Luxury Travel: The Joy of Personality

I wonder what people imagine luxury travel is, without having experienced it.  Or what it should be, for those that are creating it.  Butlers in penguin suits carrying silver trays while somebody called Fabio bows and whispers “welcome home” after knowing you for seven seconds?  In reality, it’s mostly people asking you how your flight was, regardless of whether you told them ten seconds earlier that you just drove there.

For me, the whole point of luxury travel is that it’s meant to be fun.  Not some standardised corporate factory where everybody has the personality of a printer.

Two moments from last year still make me laugh.

At Laucala, every guest has a buggy to get around.  We may or may not have engaged in a bit of racing with ours, often my Dad and I in one, Lucie and the kids in another.  Having been overtaken one morning on the way to breakfast, my Dad put a note on Lucie’s buggy pretending to be from the Gary, the GM, politely asking her to refrain from driving over the grass.  I cannot explain how hard I laughed, watching her get increasingly offended that the GM would leave a passive-aggressive note on the windscreen instead of simply speaking to her like a normal person.  He had even come over to see us for breakfast and chat to us, so she couldn’t believe he wouldn’t have said anything.

We eventually told her it was fake, maybe because I’m a good husband and didn’t want to see her morning ruined, or most likely because I couldn’t contain the laughter anymore.  We also told Gary, who realised he had narrowly avoided what might have been one of the funniest confrontations of his career.  The idea of a guest being angry at him for something he hadn’t done….now I type it, I’m regretting having told either of them.

The next morning?  An actual note on Lucie’s buggy, asking her to refrain from wearing Cheval Blanc hats around the property.  This time from Gary himself.  And a Laucala hat on the buggy.

Then later in the year, we returned to Velaa Private Island for our fifth stay.  As our yacht approached the island, we could only see one staff member waiting on the jetty holding a single bottle of water.  Sure, I don’t need a welcome party, but one person?  One bottle of water?  Even the captain was getting panicky that no one was there.  The moment we stepped off the boat, the GM and half the team exploded out of the maintenance cupboard.  The sneaky bastards.

Basically, a collection of immature GMs made my year.  In other words: a bunch of people acted like people.

Long may it continue.