Capella Hotels has a new president with a one-year deadline.

Roland Fasel, who took over in April, is openly targeting a position alongside Aman, Rosewood, Six Senses, and Belmond as Capella’s competitive set. His stated goal: get there within a year. He spent six years as COO at Aman and most recently ran operations at Maybourne (Claridge’s, The Connaught, The Berkeley), so he’s not bluffing about knowing how those brands operate. The growth play goes through Capella’s sister brand Patina. Full story at Skift.

A note on the Colosseum for anyone with Italy on the summer itinerary.

All tickets are now issued in the holder’s name and require matching ID at entry, enforced strictly since May. Tourists who show up with tickets purchased through resellers that weren’t properly name-matched or weren’t issued through licensed operators are now getting turned away at the gate. Book through the official site at ticketing.colosseo.it or a vetted operator. It’s no fun to stand outside the Colosseum on a 95-degree July day explaining your receipt.

🗝️ Anne Marie

Sources

[1] Charlotte Duck, “What are branded residences and who’s buying them?” Yahoo Finance / Savills, July 2025

[2] EHL Hospitality Insights, “Branded Residences”

[3] CoStar, “Luxury Hotel Development Increasingly Dependent on Branded Residential,” February 2026

[4] Elite Traveler, “Hotel Chains and Branded Residences”

[5] Zyda v. Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts / Hualalai Investors LLC, filed 2015.

[6] Coverage of Hualalai lawsuit, various press reports, 2015-2016.

[7] Matthew Collin, Karan Mishra, and Andreas Okland, “Offshore Ownership of American Real Estate is a Black Box,” Brookings Institution, August 2024

In The Upgrade this week:

· Pre-Departure – Why Is Everyone Going to Japan?

• The Room Report – Capella Kyoto (with guest writer Colin Nagy)

• The Lobby Bar – Japan’s tourist tax, Four Seasons Mykonos, Capella’s new president, Lake Como EDITION, Oetker’s first US property, Amanvari opening in Baja

Travelers,

If I get another request for cherry blossom season in Japan with a lead time of two months, I might expire prematurely. If you want to go in the spring, book a year in advance. If you want to go skiing this winter, start planning now.

This week, The Upgrade explores why it seems that everyone is going to Japan lately – where the luxury hotel market is headed, your guide to luxury ryokans, and a firsthand room report on one of the most exciting new openings of 2026, Capella Kyoto, from one of our industry’s tastemakers, Colin Nagy.

Buckle up, it’s a long one this week!

Happy travels! Anne Marie

🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

Why is Everyone Going to Japan? A Macro View By a Luxury Travel Agency Owner

In the past year, I’ve helped clients plan 12 trips to Japan, including:

1. Ski trips to Niseko to celebrate a 50th birthday

2. Retracing family roots in the countryside and exploring Japan through it’s artisans

3. A graduation trip to remember

4. A babymoon

5. 30th birthday romantic ryokan escape

This has me wondering, where is our current obsession with Japan as a destination coming from?

The first time I traveled to Japan was in 2012. I was working at Exclusive Resorts and had been tasked with creating a luxury-level experience with unique access. At Virtuoso Travel Week, I found a relatively new DMC (destination management company), called Inside Japan. I reached out to hear their pitch, and we began building an incredible trip together.

I conducted that site visit with a colleague during a sticky August heatwave. To ensure our experience felt authentic, Tokyo gave us an earthquake on our first night. We watched our Peninsula Hotel room walls ripple gently, while everyone else acted as if nothing had happened. We spent the next week touring just about every luxury hotel product available, meeting with artisans for calligraphy and kimono dyeing, taking a taiko drumming lesson, and meeting a geisha in a members-only tea house.

Six years later, I returned to Japan with my husband while six months pregnant with our first child. For the doubters – yes, I ate all the sushi. In case you’re not aware of it, the birth rate in Japan has fallen precipitously. It’s now about only seven births per 1,000 people per year. So, if you know 100 people, maybe not even one of them might be pregnant. In this condition, therefore, I was treated like a Fabergé egg, escorted to elevators instead of being allowed to go up a flight of stairs, immediately given any seat.

I fell in love with the country – the intentional, ubiquitous and distinctively Japanese hospitality; the art of noticing small things; the artisans; the exquisite kaiseki (elaborate multi-course) meals; the steaming onsen (hot spring bathing hotels). I have been a champion of tourism there since I first experienced their remarkable culture.

This brings us back to why Japan is only now becoming so incredibly popular with American luxury travelers.

