K. Joia Houheneka is a global leader in luxury entrepreneurship. She is the founder of Club Elevate+Aspire+, an application-only exclusive community for entrepreneurs building high-end, premium, and/or luxury businesses.
Ready to experience real luxury in travel? The first question to ask yourself is not “To where?” but “What for?”
“Luxury means ambitiously living your highest values.” -Quotes on Luxury” by K. Joia Houheneka
Have you ever spent a significant percentage of your yearly income on a picture-perfect trip only to end up feeling empty and deflated?
The views could have looked like a postcard. The sun could have been shining. The locals could have been welcoming. The food could have been crave-worthy. The meticulously planned itinerary could have proceeded without a hitch. Yet, inwardly something felt… off?
Writer Alain de Botton ruminated on this kind of experience in his book The Art of Travel regarding a highly anticipated trip to Barbados that didn’t bring the feeling of happiness – the transformation of his inner landscape – that he sought:
“It seems that, unlike the continuous, enduring contentment that we anticipate, our actual happiness with, and in, a place must be a brief and, at least to the conscious mind, apparently haphazard phenomenon: an interval in which we achieve receptivity to the world around us, in which positive thoughts of past and future coagulate and anxieties are allayed. The condition rarely endures for longer than ten minutes. New patterns of anxiety inevitably form on the horizon of consciousness, like the weather fronts that mass themselves every few days off the western coasts of Ireland. The past victory ceases to seem so impressive, the future acquires complications and the beautiful view becomes as invisible as anything which is always around. I was to discover an unexpected continuity between the melancholic self I had been at home and the person I was to be on the island, a continuity quite at odds with the radical discontinuity in the landscape and climate, where the very air seemed to be made of a different and sweeter substance.”
This might have been an expensive trip. But one would be hard-pressed to call this experience a “luxury”.
Here’s the thing: when people think of “luxury travel” what often comes first to mind are amenities like private jets, 5-star beachside villas, and butler service. While all these might be nice to have, they are at best just a start and might not even be necessary for a true luxury experience.
The truth is, real luxury is the integration of outer, material richness with deep inner, spiritual excellence. This is what is required if luxury is to be, as I believe it should be, synonymous with excellence.
This is what the top 1% understand and pursue.
As luxury experts Kapferer and Bastien observe about the Louis Vuitton brand in their seminal work The Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands:
“The core of Louis Vuitton is travel – ‘l’esprit du voyage’ (the spirit of travel) was the motto of the famous Jean Larivière campaigns of the 1980s. By travel Louis Vuitton did not mean tourism but the notion that one discovers oneself by moving and experiencing new countries and peoples – the spiritual dimension of travel.”
Here's how you can attain this
Purpose
Purpose is crucial to a full, flourishing, meaning-filled human life. Although purposes evolve as you grow, ideally your life will be guided by a grand mission or central purpose (or perhaps a few key integrated major purposes) that set the direction for your yearly, weekly, and daily goals.
As I’ve written in a previous Brainz article:
“Your mission is how you raise your daily living to a higher principle and way of being. It comes from reflecting on your values and the change you want to see in the world around you. It comes from identifying your passions and strengths and choosing a way you can be a unique force of positive influence in the universe. Your mission transcends your mere mortal life. And it elevates your singular life to higher greatness. As it turns out, self-actualization and self-transcendence are ultimately one and the same.”
It is the question, “What for?” What is the grand mission you are committing yourself to?
Then ask yourself: How can travel support and enhance my sense of purpose?
Unfortunately, so much of typical travel is cut off from any greater purpose. This is because purpose involves work, it involves intentional effort to produce a desired end. However, most travelers are on “vacation,” on an “escape” from work. The purpose is about creation and contribution. However, most travelers are in an inflated consumption mode.
Even most “business” travel is often just an otherwise routine job engagement that happens to be in a distant location. There’s often no real connection between one’s great purpose and the specific geography or unique culture of the place. For many business travelers, it’s often just another flight, another standard hotel lobby/room/conference center, another Starbucks.
Of course, purposeful travel doesn’t have to be about work, per se. Relaxation could be a valid purpose, especially after a demanding work sprint. Or, celebration could be your purpose, especially if you have a significant achievement worth commemorating. Or, bonding with friends and family could be your purpose (although I think we all know how building and nurturing robust relationships are, in fact, some of the most difficult work we do as humans).
