Crypto News: A billionaire hotel battle

Hey, jet-setters, Nikki Ekstein here, with the World's 50 Best Hotels on the brain. Last week the same group that anoints restaurants and bars convened in London's Guildhall to pronounce what they have determined to be the 50 most impeccable places to stay around the world. It's a challenge that necessitates comparing apples and oranges.

Take the winner: the Capella Bangkok. It's a boxy building on the Chao Phraya River where all the rooms and suites have panoramic windows facing the water—an actual urban oasis. But how do you compare it to the last-ranked hotel on the list, Kokomo Private Island in Fiji, where guests get to bounce on ocean trampolines and participate in coral restoration projects on an otherwise uninhabited island that's only accessible by helicopter or seaplane?

Capella Bangkok, the no. 1 winner on this year's World's 50 Best list, is an actual urban oasis. Source: Capella Bangkok

Here's one thing those two hotels have in common: billionaire owners. As a brand, Capella is owned by Singapore's Kwee family, which is behind the Pontiac Land Group; Kokomo is owned by the family of the late Australian developer Lang Walker.

To get on the World's 50 Best list, you need money. The organizers of the list will tell you repeatedly that there is no "pay for play" here. And directly, there isn't: It would be a scandal if any hotelier was paying off the World's 50 Best team for their place on the list. But indirectly, there's no doubt they are spending enormous sums on marketing and publicity to expand their spheres of influence beyond the moneyed set that they already speak to.

Another billionaire with several hotels on the list: Bernard Arnault. LVMH owns two Belmond hotels that ranked, as well as the Cheval Blanc Paris shown here. Photographer: Alexandre Tabaste

The jury for World's 50 Best is made up partially of people who travel frequently enough—and fancily enough—to have strong opinions. (Read: billionaires and friends of billionaires.) But it's mostly made up of media people, who are also known—especially in the travel world—for no longer having generous expense accounts. To see the places they want to write about, they are often hosted for free. And who can extend those freebies? Publicists, who offer costly (but effective) services to those who can pay for them.

We're reminded of the power of freebies here in New York City, where I'm writing this newsletter while watching our mayor, Eric Adams, get indicted on corruption charges that stem, in part, from having accepted free travel. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has, too, been blamed for accepting free travel in exchange for influence. Ditto UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Nobody can resist a free trip, yet nothing in this world is free. (Just for the record, Bloomberg always pays its way in our coverage.)

Passalacqua, on Lake Como in Italy, is the rare boutique property on the list. It dropped to No. 2 after being ranked the world's best last year. Photographer: Stefan Giftthaler

I'm not saying that the Capella Bangkok and Kokomo Private Island aren't deserving of their recognition; I was happy to see both hotels recognized for what I know to be excellent hospitality.

Instead, I'm raising a concern that a relatively small group of people is dictating and then reinforcing what fine hotels should be, and that consequentially our definition of luxury is becoming too narrow.

Does luxury have to be conveyed by the flag of a particular brand? A full third of the 50 Best list is taken up by hotels owned by Rosewood, Aman, Capella, Four Seasons and LVMH. Worse, must a hotel be designed by one of a half-dozen hot-right-now firms, such as Thierry Despont or Martin Brudnizki, whose work—albeit beautiful—feels formulaic the more you see it?

A rendering of an Auberge-branded villa at Moncayo, which is striving to be the Palm Beach of Puerto Rico. Source: Moncayo

Look at the World's 50 Best Restaurants, which has been around for many more years than its nascent hotels sibling. It has exalted so many Scandi-chic, foraging-obsessed chefs for so long, it has changed the taste of diners all around the world. Now travel to any major food city and you'll find New Nordic-inspired restaurants on every other block.

My worry is that the same will happen to hotels. As long as we keep reinforcing our existing tastes with "best" lists that rehash the same old virtues, while making it more difficult to recognize the independently owned gems that really do things uniquely, all the apples and oranges and passionfruit and kiwi and persimmons will eventually become just homogeneous five-star fruit.

Connect with Nikki on Instagram.