Let’s Look at Some Numbers

A record 42.7 million foreigners visited Japan in 2025, a 15.8% increase over the previous record of 36.9 million in 2024, and the first time the total surpassed 40 million. ^[1]

That’s roughly 10 million more than the pre-pandemic 2019 total of 31.9 million. Visitor spending also hit a new record of ¥9.5 trillion in 2025. ^[1]

For Americans specifically: more than 2.7 million of us visited Japan in 2024, a 33% jump past 2023, and 58% above the 2019 pre-pandemic level. ^[2]

Why Is This Happening?

The Japanese tourism boom has largely been driven by four forces:

1. The weakening of the yen against the US dollar

2. The growing popularity of Japanese food in US fine dining

3. Anime, Pokemon, and pop culture attracting a Gen Z audience

4. The feeling of safety for international travelers

1. The Yen

My first trip to Japan generated the priciest expense report I’ve ever had to turn in. I’m pretty sure our karaoke evening was about $400, much to the surprise of both me and my boss at the time. (Sorry, Gina.)

While the exchange rate was around ¥110 to the US dollar in 2019, the yen weakened to between 140 and 160 throughout 2024. This made the news around the world, with Americans in particular being told that Japan was now on sale. ^[3]

2. The Omakase Expansion

If you have seen an omakase (chef-curated) restaurant opening every other week, you aren’t hallucinating. “Omakase everywhere” was one of the headline trends in the 2025 Hospitality Trends Report by AF&Co + Carbonate, describing these menus as “a sign of luxury and indulgence; a multi-course tasting menu journey with an element of surprise for the guest.” ^[4] Omakase-style dining has seen booking rates rise 22% annually, with seating typically limited to 8-12 seats per service. ^[5] High-end sushi restaurants like Masa in New York charge hundreds or even thousands of dollars per person, turning sushi into a luxury indulgence. ^[6]

3. Anime and Pop Culture

During the pandemic hiatus, we all became glued to Netflix. Interest in Japan’s culture grew among Gen Z consumers of Pokemon and reruns of Dragonball Z. A 2024 survey found that 42% of Gen Z watches anime every week, compared to just 25% who watch the NFL. Younger respondents reported that anime influences their style, identity, and friendships. ^[7]

4. Safety, Service, and Infrastructure

In the post-COVID world, we are a society that travels in spite of concerns about geopolitical disruption. Between new entry requirements (EES [the EU’s Entry/Exit System], I’m looking at you), wars (Iran, Israel, Ukraine), outbreaks (Ebola and hantavirus), and natural disasters, venturing abroad can feel intimidating to even the savviest travelers. As a first-world country with a largely homogeneous and peaceful population, great public transportation, and an influx of luxury hotels, Japan seems like a safe bet. Demand for high-end hotels and private tour packages has tripled. Accommodation now accounts for 33.6% of visitor spending, up from 29.4% in 2019. Japan’s luxury hotel market reached $7 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $10 billion by 2033. ^[8]

Driven by high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) seeking unique cultural and historical experiences, Japan’s overall luxury travel market is projected to grow at 8.35% annually through 2033, reaching $91.7million. ^[9]

The Five Star Growth in Japan’s Hotel Scene

Aman Tokyo was the new kid on the block when we traveled there for our babymoon in 2016. It was the most I had ever spent on a hotel in my life, and I feel like my morning soaks in those giant black stone bathtubs, Japanese breakfast at hand, looking over the Tokyo skyline largely lived up to the hype. Now, major luxury brands are establishing new properties throughout the country, particularly in emerging resort destinations and cities beyond the Tokyo-Osaka-Kyoto corridor.

My favorite part of the Aman Tokyo was baths in this deep soaking tub looking over the skyline

Tokyo

• Bulgari Hotel Tokyo opened in April 2023, occupying floors 40-45 of a skyscraper in central Tokyo with 98 rooms and suites. Tokyo EDITION Ginza opened December 2023; Janu Tokyo (Aman Group’s second brand) opened in 2024; Fairmont Tokyo opened July 2025; JW Marriott Tokyo opened October 2025; and Park Hyatt Tokyo reopened after renovations in December 2025.

Osaka

• Four Seasons Hotel Osaka opened in summer 2024 and is already well-loved by my clients. The 221-key Patina Osaka opened in 2025 across from Osaka Castle, and the Waldorf Astoria Osaka opened in 2025 as part of the Grand Green Osaka development, with 252 rooms designed by André Fu Studio.

Okinawa/Regional

• Rosewood made its Japan debut in 2025 with Rosewood Miyakojima on Okinawa, a 55-villa resort overlooking Oura Bay.

