The Evolving World of Luxury Travel

Travel used to be uniformly luxurious – back in the fifties and sixties, planes were the reserve of the rich and famous and few people really cared about the cost of a ticket: indeed, many were thrilled just to be in the air. This has all changed and many people fly first class to make the process a bit more pleasant – recent developments have changed the nature of premium air travel.

For most people first class travel is prohibitively expensive – indeed, who wants to pay twice the price for a few hours of better service. This led many to abandon first class entirely. Reacting to this, airlines have created numerous gradations of service including business class, club class and economy plus – these tiers all offer different levels of luxury based upon the price of the ticket.

This is excellent news for travellers interested in upgrading without paying through the nose: you can get a better chair, meal and a higher level of service without doubling the price of your ticket. This is a superb move by the airlines and it has certainly revived the prospects of luxury and semi-luxury travel – we can fully expect them to develop more products along this line in the coming years.

Although this is certainly a good development, these services are still not cheap. Indeed, adding an upgrade is likely to cost you at least a few hundred pounds. This is quite a steep price to pay, especially if you are only going to get a watered down product. For these tiers to really take off we will need to see them come down in price, with the intense competition amongst airlines at the moment we can expect to see that happen soon.

Luxury travel has certainly seen a significant evolution over the past few years – indeed, it has become much more accessible and now almost everyone can afford to travel in slightly better style. But the question remains: is it really worth upgrading? Travelling this way is incredibly expensive and you will only see the benefits for a short period of time. Would it not be better to save that money and spend it on a great hotel when you get to your destination? This is compounded when you consider the cheap flights offered by budget airlines – they may not be comfortable, yet they can get you where you are going for a quarter of the price of a first class fare. As luxury and budget travel continue to evolve it will be interesting to see what customers choose – given people’s appetites to travel often on small budgets, it is likely that the cheaper option will win out.