Here’s a little something different today instead of the usual personal-finance blog. Enjoy.
In what may well be the average (and above average) person’s lifelong dream, luxury travel companies Luxury Travel Intelligence and VeryFirstTo.com are searching for someone (or possibly a couple) to travel around the world for one year on their dime.
The trip is purported to cost $1 million and the main requirement (because it’s actually a job) is that the person picked will need to write detailed reports about all of their luxury experiences during the trip. That person will then spend an entire year traveling the globe and eating at the finest restaurants, enjoying some of the world’s most elite night clubs and resorts and sleeping at five-star hotels every night.
“It’s like a secret shopper,” said Amar Thapen, editor in chief of VeryFirstToKnow.com, a website that gives members first looks at luxury experiences and trips when they launch. “But they have to be very discerning.”
The trip (a bit of a publicity stunt, obviously) is a major part of Luxury Travel Intelligence’s goal of providing detailed but fully objective ratings on high-end travel locations. They normally rely on their own team of researchers to provide reviews but, in this case, what they’re looking for is to improve their research with reports from a “regular person”.
The reason is simple; while it may be relatively easy to get people to write about their everyday trips and experiences on review websites like Yelp and Trip Advisor, getting the rich to do the same is a bit more of a challenge.
“Some of these people don’t like to rock the boat,” Thapen said. “And they don’t like to be out there publicly criticizing.”
According to the company, the person who’s picked for the million-dollar trip will visit over 50 “leading global travel destinations with particular focus on trending hotels, restaurants and nightlife,”. The plan is to visit each location ”incognito” and afterwards write detailed reports on everything from the service to the experience they had and the quality of each location that they visit.
Some of the locations that are reported to be included on a trip are Venice and Lake Como, both in Italy, as well as Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands. In Venice they will go to the Aman Resort to check if it’s “living up to its potential” and, while in the British Virgin Islands, the lucky traveler will report on whether or not the food, which is reportedly mediocre, has improved recently.
Thapen said that just because someone likes to travel, doesn’t mean they will be a good candidate. The ideal candidate would be well-versed in the world of high-end hotels, restaurants and experiences and be able to immediately tell a 1978 DRC from a 2001 Lafite.
“They should know exactly what to expect from the best restaurants and hotels,” Thapen said. He added that they also need to look like they belong at a luxury hotel or restaurant “and be sociable.”
While it sounds like the right person would have to be quite wealthy in order to be considered for the job, Thapen said that on the contrary, a person who has worked at a high-end hotel or restaurant would possibly be a great candidate.
Applications for this dream job are, unsurprisingly, coming in fast and furiously.