This Year’s New (Luxury) Kids on the Block:

• Capella Kyoto opened March 23 in the Higashiyama District near Kiyomizudera and Gion. Designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates, it has 89 rooms and suites and is Capella’s first Japan property.

• Hoshino Resorts is opening KAI Kusatsu, a 94-key inn overlooking Mount Kusatsu-Shirane, and OMO7 Yokohama this year.

• Hoshinoya Nara Prison opens on June 25, converting the last of Japan’s Meiji-era “Five Great Prisons” into a 48-room luxury hotel with rooms fashioned from renovated solitary confinement cells. (No, they’re not limited to single occupancy!)

• 1 Hotel Tokyo, located in the upper floors of a Tokyo tower, is also opening this year.

WTF Is a Ryokan?

My parents liked to remind me that I was “Made in Japan” by placing gold stickers with that phrase on my bedroom door. (According to family lore, I was conceived in a ryokan in Niseko.) A ryokan is a traditional Japanese inn where guests sleep on tatami (woven mat) floors, relax in yukata robes, soak in natural hot spring baths (onsen), and are served multi-course kaiseki meals, all centered around Japan’s philosophy of inexhaustible hospitality.

Today, the ryokan market is expanding rapidly. It hit $2.2 billion in 2025 and is growing at 12% annually, driven largely by international demand. Six Senses and Dusit Thani have both opened ryokan-concept properties in Kyoto, Hyatt is launching an entirely new ryokan brand called Atona with its first locations opening in Hakone and beyond this year, and Marriott partnered with Ryokan Collection in 2024 to fold traditional inns into its portfolio.

Hoshino Resorts, the dominant domestic player, now operates 73 properties across Japan and keeps expanding its KAI onsen ryokan brand into regional destinations. Japanese tourism authorities found that 68% of prospective foreign visitors want to stay in a ryokan, but only 49% manage to do so, mostly because booking has historically been difficult and intimidating without the help of someone who knows the system.

My favorite ryokans are Gora Kadan and Gen.

Powder Chasers

If you know any serious skiers (in Colorado, I know many powder bros), they have probably waxed poetic about skiing in Japan. Even with the Rocky Mountains right in my backyard, I find myself talking with my husband about a spring break ski trip to Niseko with our powder hound kids. Apparently, in the face of skyrocketing Epic and Ikon Pass prices, the rest of the world has discovered that flying to Japan and staying for a week can actually be a better deal than skiing in Colorado, particularly after this year’s abysmal ski season.

Visitors to Japan’s slopes grew approximately 40% year-on-year during the peak season from November 2024 to February 2025, after already exceeding pre-pandemic levels in the 2023-24 season.^[10] International arrivals surged nearly 50%, making up 80% of all skiers on the slopes, and accounted for around 90% of total spending during the 2024-25 winter season. ^[11]

The American booking pace is accelerating fast: as of mid-October 2024, Ski.com’s Japan sales for the 2024-25 season were pacing at nearly triple the previous year’s record total and had already more than doubled what they brought in for all of the 2023-24 season.

Takeaways

Japan rewards the clients who go in with a plan and a good advisor. The best ryokans in Hakone and Kyoto book out 6-9 months in advance, many require a Japanese-speaking intermediary to secure, and some of the most extraordinary experiences are unavailable to people trying to navigate the system alone.

For timing, late May through mid-June is the sweet spot: temples without tour groups, comfortable temperatures, and none of the Cherry Blossom pricing. September through mid-October is a close second. Avoid Golden Week (late April through early May), Obon (mid-August), and New Year’s week, all times when the whole country essentially takes a break and domestic travel surges.

🗝️ The Room Report - Personal Reviews

Capella Kyoto – With Guest Writer Colin Nagy

Anne Marie: My UHNWI (Ultra High Net Worth Individual) clients typically gravitate toward the Aman circuit in Japan, with some Hakone onsens thrown in. Aman Kyoto is pretty epic, but it sounds like Capella Kyoto is going to give them a run for their money. How does their service style compare to what you’d find at an Aman or a Four Seasons?

Colin: I think Capella has reached a level of service consistency across the portfolio that is really top notch. I find it more personalized than Four Seasons in many respects, especially as that brand has scaled. It is warm, thoughtful, and precise. And if we add on top of this the Japanese hospitality, it was a win.

Anne Marie: I talk a lot about anticipatory service at ultra-luxury properties – did you experience any of this during your stay?

