VACATIONS A poor economy fails to faze rich travelers

For some people, a cruise tab of $299,999 is nothing.
By DENIS HORGAN
HARTFORD COURANT
Across a tough, stressed-out economy, vacationers are cutting back, staying close to home, trying to make do with less. Maybe this year it'll just be a quick trip to the beach. Possibly it's a bargain weekend by the lake, a brief day-trip to the theme park.
Or, on the other hand, maybe it's a 110-day round-the-world cruise on the Queen Elizabeth 2 with 35 ports of call and full butler service for $299,999 a head. Or lounging around the Imperial Suite at the President Wilson Hotel in Geneva -- at $33,243 a night. Or a nine-day hop to the Galapagos and Peru in a private jet for $18,900 per person.
With the travel industry reeling under the multiple whammies of a grinding economy, international stresses and uncertainty about security, people everywhere are lowering their vacation expectations. Except the rich. For them, little changes.
"The Grand Suites [on the 2004 Queen Elizabeth world cruise] will be full," says Julie Davis, manager of public relations for the Cunard Line. "For as long as we have done this cruise, the Grand Suites have always been occupied. The whole cruise is very popular, too, of course. It'll be full. It's really the way to go."
The rest of the boat is cheaper, with berths starting at a paltry $23,999 per person. The $299,999 tab (and don't you just love the nipping off of a lonely dollar to keep it under a presumably off-putting $300,000) is double occupancy; traveling alone, it'll cost you more. But people do not travel alone at that level; it's a $599,998 jaunt for a couple.
What statistics show
The statistics show the very rich are getting very richer, and there's no shortage of vacation opportunities at the thin-air level.
"The challenge isn't having the money for a world cruise," Davis says. "'The challenge is having the time for a world cruise."
"Time is the ultimate luxury," agrees Larry Bean, editor of the Robb Report, a high-end magazine richly reflecting the high-end lifestyle. "Even with the changes in the economy, there hasn't been a fall-off in the world of luxury, including travel."
Resorts and spas are big, we are told. Spas and resorts chronicled in the Robb Report are not your usual rub-a-dub-dub and exfoliation retreats but laps of luxury where a stay can cost what an automobile costs.
A customized luxury package at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in London, for example, can run to $14,200 a night. A night at Temenos villa in Anguilla, British West Indies, costs as much as $7,150 a night, with a three- or seven-night minimum. The Ritz-Carlton in New York tops out at $12,000 a night, high even by Big Apple standards.
"But what's 'high' to most of us is worth it to those who can afford it," Bean says. "It's across the board at the high end. We did a spread on $250,000 Aston-Martins. Expensive? They sold out in six weeks."
'Expensive' vs. 'luxury'
There is "expensive," and there is "luxury." It is expensive ($20 million) to fly in space under a plan cooked up for next year or 2005 by Space Adventures of Arlington, Va. It is not luxurious. These flights, promising a nice view, are likely to be cramped and uncomfortable, with pretty modest Russian space-program food and accommodations.
Quark Expeditions Inc. of Darien, Conn., has a "cruise" starting soon to the North Pole for between $16,000 and $20,000, not including air fare, liquor, laundry or tips. On that adventure, "ice breaker" doesn't mean an introductory line at the cocktail party but the Russian boat that crunches through the floes toward the pole, where it is cold.
More "common" at the top of travel are $10,000-a-day safaris and nature tours for $37,500 and hotels that cost $5,000 a night. These are both expensive and luxurious.
What is worth that sort of money?
"Ninety-five percent of us wouldn't dream of spending that much," Travel Channel host Tracy Gallagher says. "But there is a top tier in America that has a lot of money and a lot of disposable income who feel quite comfortable spending it on $5,500-a-night hotel suites.
"Whether they are CEOs or celebrities, they appreciate the attention and privacy those rates command," she says. "We see places that can cost for a few days what another person earns in a year, and we see that they do a very strong business. To me, it may be excessive, but to them, it's what they want to do with their money -- and they have a lot of it."
Travel Channel surveys
The Travel Channel has done surveys of the more expensive vacations that those top-tier folks divert themselves with and has discovered golf cruises for $30,000, $22,500-a-day villas on Richard Branson's Necker Island, a resort encampment in the deserts of Dubai, where you can "rough it" for $10,000 a week.
"There are people who expect a certain level of attention and who want to be catered to and who want a level of amenities beyond what the rest of us imagine," Gallagher says. "They're ready to pay for it, and there are people ready to deliver it."
So it is that we find Orient-Express offering $6,005.31 train rides (one way) from Paris to Istanbul, Turkey, and $15,900 jet rides around the European hot spots. We find TCS Expeditions ready to haul you around several American national parks for $22,950 when it seems like Lewis and Clark did it for less, but with a lot less pampering.
TCS also offers an opportunity to leave home on an around-the-world flight for $43,950 a person while The World offers an opportunity to never leave "home" for up to $7 million. The Norwegian vessel, The World, is a floating condominium traveling the planet with its 320 residents and crew; you see 40 countries and never leave home.
"There are trips to archaeological digs for $24,000 or chances to simply luxuriate on a remote island for $50,000," Robb Report's Bean says. "At that end of the economic scale, people choose to live well. This doesn't slow down in a slow economy. It's not something the rest of us get to do, but it is done and it is done with style."
But, for all that, is all the pampering, the luxury, the comfort, the special treatment truly any better than a cheap, mosquito-laden time with a bunch of good friends or family?
Are you kidding? Of course it is.