For a rundown on places neither you nor I will probably be visiting without hitting the lottery, check out this Forbes article, World’s Most Expensive Resorts – 2005.
Besides showing us that some tourists obviously have far more money than they know how to spend, it is also an excellent primer on the resort business in general. One of the most telling passages is this one: “Savvy business ploys, like offering all-inclusive room rates, help to keep their guests on-property during their stay, and paying for incidentals, such as top-shelf liquor or an additional spa treatment, which aren’t always included in the package. ‘It’s called incremental revenue,’ explains [Smith Travel Research’s]Garner. ‘Keep the guest on the property, spending money on-site, helping out the resort’s bottom line.’ While some resorts, like Turtle Island, in Fiji, include Champagne and spirits in their inclusive rates, others don’t.”
This comes after we learn that some of these resorts in the Maldives charge $8,000 per night or more. Can you imagine paying that much and then getting charged for ordering a specific brand of vodka? Heck, for $8,000 you can probably buy a whole liquor store in a village in the Maldives.
For eight grand, you can travel around the world for a year. Or stay at a nice all-inclusive in Mexico or the Dominican Republic for a month. Or buy an around-the-world ticket in business class.
Kudos to the writer Sophia Banay for injecting more than a “aren’t these places lovely” perspective with this fine passage:
“The irony attached to many of the world’s most beautiful resorts is that they are in places so remote that for centuries they were known primarily to their indigenous people, pirates and castaways. For non-natives, these were places to escape from, not travel to. And certainly, if any unlucky seaman found marooned in the Maldives in the 18th century was told that in the 21st century people would be willing to pay $10,000 to spend the night there, not to mention thousands more to travel there, he would have thought you had been spending too much time at the grog barrel. “