Colin: I stay with Capella frequently (Taipei, Bangkok, Sydney), so they were very thoughtful about understanding and recognizing preferences with my first stay at the Kyoto property. I’m trying to avoid booze and sugary welcome amenities, and they delivered nicely with fresh fruit. Dietaries were consistently checked in on with meals, but not in an annoying way: sometimes preferences change from stay to stay, but there was just enough care to let me know they were paying attention, yet flexible. Yoga mat in room, and just subtle, thoughtful turndown touches, generous acts in the room (beautiful amenities, good minibar), and I was recognized by name in most interactions.

Anne Marie: What room level did you book?

Colin: I was in a Premier Temple king looking out over the Kenninji Temple. Great amount of space, good seating area, and desk area/work station. Big key here is that the room was quiet and quite peaceful, and the views up into Gion past the temple were lovely. Great light.

Anne Marie: What’s the room product like? Any of my favorite hotel pet peeves from my article “what luxury hotels get wrong”?

Colin: They nicely threaded the needle between classic Japanese and contemporary. Sometimes traditional Japanese stays can feel a bit minimal and austere and I am pleased to report this room looked visually beautiful but also felt quite plush in the places that mattered (bed, seating, etc).

Anne Marie: How were storage space, light switches, pool chair access, check in speech?

Colin: Storage was great, and the highlight of the room was a simple console with analog switches that controlled everything. No stumbling through iPad menus or doing the late-night scavenger hunt to turn off the lights. This was exactly the room/electronics experience that I wanted. Simple, satisfying and intuitive.

Highlight for me was also the use of the private onsen room, which is a lovely, modern-feeling room with a bathroom, separate living space with couch and TV, shower area and an onsen hot spring. Really divine way to spend an hour.

Anne Marie: Is there a standout suite or room category worth the premium?

Colin: There are suites with private onsens, which for a special occasion could be quite a treat.

Anne Marie: Kyoto is one of the most competitive dining cities in the world. Does the hotel restaurant hold up, or do you leave the property for meals?

Colin: They have a collaboration with Singlethread in Sonoma, SoNoMa, which was meticulously done. Instead of competing in the hyper competitive kaiseki space in Kyoto, they are doing a blend of California and Japanese in a very elegant way. Also, for foodies, Singlethread carries a lot of weight and credibility and is an unexpected find in Japan. My dinner was impeccable, and there was a mango desert that I am still dreaming about. Service was just a wonderful mix of California five-star hospitality (some of the staff have come over to work) but also Japanese precision.

There is also a more casual restaurant, Lantern, where breakfast, lunch, and dinner are served, as well as a later-night bar and convivial dining area called Yoi. I loved the touch of the vintage lamps ported over from an old school, with beautiful photography throughout.

Anne Marie: What were the favorite things you ate and drank?

Colin: Tasting menu at Singlethread, without question. And they did a wonderful, very elevated oatmeal dish at breakfast that was dialed.

Anne Marie: Who is this hotel actually for? What made it stand out so much in your mind as one of the best experiences you’ve had?

Colin: People who want precision, dialed service, but also a more subdued environment. It is not hard to get to the tourist attractions and more vibrant areas, but this felt hushed and residential in the best way. Also, Capella still feels like an “if you know, you know” brand, which is different from the current vibe of Aman. Also, the guests seemed cool, interesting, and international. Not a bunch of rich people staring at TikTok.

Anne Marie: If you went back to Kyoto tomorrow, would you stay here again – and if not, where would you go instead?

Colin: Without question. One of my best stays in five years. I would recommend this to people who know their stuff and have seen the best.

Anne Marie: What’s the thing the hotel does better than anywhere else you’ve stayed?

Colin: They have only been open for over a month, but I felt that John Blanco and the hotel leadership had this place running like a Grand Seiko watch. No discernable mistakes or friction, and the entire Capella hospitality and service playbook was nicely installed.

Capella Kyoto - image courtesy of the hotel

Additional Guest Take - by Viraj Bajoria

He Got Omotenashi’d

Viraj traveled this May with a group that had multiple dietary constraints. The kitchens simply knew and adjusted without making them feel like the difficult table. There’s a word for that, and it names the thing every first-timer feels but can’t quite place: omotenashi. The lazy translation is “hospitality.” The truer one is closer to wholehearted, anticipatory care offered with no expectation of return, the kind of thing a culture grows over four centuries rather than something a hotel switches on. Its roots run to the tea ceremony (chanoyu), where the host prepares details the guest will never consciously notice: the angle of a scroll, the flower cut that morning. The effort you don’t see is the entire point.

