Luxury tours and activities evolve as out-of-the-box cravings intensify among the well-heeled

Luxury travellers are getting more sophisticated with their holiday expectations, prompting travel and tourism specialists in Asia-Pacific to curate out-of-the world offerings to win them over.

Jenny Zhou, head of Leisure Travel, Wild China, has delivered a customised food tour that traversed across China for a private group as well as sports programmes that featured a world champion as the trainer.

Speaking on a panel at the recent Further East 2024 luxury travel trade event in Bali, Indonesia, Zhou added that her team has just launched an “extreme snakes trip”. The 12-day expert-led Herpelogical Expedition, a collaboration between the travel company and Serpentine Expeditions, included a quest for the Mangshan Pit Viper.

The Herpelogical Expedition highlights the reverence reptiles and amphibians hold in Chinese folklore and follows the path of some of the China’s most coveted herpetological treasures, covering both those who have adapted to live on the fringes of densely populated urban centres and those who remain in their natural habitats, now protected national forest parks and UNESCO-recognised biosphere reserves.

More special interest tours, such as those focused on archaeology, arts and pottery will be rolled out in 2025.

Travellers’ quest for the unusual also means hoteliers “could no longer just sell rooms”, stated Dorris Goh, vice president Commercial, Como Hotels & Resorts.

Goh added that tourism has come of age and the travel industry now has a more educated audience.

In 2025, Como Hotels & Resorts will launch the Como Journey: Into the Arctic, in collaboration with Nature World Safaris. The 11-day trip onboard the eight-suite MS Polarfront expedition ship will set sail from the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen to explore the Svalbard Archipelago.

This voyage follows on from the successful Como Island Astronauts Camps that were organised with NASA and citizen astronauts over the past three years. These camps were held at Como’s island resorts in the Maldives, Thailand, and Indonesia’s Bali.

Goh said: “Three years ago, we considered how we would want a brand to be remembered by generations; (we needed) something extraordinary, so we decided to engage with the space community and brought in space camps. We wanted to do it specifically for families and children who come to the resort, so that they have something to look forward to.”

The Como Island Astronauts Camps are in support of Space for a Better World, teaching children that any dream is possible. The camps also engage with students from local schools.

Bill Barnett, founder and managing director of C9 Hotel Works, opined that hotel developers have to respond to these travel expectation changes by rethinking hotel design.

Just as how art can move and interact with visitors at an immersive art gallery today, Barnett believes that hotel design should be as innovative.

“Hotel rooms don’t have to be boring with design. Why does a hotel have to be a single structure? Why can’t we put the back-of-house and the employee dining room in a place where guests can come and join in? People want to engage with people in a social space, so must we have barriers between back-of-house and front-of-house?” he mused.