Been there, done that. Huge hotel rooms, expensive marble tiles and gold-plated water taps and 24-hours-a-day butler service are starting to bore the well-heeled traveller. Those amenities are no longer enough to make travel memorable. That is the conclusion of Stefan Kraemer, Head of Airtours, the luxury holidays division of the German travel company TUI. Travellers now want to take back very special experiences - for example, sleeping among elephants or having a romantic dinner for two in the middle of a rice paddy. Kraemer uses the term ‘immaterial luxury’ to describe what travellers with deep pockets seek. “Ten years ago, the size of a room or the hotel’s facilities were the decisive factors. But today a holiday experience also means an interplay with the surroundings - that special ‘outside moment’,” he says. Of course a hotel is still necessary, he quickly adds. “There’s a lodge in Botswana where you can sleep in a bed atop stilts under the open skies, directly among a herd of elephants. You can hear them snoring at night. This will surely be the first story that you will tell when you get back home,” he says. So far, leading the way in the new ‘trend’ is Africa, but there are also some great offers coming from Asia. “For example, one place is offering a waitered dinner in a rice paddy in China. The first of the Alpine hotels are also joining the wave, says Kraemer.” A key component of his job is to determine who the new-trend travel customers are. “As a rule, they are not neophytes. They have a certain amount of experience – though this does not mean only an older clientele,” he says. Another aspect is price, with Kraemer conceding that room prices will be even higher than at a city palace. “And naturally the additional experiences are going to cost something extra. For observing a huge bird migration from the air, some people may be willing to pay the cost of chartering an airplane, he adds. “Our range will be anything from the small beach hotel right next to the cliffs, to a luxury lodge in the middle of a private wildlife reserve.”
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