May 26, 2026

In this week’s issue:

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

• The Room Report – Swanning About At Estelle Manor

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

Travelers,

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

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

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

Happy travels! Anne Marie

Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

Check out previous editions of The Upgrade Weekly:

• Why you should travel with your parents

• What’s the Deal with Farm Hotels

• What Luxury Hotels Get Wrong

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🗝️ Pre-Departure — Hospitality Hot Takes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Hotels Are Getting Into the Club Business

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

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

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

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

Demand signals are hard to ignore

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

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

Soho House as Both Industry Darling and Cautionary Tale

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

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

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

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

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

Two Models Worth Knowing

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

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

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

The Hotels With Memberships Currently

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

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

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

Maison Estelle, Mayfair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For further reading on membership clubs, check out:

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

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

· Hotels Above Par, “The Hottest Membership Clubs”

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

🗝️ The Room Report — Personal reviews from my own travels

Estelle Manor, Oxfordshire

Estelle Manor, Anne Marie Brown

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

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

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

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

Rooms

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

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

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

Spa

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

The Membership Model

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

Sustainability

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

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

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

Michelin Pulls the Green Star

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

Raffles Is Going to Courchevel

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

Four Seasons Gstaad Is Coming Back

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

Condé Nast Wants to Be Your Shopping Platform

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

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

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

TikTok Is Now a Booking Engine

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

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

Ascott Is Building for a World Where AI Books Your Hotel

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

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

Sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 19, 2026

In this week’s issue:

• Pre-Departure – The Race for Irreplaceable Hotels

• The Room Report – Passalacqua, Lake Como

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

Travelers,

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

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

Happy travels! Anne Marie

Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

Check out previous editions of The Upgrade Weekly:

• Why you should travel with your parents

• What's the Deal with Farm Hotels

• What Luxury Hotels Get Wrong

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  🗝️ Pre-Departure - Hospitality Hot Takes

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The Race for Irreplaceable Hotels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Danieli in Venice

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

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

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

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

Public Private Partnerships

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

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

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

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

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

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

What it means for you

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

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

🗝️ The Room Report - Personal reviews from my own travels

Passalacqua, Lake Como

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🗝️ Anne Marie

alpenglowtravel.com | AnneMarie@alpenglowtravel.com

Travelers,

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

Happy travels, Anne Marie Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

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

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🗝️ Pre-Departure – Hospitality Industry Hot Takes

What Luxury Hotels Get Wrong

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

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

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

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

1. The Chair Game

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

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

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

2. Light Switches That Require a Degree

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

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

3. Charging for Water at the Restaurant

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

4. Slow Pre-Arrival Communication

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

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

5. Housekeeping After 1pm

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

What You Said

I asked my network for their hotel pet peeves:

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

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

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

• Slow pool service

• Resort and destination fees

• Exorbitant laundry pricing

• Not enough hangers

• Hidden outlets, or none by the bed

What Others Are Saying

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

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

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

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

🗝️ The Room Report - Personal reviews from my own travels

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

The Lanesborough, London

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

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

My daughter, Malia, with the Lanesborough cat, Lilibet

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

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

The Hotel Pipeline Is at an All-Time High

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

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

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

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

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

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

🗝️Anne Marie

🗝 The Upgrade · Weekly · by Anne Marie Brown

In this week’s The Upgrade:

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

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

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

Travelers,

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

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

Happy travels, Anne Marie

Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

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

Subscribe now

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

The Ethics of AI in Luxury Travel Planning

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

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

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

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

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

That’s a hard line for me.

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

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

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

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

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

🗝️ The Room Report - Personal reviews from my own travels

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

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

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

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

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

Read: One & Only Mandarina Spring Break Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

· American Airlines Says “No” to United

· Most Anticipated Hotel Openings of 2026 in the Luxury Sector

What’s Actually Happening with Rosewood

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

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

What’s opening and when:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🗝 Happy Hoteling, Anne Marie

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🗝️ The Upgrade · Weekly by Anne Marie Brown

In this week’s The Upgrade:

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

• The Room Report - Attending the Masters

• The Lobby Bar - Susurros Corazon and Rosewood Mandarina

Travelers,

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

Happy travels, Anne Marie Co-Founder, Alpenglow Travel

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

Derby Season is Here

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

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

The Summer of Europe

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

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

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

The Real Story on Hotel Upgrades

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

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

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

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

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

• Preferred Partner clients

• Consortium clients

• Return clients

• Amex/Chase

• Direct bookings

• OTAs (Expedia, Booking.com)

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

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

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

🗝️ The Room Report - Personal reviews from my own travels

The Masters: A Wild Weekend

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

The video comprised these three pieces of our advice:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two promotions worth knowing about right now:

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

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

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

🗝️ Anne Marie

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