For luxury travel, I believe seeking out, savoring, and reveling in excellence ought to be part of everyone’s purpose. Whether it’s through thoughtful design, rich materials, awe-inspiring natural settings, historical wonders, or other high-quality creations – ideally, it’s inspiration and fuel for you to go create more excellence in your own way.
The key is to be a Person of Purpose in your life, your work, and your travels. In so doing, you create experiences that are wholly unique and deeply fulfilling to you.
Personalization
As the foregoing suggests, one of the crucial elements to a true luxury experience is personalization.
Too many people plan a trip merely by following what other people do and go to see. Then, they come home with an otherwise generic set of photos from an experience not worth remembering.
However, the travel industry is coming to recognize that what makes travel most potent and worthwhile is when the travel planning process starts by spending time delving deep into the unique desires, personality, ideals, history, dreams, and values of the traveler – when it starts with the person not the destination – so that a one-of-a-kind itinerary can be crafted. Witness the rise of travel designers and travel coaches who specialize in orchestrating transformational travel experiences.
Of course, these services often come at a cost, but the investment can ensure that your even larger investment in your trip brings back the highest possible returns.
Here’s a taste of what this planning process might look like for you
Reflection
Start by reflecting on your past travel experiences, identifying which one or two left the most positive lasting impression (and why) and which fell short (and why).
Motivations
Explore your motivations and the emotions you associate with your travel desires (e.g. freedom, curiosity, inspiration, connection, thrill-seeking, self-discovery, etc.).
Vision board
Assemble a collection of images that resonate with you, and seek out patterns or themes that emerge.
Core values
Identify explicitly your core values, and consider how they ought to manifest in your upcoming travel plans
Goals
Define your travel goals based on your motivations, vision, and core values, then start to explore potentially aligned destinations and experiences.
Potential obstacles
Consider potential pain points you would want to avoid so you can start preparing to eliminate or effectively manage them.
Planning for presence and memories
Before you go, identify strategies for how you will stay present during your trip and how you will reinscribe the memories so they will last once you return.
The combination of authentic human connection through a personal advisor with augmentation through AI technology makes personalized travel planning the new gold standard
Push to the edge of your comfort zone
Luxury travel is often associated with leisure and comfort.
The thing is: while leisure and comfort may be of value some of the time – particularly as a respite from days of hard work – it turns out that too much leisure and too much comfort are not too good for the soul.
Human beings thrive when our lives are processes of continuous growth. We find meaning, purpose, and exhilaration when we confront and overcome challenges that stretch us to the limits of our current abilities and push us to become more than who we were.
In fact, this is the essence of the optimal state of experience: a flow state.
Flow is defined as the “state of complete absorption in an activity, where the challenges of the task match the individual's skills and abilities.” It is the optimal state of human consciousness, when you feel completely immersed in the task at hand. Action and awareness seem to merge. Time passes strangely. Your sense of self vanishes. And your physical and mental performance skyrocket. Often referred to as being “in the zone”, in a flow state you feel a heightened sense of focus, enjoyment, and effortless effort.
Ideally, any true luxury trip should include experiences of flow. However, if a trip is planned to be pure leisure, it could thwart your ability to enter a flow state.
Mihály Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who introduced the concept of flow, identified that there is a curious paradox of work and leisure when it comes to attaining happiness:
“Thus we have the paradoxical situation: On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative, and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore they tend to feel more sad, weak, dull, and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure. What does this contradictory pattern mean?”
I want to say, I don’t think this contradictory pattern means we have to always be on the job and forego vacation. However, I think it does mean that while we may want to indulge in special comforts during our luxury trips, we should also want to plan activities that push ourselves right to the edge of our comfort zones. This “sweet spot” where challenge meets skill is the first-class ticket to the thrill of flow.
