Musha Cay, David Copperfield's estate in the Bahamas
For two days I've had the entire wing of a huge estate on a billionaire's private island at my disposal, yielding to the attentions of a butler who's been watching me every step of the way. I have tasted three course lunches , sipped rum and champagne cocktails, worked out in a fully equipped gym just for me, swam in a boat-sized bathtub, and had a gleaming yacht at my beck and call. I have bathed in Caribbean , my footprints being the only mark in the sand. Suddenly it's hard to imagine a vacation other than this. I'm even beginning to feel entitled to this.
I'm in the Caribbean Calivigny Island , just south of the island country of Grenada (next to Saint Vincent and Barbados), where for €126,000 a night you can live with 59 of your best friends in this vacation paradise owned by a French businessman and his wife: it includes the main house of 1800 m², two swimming pools, five outdoor showers, four boats and a permanent service of 30 people.
Although the price may seem a bit exorbitant there are a good number of wealthy travelers who can afford it, and it is growing. Last year, more than two thousand people in the world had $1 billion (765 million euros) or more, 185 more people than in 2011, according to a global survey by the WealthX company. And those are the fat fish. If we go down a step in that ranking of millionaires, we find that there are some 187,000 people with a fortune of at least 20 million euros around the world. So it's not surprising with their vacation spending: Nearly a quarter of it was spent 40,000 euros or more in leisure and travel last year, according to a study by the Spectrem Group, an Illinois-based consultancy that conducts research for the banking and retirement industry. Half came to spend up to 80,000 euros.
Calivigny Island, a private island in the Caribbean at 126,000 euros per night
BLANK LETTER
In its most basic form, for super rich traveling means not having to bother with petty paperwork and, above all, enjoying all the privacy and services that money can buy. The super rich want space, much space , feel safe away from the bustling and less fortunate crowd. Employees have to indulge any craving, no matter how mundane, crazy, or logistically extravagant it may seem. Tired of the cloying smell of Easter lilies? They are removed from the entire hotel. Do you need to book rooms for your wife and two of his mistresses in different hotels so that they won't notice each other's presence? Agents, hotels, and concierges who cater to the richest will go to great lengths to get it.
"The word 'No' it is not part of our vocabulary, because what is impossible today may not be tomorrow”, he assures Jody Bear , from the New York agency Bear & Bear/Tzell, which, like the other companies in this article, is a great specialist in this field. “There are clients who have called me from their Parisian hotels to 'my' four in the morning to manage a late checkout for them; since Milan to change the time at the hairdresser and from Hong Kong because suddenly they feel like another type of breakfast. With less than 24 hours notice I have organized a special Christmas dinner prepared by a chef with three Michelin stars ”, she recounts.
After all, if money is not an issue, anything is possible. “We will do anything a client asks of us, as long as it is legal,” he says. Stacy Fischer-Rosenthal , from Fischer Travel, an agency that only provides its services by recommendation and that has an entry price of €80,000 (it is rumored that Barbara Streisand is one of her clients). One of her travel agents recalls earning €15,000 in tips during a group trip lasting several weeks. Money flows easily when you have to deal with customs security to expedite baggage processing or when you have to make a reservation for 40 people in one of the best restaurants in Cannes during the film festival.
businesswoman and philanthropist Tatiana Maxwell She was in Morocco a few years ago with her best friend, on a vacation meticulously planned by a super-luxury travel agent, and the only thing she came to miss about her was her husband. “I must have mentioned to my friend: I would love for Paul to be here. It would be fantastic,” she recalls. And one night, as she wandered through the chaotic food stalls of Jemaa el Fna He heard a familiar voice. "I turned around and there was my husband, in one of the stalls with an apron and a spatula," she tells me. To please her client the agent had arranged for her husband to take an overnight flight from her home in jackson hole , Wyoming (USA) .
The owner of Calivigny invested 75 million euros to make it synonymous with sumptuousness
LIKE THE FOAM
The global financial crisis that has affected most people it hasn't caused the wealthiest to cut back on travel spending. In fact, luxury hotel companies are expanding at a dizzying pace to meet demand, especially in China . The Ritz-Carlton has just opened its second upscale reservation in Puerto Rico , with rooms costing 1,000 euros a night. The Beverly Hills hotel recently sacrificed one of its tennis courts to make room for two 1,700-square-foot presidential bungalows ($14,000 a night, nearly three times what the hotel's most expensive bungalow used to cost).
