A Newport Eyesore Trades Up for a Palace
Plus, a new helicopter service for Greek island hopping.
Good morning from Newport, Rhode Island, where I’ve been spending the 4th with my family this year.
With the holiday (and a bout last week with covid that put me behind), I’m going to try something a little different this week. Some readers have expressed interest in having some editions just be the Department of Grievances and industry news instead of a big feature. So, let’s try it–let me know what you think. Next week we’ll pick back up with my Paris guide.
But before I do, I wrote a piece for Bloomberg that ran this week on something I have long thought luxury travelers should think about–getting a better bang for their buck at boutique properties when they spend four-figures a night than an entry-level room at a famous hotel.
DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES
Speaking of Newport … Locals may gripe about crowds but this is the deadest 4th of July I’ve ever experienced here. The harbor is far from bristling with masts, traffic is not clogging the streets, and the beaches anything but jammed. I’ve been banging on in this newsletter week after week about soft domestic tourism (including pulling Newport’s numbers showing lackluster growth) but seeing it with my eyes is another thing entirely. That being said, if everybody is making good money under the status quo, then probably better to just enjoy it. Because as many overrun European destinations can tell you–it’s not always worth it.
What I am excited about with Newport is that dramatic plans were recently unveiled for a new luxury hotel. The property will occupy one of the famed city’s eyesores–the parking lot in front of Bellevue Plaza across from the Tennis Hall of Fame. The scandalous media tycoon James Gordon Bennet once owned a house here named Stone Villa (he also built the Casino that is now the Hall of Fame).
But that was torn down in the 1950s to make way for the shopping plaza that exists today. As strip malls go, it’s not a bad one. But given its placement at the start of one of the most famed streets in America, it’s horrendous. The proposed hotel is being designed by Centerbrook Architects, which oversaw the restoration of Ocean House. The plan is inspired by the original Stone Villa, and the architects really did lean into the original building’s aesthetic. While I’m leaning in favor, a lot of its success will be determined by the materials. Will it be natural stone? A composite material? Concrete? Because a third of the time I look at it, it’s giving Rodeo Drive. Another third, Doha’s Place Vendôme mall. And the final third, especially when looking at the wings, a post-modern building on a college campus.
Will there be no off-the-beaten path destination in a few years? The tour operator Collette announced this week it’s launching a Balkans itinerary in 2025 that includes Albania, which has been one of the fastest growing destinations in Europe lately. It’s a remarkable change for a place that usually only attracted backpackers, country checklist travelers, and those seeking budget beach experiences. I guess there will always be North Korea…
If it’s a city I go to a lot, I tend to eat at the same places over and over unless a friend brings me somewhere new. As a result, I don’t have much of a dog in the whole drama brewing over reservations. That said, I do find the credit card wars interesting, as the perks doled out often directly reflect what kinds of things (real and status-related) people will spend extra for. It turns out, reservations are one of them and American Express is sinking hundreds of millions into ensuring its cardholders can skip the line. As this fascinating Atlantic feature explains, the company owns Resy and just bought a competitor, Tock, for $400 million. (For the unfamiliar, a piece in the New York Times a couple years ago explaining the difference between the various apps opened with: “OpenTable is economy. Resy is premium economy. Tock is business class” in terms of the users and the restaurants one can access through them.) Anyways, the focus of the piece is a new Indian restaurant in New York City called Bungalow, and the way this little ecosystem works is as follows:
Every day, Bungalow’s Resy page sees about 1,500 people vying for a spot, Jimmy Rizvi, a co-owner of the restaurant, told me. American Express withholds a few tables for its elite customers, and in return comps Bungalow the nearly $500 monthly fee to use Resy. “And it benefits us that we get a clientele of big spenders,” Rizvi said.
I loved my recent stay in Menorca at Vestige Son Vell, one of the most hyped-up new hotels in the world. But I found the prices at its restaurant bordering on ridiculous for Spain. If I had stayed there longer, I would have eaten outside of the hotel for every dinner possible. It turns out I’m not alone and that eye-watering prices for things like dining at already-expensive hotels is becoming grating for luxury travelers. It’s not the burden of paying, but the principle against being gouged over and over. And smart hotels are taking notice, working to cushion the blows with freebies sprinkled throughout the stay.