I can't see the new Pendry Natirar, a Downton Abbey-like estate in New Jersey, ranking next year—and that's mostly because I can't see enough of these elite travelers vacationing in central New Jersey. Photographer: Pendry Natirar

These Are the 50 Best Hotels in the World in 2024
A hotel in Bangkok tops the annual list, now in its second edition, leading the Thai capital to earn the lion's share of this year's awards.

London's Buzziest New Hotel Is an Old War Office
The new Raffles is opening after a $1.76 billion renovation, with nods to its historical heritage. Suites include Winston Churchill's old office, bookable for £25,000 a night.

Two New Dubai Hotels Are Luring Travelers Away From the Beach
Here's how the Lana—the Dorchester Collection's first hotel in the Middle East—and the One&Only One Za'abeel stack up.

What It's Like to Stay at Atlantis the Royal, Dubai's Most Ultraluxury Hotel
Beyoncé broke the internet here. And you just might fall into a water feature. But don't you dare just stay in your room.

Two Hotels in Italy Are Proof That a Remake Can Live Up to the Original
Villa Passalacqua, on the shores of Lake Como, and Hotel La Palma, on the island of Capri, top the list of Italy's most anticipated hotels.

Last month, as travel companies from Airbnb Inc. to United Airlines Inc. released quarterly earnings, it started to become clear that the post-pandemic travel boom is, at best, plateauing. Expansion plans are slowing down; search traffic for online travel agencies is down; and when travelers do book trips, it's often for shorter periods of time and with a greater emphasis on value.

In other words, we're back to the old normal.

Belmond's Coquelicot, a new three-cabin barge takes guests on $80,000 weeklong private cruises of the Marne River in newly welcoming Champagne. Photographer: Belmond

But from what I'm hearing, things on the luxury side of the spectrum are slightly different. High-net-worth consumers are tired of paying $3,000 a night for a Positano hotel room that in pre-pandemic years cost $1,000 a night; the ones that were willing to shell out mid-six figures for a group trip to the Maldives are balking when they're quoted nearly $1 million for the same trip this winter. These are real stories, not hypotheticals!

This is all great news for the travel industry.

Summer travelers who were wise enough to skip the too-hot Greek islands and visit cooler Aarhus. Photographer: Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images

Between the pushback on astronomical pricing and the desire for cool-cations this summer, what we've been seeing is a geographic redistribution of travelers, with fewer people in traditional hot spots such as the Amalfi Coast in its traditional peak season, and more people electing to go there in the fall months, when both temperatures and prices have dropped. And instead of being there in July, these same monied travelers are dispersing all around the continent, to destinations such as Gstaad that are traditionally thought about as snowy destinations, or to cities such as Vienna that are underappreciated outside of the peak winter holiday season.

It's exactly what destinations have been trying to achieve for years: a more sustainable flow of foot traffic that spreads the wealth of tourism across more destinations and more months of the year, helping iconic destinations reduce overcrowding in their peak months and getting lesser-known spots the attention they've always deserved.

Visitors take in the Stockholm skyline from Skinnarviksberget on a June day. Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg

Denmark's Beaches Set Visitor Records as Weather in the Med Heats Up

How $1,000-a-Night Hotel Rooms Became the New Normal

Europe's Travel Hotspots Are Changing This Summer

Tourists Escape to Cooler Scandinavia Instead of Europe's Hottest Spots

The No. 1 Destination of the Summer Slid Totally Under the Radar

Overtourism Isn't the Conundrum It's Made Out to Be

We call for queries weekly on our Instagram account and via e-mail. Here's what you were dying to know about this time around.

Can you recommend some good noise-canceling earbuds?

Noise-canceling headphones have become a travel essential, so believe me, Neville Smith, I hear your plight (ha!) about not being able to use any of the the 12 best over-ear headphones that Matthew Kronsberg wrote about last week. In my opinion, even if you're not wearing glasses, the most cushy ones can be uncomfortable when you're trying to snooze and hurt your ears on ultra-long flights.

The best over-the-ear headphones for necessary noise cancelling. Photographs by Rene Cervantes for Bloomberg Businessweek. Prop styling by Caylah Leas

Luckily, Kronsberg is a tech wiz and got right back to me on your question.

