LVMH-owned luxury hospitality company Belmond will launch a luxury sleeper train next year that will take travelers through the countryside of England and Wales. The Britannic Explorer will run three itineraries: one to the southwestern county of Cornwall and the other to the opposite end of England through the Lake District of Cumbria in the … Read more
I’ve always considered lobster a luxury food, so imagine my surprise when I discovered it’s now available at your local Iceland store. Not that I’m dismissing Iceland – it’s been a stalwart of the frozen food industry since the 70s, but it’s not the first place that comes to mind for lobster. My sister-in-law quickly … Read more
A cause for optimism? Though luxury brands have been slumping this year, it should be a decent holiday season for the sector, at least based on findings from the latest Saks Luxury Pulse, set to be released Tuesday to the industry. Eighty-two percent of luxury consumers celebrating the holidays plan to spend at least the same on holiday shopping … Read more
Temperatures are cooling in Japan, but interest in visiting shows no signs of abating, as autumn arrivals continue to outpace pre-pandemic levels. The country welcomed 2.93 million foreign visitors in August, followed by another 2.87 million visitors in September — well above the 2.52 million and 2.27 million who arrived during those same months in … Read more
The 2024 World Series may be over, but that won’t stop baseball fans from searching for their next ballpark fix. But forget touring a stadium — this one lets you sleep inside it. Es Con Field Hokkaido is a stadium on the Japanese island of Hokkaido with a grass field, retractable roof and space for 35,000 spectators. But … Read more
The week before Sam Aisbett opened Akuna in Ho Chi Minh City, in southern Vietnam, he panicked. “I said, ‘What the hell am I doing? What an idiot,’” recalled the Australian chef of the July 2023 opening. There was no way his restaurant, with a menu price of 3.9 million dong (US$155) – at least … Read more
I’m proud to call the tiny sugarcane farming community of Ingham, Australia, my hometown. It boasts blue skies, sandy beaches and Australia’s longest single-drop waterfall. But its location — at the northern end of the state of Queensland — is a problem for me. Lured by the desire to explore Europe, I left for London … Read more
For most travelers, flying in business and first class, especially on international flights, is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A business class ticket can cost up to five times more than an economy ticket on Singapore Airlines — and a whopping 13 times more for a first-class one. As a result, these cabins are often booked by … Read more
MILAN — Luxury’s skyrocketing prices may have left aspirational consumers with window shopping as their sole comfort, but high- and ultra-high-net-worth individuals don’t seem to be skimping on their shopping sprees, undaunted by the dampened macroeconomic landscape. Over the past 12 months, Europe, as well as Japan, has been swarming with UHNWIs eager to splurge … Read more
“Made in Italy: shame in Italy,” chanted a handful of migrant labourers last week in Geneva, Switzerland, outside the flagship store of luxury accessory maker Montblanc, having travelled from Italy’s famed leatherwear region Tuscany. Standing about 3km (two miles) from where Montblanc’s US$76 billion parent company Richemont was meeting shareholders, the workers – flanked by … Read more
