Champagne, Concierges and Emergency Sand: How the Ultra-Rich Travel

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/travel/luxury-travel-agency-advisers-wealth.html

https://archive.ph/X5XFK

Champagne, Concierges and Emergency Sand: How the Ultra-Rich Travel
Inside the arms race to satisfy travelers for whom exclusivity is everything and money is no object.
By Sarah Lyall
Feb. 11, 2026

...

One of his previous jobs was at a Maldives resort where rooms ranged from $4,000 to $15,000, depending on the season. Once, he said, a client summoned Mr. Arslan to his room in the middle of monsoon season, gestured out the window and said, accusingly, “It’s been raining for four days.”

Rather than “explaining why it rains,” Mr. Arslan said, he immediately invited the guest to join him for drinks and backgammon in the bar.

“Give them Champagne, give them a free spa treatment, upgrade to a suite,” he said. “Complimentary service is part of hospitality. Kill them with kindness.”

It’s a challenging endeavor, finding new ways to please people who glide through life unburdened by the notion that there are things they cannot do or items they cannot have. But it’s a challenge people in the industry are seemingly happy to take on.

Once, to placate a client panicking because a monsoon had washed away the beach around the $40,000-a-night villa he had booked in the Seychelles, Mr. Ezon arranged to have an emergency shipment of sand brought in. Another time, he said, he arranged to have wall-to-wall carpeting installed in a 225-foot yacht his clients had chartered for $750,000 a week because the wife “didn’t want to take her stilettos off,” he said — and the yacht owners did not want anything damaging the wooden decks.

...


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There is something they can have - for free

[harumph]

1. I hear Madam Guillotine is kind - in the sense that it's fast.

[pandr32]

2. It seems life loses meaning and wonder for the uber-greedy-rich.

They are the problem.

[kimbutgar]

3. Before I worked with seniors in my move management job I worked with high end people who moved into mansions

One lady made me re do her closet three times. On the third time I changed it back to the original version I did and she was happy. She told me where she wanted everything and I did it exactly right the first time. She tore everything down and had a meltdown. After that I stopped taking high end jobs. And the co workers assigned to the kitchen almost walked off the job.

[tanyev]

4. Wearing stilettos on a yacht is a good way to find yourself unexpectedly swimming.

Oh well.

[Greg_In_SF]

5. Must

be nice.

[leftstreet]

7. That guillotine doesn't look OSHA approved

Safety first!

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