Traditional Luxury Is Dead but Never the Tradition of Luxury

As a subcategory of hotels, traditional luxury conjures up images of grand, historic hotels in the immediate vicinity of a train station where doormen in immaculate outerwear usher you through to an ornate lobby of marble, extravagant flower arrangements and chandeliers. Those types of hotels are still totally relevant to today’s world; they’re ever-innovative and in ever-high demand. But as an asset class, there’s no further growth.

Instead, the conversation has shifted to experiential luxury. This equally complex and ambiguous term denotes those hot brands that are baking a mixture of exclusive access to select activities, unorthodox room configurations, remote destinations, wellness, lifestyle communities, membership clubs, immersive culinary, agrotourism and other elements, all to carve out a niche and generate demand in this ever-diverse world of hospitality.

To reference some names from around the world worth researching, think Aman, andBeyond, Auberge Collection, Banyan Tree, Capella, Design Hotels, Equinox, Explora, Fasano, Hoshinoya, MGallery, Lanserhof, Nayara, Nobu, One&Only, Singita, Six Senses, Soho House, Viceroy and Virgin Limited Edition. The list goes on!

This continued luxury boom speaks to the very essence of the experience economy: people now value their time above material possessions. We’re seeing this play out in the wellness space where a ‘health is wealth’ philosophy is translating into people wanting more health to thereby obtain more time for incredible experiences. We’re also seeing this play out demographically as wealthy boomers are preferring to spend their accumulated war chests on traversing the world rather than leaving it all as inheritance – think slow travel, suites-only hotels, cultural season travel, multigenerational travel and even the reconfiguration of airplane cabins to favor first class seats.

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What should be emphasized here is that while the idea of traditional luxury is passing the torch over to experiential luxury in various ways, what’s eternal is the tradition of luxury.

True luxury is having your needs met, remembered and anticipated at every turn. No matter the bells and whistles of new brand launches or property repositioning, luxury will always depend on treating guests with the utmost of care. While the staff uniforms may be less formal nowadays and the interior designs have evolved from ornate marble to subdued, minimalist Godai or Hygge mixed with local artisanship, the core principle of treating guests as sacrosanct has never budged an inch.

As a proudly Canadian example here, consider the recent launch of BASIN Glacial Waters at Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise. This property is firmly within the traditional luxury camp, and yet here it is diving headfirst into the thermal bathing trend with this multimillion-dollar Nordic spa expansion, crafting an incredible onsite experience that drives year-round demand. Throughout this property reinvention, though, service has always been at the forefront, now honed even further through this world-class wellness offering.

In 2026, of course there are ways to gain efficiencies towards this end by using stellar hotel technology and AI (however much the latter is a buzz term versus a reality). For instance, there’s much that can be done in the form of customer relationship management (CRM) to create centralized guest profiles for associates to instantly recognize preferences as well as foster microsegments so that your loyalty marketing efforts are hardly yet more glorified spam in the eyes of their recipients.

Further, the roaring business in global luxury development also translates to stiffer competition, meaning that simply calling yourself luxury without the goods to back it up will only merit apathy or, sometimes, skepticism. The brands rifled off above have the goods. They don’t need to say they’re luxury, and that’s precisely why they are.

These brands all thoroughly understand that the tradition of genuine and discreet luxury hospitality must be mastered before looking to roll out the amenities, activities, excursions, exciting dining concepts or spatial reconfigurations that will give the brand or independent property a lucrative niche.

So, overall, experiences are the future, be they driven by exclusivity, groups, wellness or exceptional F&B. And this pursuit of unique experiences goes hand in hand with the luxury hotel boom. But we cannot forget in all this conceptualization, development, operational retooling or program design that the most fundamental guest experience is to be treated with care and remembered. Plenty of ways to profit in 2026 so best look at how you can lean into these trends!