Ultra-Luxury Hotels: Secrets of Successful 5-Star Stays

Ultra-luxury hotels — think of brands like Aman, One&Only, Rosewood, and The Peninsula — don’t always perform to their full potential.

• Discerning travelers can’t always know in advance how good a given property might be.
• The issue matters. Demand is outpacing supply. Over the next decade, 46,000 additional ultra-luxury hotel rooms are forecast to open around the world, according to brokerage JLL.
• Yet the ranks of the wealthy will likely expand even faster. The count of ultra-high net worth individuals is predicted to rise by 28.5% between 2022 and 2027, Knight Frank said.

A few factors cloud the ability of discerning travelers and hotel investors to get good info.

• Travel concierges and social media influencers may take kickbacks from properties, biasing their advice. Some websites may rely on free stays to vet properties, and so they pull punches.
• Ultra-luxury properties in non-urban locations may not have a lot of repeat guests. Well-off travelers may prefer variety, so even if they like a hotel, they may not return for quite some time.
• Ultra-luxury properties tend to be small. At the extreme, some exclusive properties — such as a solitary villa on an island — may draw only a handful of guests a year. That doesn’t give a lot of data points about what’s right and wrong.
• So many of the points of failure are in subtle points of execution that investors won’t see if they don’t stay at length at a property themselves.
• High-net-worth guests are usually quite private and are less likely to post reviews publicly or take the time to fill out Medallia/Qualtrics surveys.

So what to do? One option is to find an expert who has relatively few incentives to mislead you. Some examples include:

• The Gallivanter’s Guide by Philippe Servais.
• Wendy Perrin.
• Many of the agents that belong to the Virtuoso network.

Thomas Cahalan, founder of Dorsia Travel, also has the credibility to talk about ultra-luxury hotels.