To help you get more flow on your next trip, here are the 8 key characteristics of flow as described by Csikszentmihalyi:
Complete concentration on the task
Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback
Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down)
The experience is intrinsically rewarding
Effortlessness and ease
There is a balance between challenge and skills
Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination
There is a feeling of control over the task
And here are 22 flow triggers that can help prime you to enter a flow state
Internal triggers
1. Clear Goals
2. Immediate Feedback
3. Challenge-Skill Balance
4. Complete Concentration on Task
5. Curiosity/Passion/Purpose
6. Autonomy
External triggers
7. Risk / High Consequence
8. Novelty
9. Complexity
10. Unpredictability
11. Deep Embodiment
Creative trigger
12. Creativity and Pattern Recognition
Group flow triggers
13. Shared Goals
14. Equal Participation
15. Blending Egos
16. Close Listening
17. “Yes, And…”
18. A Sense of Control
19. Familiarity
20. Open Constant Communication
21. Shared Risk
Bonus trigger
22. Prove Yourself
You can also watch Csikszentmihalyi’s 2004 TED Talk on “Flow, the secret to happiness” for more.
Peak experiences & self-actualization
Luxury travel is the opportunity to experience and draw invigoration from the best of what the world has to offer. Whether this is from resplendent nature or the greatest works of humanity across time and place, luxury travel is the opportunity to experience awe.
Humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow devoted much of his life’s work to studying experiences of awe and greatness, calling them “peak experiences”. As he described them:
“The peak experience, the mystic experience, the oceanic feeling, feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more powerful and more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of great ecstasy in wonder and awe, the loss of placing in time and space with, and finally the conviction that something extremely important and valuable has happened. It’s a very good thing for a person.”
Through his research, Maslow discovered that peak experiences can be had by anyone, you don’t have to be a mystic, saint, or hero. That said, he did find that self-actualizing individuals are prone to have these kinds of heightened experiences more frequently.
For Maslow, “self-actualization” was the term he used and redefined to describe those individuals achieving the heights of mental health, maturation, and human potentiality. In his work, he sought patterns and identified several characteristics frequently shared by those who are self-actualizing. These include:
More Efficient Perception of Reality and More Comfortable Relations with It
Acceptance (Self, Others and Nature)
Spontaneity; Simplicity; Naturalness
Problem Centering
The Quality of Detachment; The Need for Privacy
Autonomy; Independence of Culture and Environment; Will; Active Agents
Continued Freshness of Appreciation
The Mystic Experience, The Peak Experience
“Gemeinschaftsgegühl” (i.e. community feeling: “This word, invented by Alfred Adler, is the only one available that describes well the flavor of the feelings for mankind expressed by self-actualizing subjects. They have for human beings in general a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection in spite of the occasional anger, impatience, or disgust… Because of this they have a genuine desire to help the human race. It is as if they were all members of a single family.”)
Interpersonal Relations
The Democratic Character Structure
Discrimination Between Good and Evil
Philosophical, Un-Hostile Sense of Humor
Creativeness
Resistance to Enculturation: The Transcendence of Any Particular Culture
Check out this 4-minute video of Maslow for more.
With these ideas in mind, the task then is to build the traits of self-actualization into your life and into who you become through travel. Whether it is before a trip (in the work and throes of Anticipation), during a trip (when one aims to practice Presence), or after a trip (in the efforts of a following Reflection).
This is how the top 1% of humanity get the most from the best of what’s possible in travel. This is the highest of luxury experiences.
(PS: if this is the kind of travel you desire, you can find this kind of experience by partnering for success with a Luxury Travel Designer at Delve Travel.)
(PPS: If you’re an entrepreneur who is serious about excellence and building a high-end, premium, and/or luxury-level brand AND you love travel and luxury retreat experiences, then you might feel perfectly at home as a globe-trotting member of Club Elevate+Aspire+. If so, here’s how to apply today to join us.)
K. Joia Houheneka, Luxury Travel Advisor & Excellence Coach
K. Joia Houheneka is on a mission to Elevate Luxury to make luxury synonymous with excellence. She has a background as the owner of a luxury travel agency, Delve Travel. However, much of her current work involves coaching entrepreneurs in her bespoke method that combines luxury business strategy, training in flow states & self-actualization, and growth-focused travel – it is designed for those who are serious about achieving excellence and flourishing across all areas of life. Entrepreneurs with high-end, premium, or luxury businesses are invited to apply for a Complementary Level membership to Club Elevate+Aspire+ to discover more.