“The rich are the least affected by the financial crisis –says the owner of Calivigny Island, George Cohen , who has been a billionaire since he sold his tech company in 2000. It's a terrible time for poor people, but the economic crisis hasn't changed the way rich people live at all."
in Calivigny 'life is Beautiful'. Cohen bought 80 acres when it was little short of wilderness and, along with his wife, spent approximately €75 million to make this place synonymous with sumptuous. The main residence of the island, called humbly beach house (beach house), has marble floors, carved wooden doors in Calivigny's own workshops and French colonial-style furniture.
During a lunch consisting of steak, fries and chocolate mousse and served by a butler, Cohen stresses that the island is a private home , one that is not to be shared unless expressly desired otherwise. That includes the Cohens, who spend the winter on the island but escape on their mega yacht to one of their other houses or to any place if they have Calivigny reserved. When a group of 30 occupied the island in December, the Cohens booked a luxury cabin on the Queen Mary 2 to make his first commercial cruise. The truth is that they did not know what it was going to be like to mix with the masses.
The desire for privacy is not necessarily pure snobbery , no, really, say those who work with the wealthiest travelers. The safest places, those that protect guests both from the press and from possible attacks on their integrity, are the most popular among the jet set . Think of the Arctic, Africa, any place that cannot be reached except by helicopter, boat, seaplane or all of them. Experts say that there is a significant number of billionaires who want to venture where no one, or at least none of their friends, has been before. "They want to be the first to say: I was in Cartagena before Gansevoort opened," he says. Lia Batkins , from In the Know Experiences , an agency in New York that works with celebrities, CEOs and even royalty.
The new presidential bungalow at the Beverly Hills hotel
NEW DESTINATIONS
Some of the exclusive destinations of the moment for the most demanding clients are the Swedish Lapland , the Uyuni salt flat in Bolivia and the Emerald coast In Nicaragua. An exclusive travel specialist is taking her clients to Afghanistan Already Sudan . The taboo that these places are often associated with because of their dangerous situation is attracting the super-rich, says Batkin. "It's pure bragging" she concludes. But with all the comforts, of course.
There are still many who travel to more conventional places, especially those who are not nouveau riche. They sail on a yacht Mediterranean or rent luxury villas in Eel, San Bartolome, Costa Rica, Italy or the South of France . For those who want to stay close to Wall Street there is The Point , the old vacation spot of William Avery Rockefeller , grandson of the oil tycoon. Completed in 1933, this quirky vacation spot on the shores of Lake Saranac ($2,300 a night) in upstate New York attracts many of the Manhattan hotshots , who avoid the six-hour drive by taking a private flight to the Adirondack Regional Airport.
The Point seems at first glance the antithesis of Calivigny . While Calivigny is a poster child for glitz, The Point has an understated, somewhat rustic atmosphere. It does not offer services such as television or internet in the rooms and, as a member of staff tells me, the mobile works with 'AT & Tree' , a soft way of saying that there is no coverage. But really both are part of a long tradition of exclusivity and lonely hideouts built by and for the stratospherically rich.
For those who 'have seen it all' , money can buy new vacation thrills above your expectations. Part counselor, part psychologist, part concierge, and part organizer, travel agents mold themselves around each client to create a tailored itinerary.
"It's about making every experience absolutely perfect," he says. Philippe Brown , founder of Brown & Hudson , a London - based agency with clients in United Kingdom, China and the United States (Maxwell, whose husband 'turned up' in Marrakesh, is one of them.) It can be anything from a private firework display to a balloon ride over the Arctic to see polar bears (organized by Arctic Kingdom Polar Expeditions, a Toronto-based company). Maybe they just want to go unnoticed at an already exclusive event.
Based on a True Story, a company that caters to overly exclusive experiences, organized a trip to burma for a family who paid over a million euros to visit a traditional Buddhist monastery where they ate and received a special blessing from the head monk. They also took part in an initiation ceremony in which 14 young men were to become monks: they went out in procession and helped shave boys' heads as part of the Buddhist ritual.
Musha Cay, the resort of the stars in the Bahamas
LOCAL FLAVOR
Maybe they just want to mingle with what Brown calls 'influential individuals' , ranging from journalists to historians, through wine experts or exceptional people. Brown once arranged a honeymoon for a couple who made it clear that he wanted to meet 'to local people' . Brown asked them to be more specific: “Are you referring to the colorful Maasai or the Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu ?”. It was the seconds. Mandela, the former president of South Africa, was not available, but Brown was able to get the couple to meet tutus , the pacifist cleric and human rights activist. The price: a donation whose value he did not want to reveal.
