The New Definition of Luxury Travel: Why the Advisor Matters More Than Ever

For a long time, luxury travel was relatively easy to define. It was the five-star hotel, the first-class seat, the suite with the best view and the white-glove service that came with it.

Those things still matter. But after many years in the travel industry, I believe the definition of luxury has become much more interesting.

Today, luxury is increasingly personal.

It is access to something most travelers wouldn’t know was possible. It is experiencing a destination in a way that feels authentic rather than manufactured. It is having someone understand not only where you want to go, but why you’re going, and then creating an experience around that. And sometimes luxury is simply knowing that all the complicated pieces of a journey have been taken care of so you can actually enjoy it.

That shift has important implications for our industry, because the more personalized travel becomes, the more valuable a great travel advisor becomes.

Luxury Is Becoming More Personal

Virtuoso’s 2026 Luxe Report offers an interesting look at this evolution. The report draws on insights from more than 2,400 travel advisors across over 50 countries, based on what they are hearing and seeing from some of the world’s most experienced luxury travelers.

Among Virtuoso’s top ten travel trends for 2026 are family travel, multigenerational travel, active and adventure trips, cultural immersion, expedition cruising and authenticity. The leading motivations are equally telling: celebrating milestones, exploring somewhere new, spending time with loved ones, personal enrichment and seeking adventure.

Those aren’t primarily descriptions of things people want to buy.

They’re descriptions of how people want to experience the world.

Travelers are still willing to invest significantly in those experiences. Fifty-five percent of Virtuoso advisors surveyed expect spending per trip to increase modestly in 2026, while another 28 percent expect it to remain at today’s already elevated levels.

But travelers are also becoming more thoughtful about what they receive in return for that investment.

I think that’s an important distinction. Value in luxury travel doesn’t necessarily mean finding something for less. Increasingly, it means making the experience worth more. And that is where the advisor has an enormous opportunity.

Personalization: The Trip Should Feel Like It Belongs to You

True personalization goes far beyond selecting a nice hotel and adding a private transfer.

A talented advisor starts with the traveler.

Is this a family’s first trip to Italy? Are grandparents traveling with grandchildren? Is someone celebrating a 50th birthday? Does one family member love history while another cares much more about food? Is the goal to see as much as possible – or finally slow down?

The answers can completely change the itinerary.

Imagine a multigenerational family traveling through Tuscany. Instead of simply booking a sightseeing tour and dinner reservation, their advisor and local destination partner might arrange a visit to a family-owned agriturismo. The family meets the owners, learns how the farm operates and spends time discovering where the ingredients they eat actually come from. Later, a private chef prepares a regional meal using ingredients from the farm.

For children, parents and grandparents, the same experience means something different, and yet they experience it together.

That’s personalization.

It’s also exactly the kind of travel reflected in the trends we’re seeing. Family and multigenerational travel occupy the top two positions in Virtuoso’s 2026 Luxe Report, while cultural immersion and authenticity are also among the year’s leading trends.

The best itinerary isn’t necessarily the one with the most expensive components. It’s the one that couldn’t simply be handed to the next client.

Access: Knowing What’s Possible

One of the most fascinating things about our industry is how often the answer to “Can this be done?” depends upon whom you know.

At Virtuoso Travel Week this year, I heard a wonderful example involving an Italian destination management company working with an advisor. The clients were traveling in Rome over Christmas, and together the advisor and DMC arranged an extraordinary experience: a private visit to the Sistine Chapel on Christmas Eve.

Think about the difference between that and purchasing a standard Vatican tour online.

Both travelers may technically visit the same place. Their experiences are nothing alike.

This kind of access exists throughout luxury travel. It might mean exploring a museum after hours, touring areas normally closed to the public, visiting a private estate or arranging a specialist guide whose expertise completely changes a traveler’s understanding of what they’re seeing.

Virtuoso advisors themselves describe experiences ranging from private after-hours museum visits to seeing rooms at Versailles normally closed to the public, private nighttime tours of Venice’s Doge’s Palace and dinners in extraordinary locations.

Most travelers would never know many of these possibilities exist, much less know whom to call to arrange them.

That is why relationships remain one of the most valuable currencies in luxury travel.

Authenticity: Getting Beyond the Checklist

Another word we’re hearing increasingly in luxury travel is authenticity.

