Seeking stories to tell
SA is looking good as a safe destination for travellers seeking a luxurious and authentic experience, writes Sue Blaine
Today’s luxuries, for top-end travellers, are more about exclusive experience than pampering. It’s not that pampering is passé, it’s that it is taken as a given. “The elements (of luxury travel) that five to 10 years ago were top-end are now expected,” says George Cohen, MD of Johannesburg’s ultra-swanky boutique hotel The Saxon. “These people come from homes where they have butlers and chefs. What they want is more authentic, specialised, discrete and exclusive experiences”.
While spending on material goods increased incrementally between 2005 and 2015, according to research from consumer trends agency Future Foundation, spending on experience outpaces this. That trend is expected to continue.
“The new era of luxury travel will be about having access to the most incredible, transient experiences money can buy, but only for a select few,” tourism research and development company Amadeus reported in May. It operates in 195 countries.
“We design non-Googleable options,” Luigi Bajona, partner at boutique Italian travel agency Onirikos, told Amadeus. “From a private gala dinner in Venice on the roof terrace of Peggy Guggenheim (art museum, in Venice) to a private visit to an excavation under the Vatican.”
This is something the SA hospitality industry is also seeing. “It’s more and more about specialisation,” says Cohen. “More and more important is that guests don’t want bling, they want authentic.”
Given the rand’s weakness, and repeated tragedies in the northern hemisphere such as the attack in Nice, the coup attempt in Istanbul and the boiling over of racial conflict in the US, SA is looking good as a safe and affordable destination. SA Tourism says the overall increase in foreign tourist arrivals in SA was 28.9% overall for January-April 2016 against the same period in 2015. That figure for Europe was 15.4%, for North America 19.6%, for the Middle East 40.7%, and for the Indian Ocean islands 18.9%.
Of course, not all of these travellers have weighty wallets, but luxury travel is growing faster than overall travel, Amadeus reports. North America and Western Europe account for 64% of global outbound luxury trips, says