Beyond that are the truly eccentric vacations, fantasies as carefully orchestrated as money can buy. These fantastic elements are included in Musha Cay , a resort on a private island of the Bahamas who has hosted Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and Sergey Brin , as well as Saudi and European royalty. wizard property David Copperfield , their unofficial motto for guests is 'whatever you can dream can come true'. For 28,000 euros per night for 12 people or 40,000 for a maximum of 24, guests can, if they wish, watch a movie on a cinema screen on the beach, all 'props' with 50's signs and retro style candies.
In another scenario, the helicopter Musha Force will land on the beach, creating a laser light show. If, as usual, guests do not want to take care of the rubbish they have left on the beach, no problem, the island has a team of trained macaws to collect the garbage and leave it in the containers. “Best of all is being able to entertain people who have seen it all” Copperfield says.
The macaw show pales in comparison to some of the tours organized by Based on a true story . The founder of the company, Niel Fox , is an English adventurer who jumped into the media in 2000 for traveling from the United Kingdom to Antarctica simply for charity and using only transport propelled by the force of himself or animals (bicycle, kayaks and dog sledding). Along the way he met people with a lot of money and "it occurred to me that we could show them the whole world," he says.
Among the creations brand of the house, Based on a True Story has built scenarios, igloo with fur rugs, fisherman's shacks and scripts generally designed to appeal to the children of the super-rich. In 2011 the company staged a Christmas trip to the Arctic for a billionaire's family in which the children helped a Santa who was in high demand from a greedy world. For a Russian family he organized an eleven-day trip that took the group through several countries using means of transport as striking as camels, yachts and a hot air balloon , and ended with a colossal pirate battle here, on the Spanish coast.
New York's elite come to summer at The Point in the Adirondacks
HOLIDAYS IN OLYMPUS
He also organized what he called 'The children who saved Greece' , a multi-million dollar family vacation in which he had the collaboration of the greatest European authority on Greek mythology; the talent of hundreds of actors dressed in period costumes and a treasure to find. “The children were on a mission to locate a cache of gold with which to save Greece from its problems and thus restore the power of the Greeks. greek gods . They were able to keep a part of the gold, which of course was real, but they had to 'give up' the rest. The message was: the children have to help, not keep all the profits”, summarizes the adventurer.
It is really he who injects the message into these morality tales, not his clients. Although it is also true that there are not a few billionaires who try to use these exclusive vacations to teach their children lessons, with somewhat mixed results. “There are many who have a blindfold on their eyes”, diagnoses the doctor Jamie Traeger-Muney , a psychologist who works with both financial institutions and individuals analyzing the emotional consequences of wealth. “They often take their children to see the other extreme: they go to school. India and see people living on the street. It is really important that before throwing children into this environment, parents have a previous talk about gratitude , how lucky they are and how fortunate they are, the advantage of having an education and the responsibility they have for having so much money, ”he recommends.
Although most of the rich are comfortable with this kind of travel, there is an emerging class of millionaires, much younger and newer to dealing with a large fortune, who feel uncomfortable with excesses . This group still prefers to fly under the radar, albeit in first class. In The Point I met a financier couple in their 40s who spoke disparagingly of the extravagant resorts they had visited. They were looking for places with character, the husband told me, not exaggerated. A sentiment shared by some friends of mine, a young couple of retired billionaires who cannot stand the huge disparity between the people who are served and those who serve in these types of places.
Call me bourgeois, but after two days of residing in Calivigny I'm longing to get out of this bubble of luxury. My butler fulfills my wish and takes me to Grenade . In its capital, São Jorge, people live in humble homes with goats grazing everywhere. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan wiped out the island's main source of wealth, the nutmeg . The trees are already growing back, but for many locals life is hard. I climb to the top of Fort George. “A 300-year-old structure built by the French,” Alice, a jovial tour guide, tells me, “after they conquered and massacred the Caribbean Indians and Arawaks and brought in African slaves.” When she asks me where I'm staying, I tell her, but suddenly embarrassed by the revelation, she quickly adds: "I'm there for work!".
Back in Calivigny, I wonder if I would really enjoy this kind of life all the time, away from the world , apart from anyone who is not of my social class... unless they work for me. It's a nice place to visit, I decide, but I'd hate to have to live here forever.
*** You may also be interested in...**
- Go to St. Barth (if you can afford it)
- Rich and environmentalists
This report was published in number 62 of Condé Nast Traveler.