I do wonder, though, where the breaking point is for hotels and travelers. If a destination becomes known for impossibly high prices, at what point do travelers not even consider a trip there? In part due to its short-term rental crackdown, hotel prices have soared in the last six months in New York City. This spring, the average price per night of a hotel room was $687 per person!!! That’s multiples of an average in hotspots like Berlin, Tokyo, London, and more. While the New York Post wanted to blame it on crime, tucked away in their piece on soft NYC tourism it noted the city’s comptroller remarking that high prices were an issue. While many places have soared past their pre-covid numbers, NYC’s domestic visitors are still 5% less than in 2019. City officials’ prediction of 64.5 million tourists total for 2024 is still less than the 66.6 million in 2019. (And I’m skeptical the city will hit its predicted number.)
When I was in Tucson over the winter holidays, I found it remarkable how much tourism there was across the border into Mexico for things like dentistry. There are fortunes being made in malls in Nogales because of dentist and doctor offices sending buses to retirement villages in Arizona, rounding up seniors in need, treating them for a fraction of the price and sending them home. It’s part of why I found this Tik Tok talking about U.S. medical care in the context of Americans going abroad for treatments so interesting. I mean, we all know just how outrageous care in this country has gotten, but I still am shocked at how big the medical tourism industry is—and how fast it’s growing. In just the last two years, the number of people traveling to Turkey for medical procedures (ahem, hair transplants), has doubled! The numbers in this article on it from Huriyet are staggering: “Revenues from medical tourism climbed to $2.1 billion in 2022, rising from $1.7 billion in the previous year. Medical tourism revenues stood at $638,000 in 2015.”
I’m generally over “views” as a reason for going somewhere, so I liked this breakdown of the various observation deck experiences in New York. I have zero interest in them all since you can often get better views from plenty of other buildings. Except, I begrudgingly admit I now some interest in the City Climb at the Edge. That does look … cool?
I’m not sure I can unsee the revolting images of the moldy chicken Delta served on its flight to Amsterdam this week. And, just a couple days later, the airline AGAIN found itself having to pull meals on dozens of its international flights. There isn’t much one can say about shitty airline food that hasn’t already been said, but this is another level.
I understand the impulse, nay, the need for a news outlet to write about the “next thing,” but I found this Wall Street Journal piece arguing “Nice Is Quietly Becoming the Coolest Destination on the French Riviera” to be silly and unconvincing. Nice has a lot going for it–it’s a really lovely city! But a couple of new luxury hotels and some Michelin-star restaurants does not make it “cool.” Certainly not, for example, in the way that Marseille became in the last decade. Nobody I know who has gone to the south of France in the last year or two was excited for Nice in particular. Happy to go at best, usually just curious, some downright reluctant. (I say this as somebody who liked the new Anantara, which is one of the hotels talked about in the piece.)
The Denver International Airport held a ribbon cutting recently for its brand-new train cars, but that only served to draw attention to news that its intra-airport trains broke down twice in recent weeks, trapping passengers, and forcing TSA to stop screenings. That airport is hell on a good day, so I can only imagine the absolute nightmare it became. The rise of Denver into one of the world’s busiest passenger airports has always been a strange one to me, and a rise that hasn’t been matched by betterment of one’s experience in the airport. The food options are mid, finding a non-crowded bathroom unlikely, and security lines are always excruciating. Throw in how prone it is to nature and how far from the cities it serves, and it’s truly one of my least favorite in the world. (And why, unless the price is outrageous, if I'm going to Boulder I’ll always try to fly JSX.)
TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS
List prices in Nantucket are down nearly 6% from last year, attributed in part to fears of erosion.
A number of passengers were injured in another incident involving turbulence, this time on an Air Europa flight. I used to be a seatbelt rebel on planes, but no more.
A Trump-branded resort is expected to debut in Oman by December 2028.
I guess we’re back to news outlets making news out of non-news when it comes to planes.
The Wall Street Journal ranked the best national parks if you care about crowds.
A 25-story JW Marriott is opening in Detroit in 2027.
Roadside land values in Japan jumped thanks in part to the massive increase in tourism.
Cc
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