Two ideas sit underneath it, worth carrying with you:

Ichigo ichie (一期一会): “one time, one meeting.” The idea, also born in the tea room, that every encounter is unrepeatable and deserves your full presence. It’s why the service stays a step ahead of you: your one stay, on these exact days, will never come again, so it’s worth getting right.

Shokunin (職人): the craftsman’s spirit, the belief that mastering your work, however humble, is a matter of personal honor. It’s also the answer to the question every American quietly asks here: if no one tips, why is everyone so good? Because excellence in Japan was never for sale.

One morning at Patina Osaka, a director walked Viraj into the team’s daily meeting, where the department heads accounted for every small thing that had slipped the day before. Credit corporate for that part; it is a brand standard, the same ritual Patina runs everywhere it operates. What you won’t find in the manual is a director inviting a guest in to watch her team air their own failures without a flicker of defensiveness. The system is Patina’s, but the care is unique to Japan.

🗝️ The Lobby Bar

Hospitality updates, promotions, and the occasional pun

Japan’s Tourist Tax: You can’t talk about Japan without discussing the overtourism issue. Japan is now working on formal two-tier pricing at tourist sites, meaning foreign visitors will pay more than residents. The Tourism Agency is expected to publish guidelines by March 2027, with an expert panel currently gathering data from cities that have already tested the model.

Four Seasons Mykonos is now bookable. The Four Seasons Resort Mykonos opens on June 26 with 94 rooms, villas, and suites on Kalo Livadi Bay. It’s the first newly opened luxury property on the island from a major hotel group in quite some time. Book through us for upgrade priority and breakfast included.

Capella has a new president. Roland Fasel, who took over in April, is targeting Aman, Rosewood, and Belmond as his competitive set and told Skift he needs Capella in that top tier within a year. His strategy: scarcity, heritage property conversions, and highly personalized service over rapid expansion. Fasel ran operations at Aman for six years before moving to Maybourne, so he knows the category from the inside. Florence opens in 2027. Skift

The Lake Como EDITION is open. Marriott’s EDITION brand opened in a restored 19th-century palazzo in Cadenabbia in March, with 148 rooms and four dining concepts led by three-Michelin-starred chef Mauro Colagreco, his first restaurants in Italy. The signature dining experience is Cetino. There’s also a floating pool on the lake. FTN News Tao Hua Yuan

Oetker landed in the US. The Vineta Hotel reopened in Palm Beach on March 2 as Oetker Hotels’ first US property, restored to 41 rooms at 363 Cocoanut Row, a short walk from Worth Avenue. Oetker owns Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc and The Lanesborough, among others. Rates from $1,900 per night. Hoodline AFAR

Amanvari about to open in Baja. Aman’s Mexico debut on Baja’s East Cape starts welcoming guests on August 1, with rates beginning around $4,500 per night and climbing past $7,000 in peak season. The 18-key property sits where desert meets sea, with a temazcal (ancient Mesoamerican sweat lodge), open-air yoga pavilion, and the privacy the brand is known for. It sits inside the Costa Palmas community alongside Four Seasons Los Cabos. Two Aman-adjacent brands, one address. Upgraded Points Asmallworld

Anne Marie

1. Nippon.com – Japan tourism records 2025 – https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h02673/

2. Japan Travel – USA-Japan tourism 2024 breaks all-time record – https://www.japan.travel/en/us/press-release/usa-japan-tourism-in-2024-breaks-all-time-record/

3. Nippon.com – Yen exchange rate data – https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h02262/

4. Restaurant Business Online – Omakase menus go beyond their Japanese roots – https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/food/omakase-menus-go-beyond-their-japanese-roots-new-culinary-territory

5. Market Reports World – Sushi restaurants market – https://www.marketreportsworld.com/market-reports/sushi-restaurants-market-14722218

6. Toast POS – Sushi trends – https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/sushi-trends

7. Asia Times – Why everyone loves Japan – https://asiatimes.com/2025/12/why-everyone-loves-japan/

8. IMARC Group – Japan luxury hotel market – https://www.imarcgroup.com/japan-luxury-hotel-market

9. IMARC Group – Japan luxury travel market – https://www.imarcgroup.com/japan-luxury-travel-market

10. Visa – Skis up: enduring appeal of Japan’s snowy slopes – https://www.visa.com.sg/about-visa/stories/2025/skis-up-enduring-appeal-of-japans-snowy-slopes-deliver-a-tourism-boost-in-the-ski-season.html

11. Travel Weekly Asia – Japan’s ski tourism hits new heights – https://www.travelweekly-asia.com/Destination-Travel/Japan-s-ski-tourism-hits-new-heights

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