The first two recommendations, he says, are the painfully obvious ones: Bose QuietComfort, which are the ones to beat, and if you're mostly listening on Apple products, AirPods Pro 2 or AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation. Also great are Sony's WF-1000XM5. Edifier just released the Stax Spirit S10s, which are noise-canceling planar magnetic earbuds. They sound fantastic, but do not seem to be available in the UK just yet.

Also pretty cool: the new JBL Tour Pro 3. On a flight, you can plug the case into the seat back TV's headphone jack, and it will act as a Bluetooth transmitter for the earbuds.

We stayed in a Relais & Chateaux in Jura and the service was well below expectations. Is this the new normal?

@julia_ir, this is such a good question. In the short term I think this is a new norm. But I get the sense that brands are initiating a course correction right now, and in another year or so, we may start seeing improvement.

Christophe Hay is the centerpiece restaurant of Fleur de Loire, an ambitious Relais & Châteaux hotel that's remaking luxury in France's Loire Valley. Photographer: Lindsey Tramuta

Remember that labor shortages have been a huge plague for the hospitality industry in recent years—it's something we're still hearing about in many corners of the globe. Here in the US, hotel workers have been striking all week, demanding better wages. That has left hoteliers figuring out how to work with fewer people, how to quickly train those who are inexperienced and how to make room in their budgets to better compensate their veterans.

At the same time, Relais & Chateaux is among the many luxury hotel brands that have seen a recent leadership shuffle; that company welcomed a new president, Laurent Gardinier, in 2023. As such brands eye expansions and rethink operations, they evaluate which hotels are performing below their standards and either trim the fat or make capital investments.

After all, they are only as good as their worst stay, and the reputation of all their other hotels is on the line. Which is to say: I think experiences like yours are not uncommon right now, but I'm hopeful your next trip will be better.

What's the best luxury hotel in Southeast Asia?

It would be so easy for me to refer right back to the top of this newsletter, @joctavia, what with Capella Bangkok winning it all at the World's 50 Best. But just this week we saw Michelin hand out keys in Thailand, with eight hotels in the capital and across the islands taking the top "three key" designation. Capella Bangkok was not one of them. (Funny how that works out, huh?) But the list holds plenty of dreamy escapes for your inspiration.

Samujana Villas, was awarded three keys by Michelin and is allegedly the setting for a scene in the upcoming season of The White Lotus. Photographer: Nicolas Voisin/Michelin

Of course there's more to Southeast Asia than Thailand, so let me share a few ideas that are on my personal hotel bucket list. I am desperate to plan a trip to Cambodia with a stop at Phum Baitang, just outside Angkor Wat with an entire "spa temple" and villas that look like stilted farmhouses.

For something completely different, consider another hotel in the Capella portfolio, Capella Hanoi, which inhabits an old opera house and feels like the most sumptuous place to rest your head after dizzying trips to the city's night markets.

Where should I go on a romantic getaway this Christmas, just the two of us?

That depends on where you're from, Lara Sokolova (@larasokolova), but I'll spell out my own fantasies here in hopes that they might just apply to you.

The Point, a former Rockefeller Great Camp, can be the winter vacation of your dreams. Source: The Point

For me, the essential ingredients of a romantic winter escape are seclusion, a cozy fireplace and snow on the ground—I'll take the island escape once I'm tired of cold weather, in February or March. My dream is to hole up with my husband for a few kid-free nights at Twin Farms, an adults-only Relais & Chateaux in Vermont where the food is as much a draw as the wraparound forest views from ultraluxe, 800-square-foot treehouses.

Staying in the Northeast, I'm also really drawn to the Point, a historic Rockefeller camp turned luxury resort that goes extra-large on Christmas decorations.

And if you're in Europe, how about "Cold Hawaii"? It's totally the wrong season, and that's the point—is there anything prettier than a beach in stark weather, with hot toddies and blankets and nobody there but the two of you?

Klitmøller Beach in Denmark's Jutland feels a lot like Cape Cod in the US, and could be just as magical off season. Photographer: Mette Johnsen/VisitDenmark

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