It’s easy to dismiss that as a travel-industry buzzword, but I think travelers are telling us something important.

They don’t simply want to see a destination. They want some connection to it.

There is a meaningful difference between eating at a highly rated restaurant and cooking alongside someone who has prepared the same regional dish for decades. There’s a difference between buying a souvenir and visiting the artisan who makes it. There’s a difference between seeing the Scottish Highlands and working with a local expert to trace your family’s heritage, identify its tartan and visit the villages connected to that history.

The latter is the kind of experience that travelers talk about years later.

We’ve seen Virtuoso advisors arrange everything from visits to private cashmere farms in Tuscany to highly personal cultural experiences built around local markets, home cooking, art, history and family heritage.

Technology can tell us the top ten things to do in almost any destination in seconds.

The role of the luxury travel advisor is different. It is knowing which experience is right for this particular traveler.

The Advisor Doesn’t Work Alone

There is another part of this conversation that I think travelers rarely see.

Behind an exceptional travel advisor is often an extraordinary network.

This is something we think about a great deal at Andavo Travel. As a luxury travel host agency and member of the Virtuoso network, our responsibility isn’t simply to provide advisors with booking tools. It is to surround independent travel advisors with relationships, knowledge and a community they can draw upon when serving their clients.

No advisor can personally know every hotel, ship, DMC, tour operator and destination in the world.

But a strong community can know an extraordinary amount collectively.

It’s one of the things our advisors tell us they value about Andavo.

Our private advisor Facebook community allows someone planning a trip to reach out to fellow advisors and ask, “Has anyone worked with this DMC?” or “Who would you recommend for this particular client?” Advisors share supplier experiences, recommendations and firsthand knowledge with one another.

Every week, our Andavo Connections call takes that exchange further. Advisors discuss industry news, talk about recent FAM trips, share what they’ve experienced and pass along information that may help another advisor serve a client.

We’re now expanding that exchange of firsthand knowledge through the Andavo intranet as well. Advisors will be able to share more detailed FAM trip experiences, insider selling tips and their own photos so that another Andavo advisor who hasn’t yet experienced that hotel, ship or itinerary can learn from someone who has.

I believe that’s an increasingly important function of a luxury travel host agency.

The independent advisor may own his or her business, but independence shouldn’t mean isolation.

Human Connection Is Still the Advantage

Technology will continue to transform our industry. Travelers have more information available to them than at any point in history, and AI will make that information even easier to access.

But information and expertise are not the same thing.

A search engine can tell you that the Vatican is worth visiting.

An AI platform can build a sample three-day itinerary for Rome.

Neither inherently has the relationship with the destination specialist who knows that an extraordinary private experience may be possible on Christmas Eve—or the firsthand feedback from a trusted colleague who used that partner last month.

This is why I don’t believe technology diminishes the role of the travel advisor. Used well, technology gives talented advisors more time and better tools to do the things humans do exceptionally well: listen, understand, connect, advocate and create.

Virtuoso’s own recent data points in that direction. Demand for professional guidance remains strong as luxury travel grows more complex and experiential.

The advisor of the future isn’t valuable because information is difficult to find.

The advisor is valuable because the right experience is difficult to create.

A Different Kind of Luxury

The five-star hotel isn’t going anywhere. Neither is the beautiful suite, the exceptional restaurant or the premium cabin.

But those things increasingly form the setting for luxury rather than its entire definition.

Luxury can be a grandmother watching her grandchildren make pasta on a farm in Tuscany.

It can be standing beneath Michelangelo’s ceiling without the usual crowds.

It can be meeting the artisan instead of simply buying what they created.

It can be arriving in a foreign country knowing that someone you trust has already thought through what happens next.

And it can be having an advisor who knows you well enough to recognize the experience you would love—even when you didn’t know it existed.

For independent advisors, I believe this evolution represents an extraordinary opportunity. Travelers aren’t simply asking us to book more expensive trips. They’re asking the travel industry to create more meaningful ones.

At Andavo, our goal as a luxury travel host agency is to give independent travel advisors the relationships, Virtuoso resources, preferred partner access, community and support they need to do exactly that.

Because the future of luxury travel isn’t simply about where we can send people.

It’s about what we can make possible once they get there.