Here's my test for whether a trip is actually luxury: does the itinerary name the hotel? Plenty of companies sell "five-star accommodations" without ever saying where. Well, a Holiday Inn can be five-star abroad. Star ratings change from country to country, and anyone can game them. So which is it: are we staying at a Holiday Inn, or are we staying at a Four Seasons? If the itinerary won't say, that tells you something.
“If you don't know the hotel, it's not luxury.”
Transparency IS the luxury signal
For luxury trips, name the property, every time. Your clients know the difference between Ellerman House and "a deluxe boutique hotel," and naming it lets the property's own reputation sell alongside you. Withholding hotel names has a legitimate place on value-priced group trips where flexibility keeps costs down. But at luxury price points, mystery reads as evasion.
How it works
What the itinerary tells your client
"five-star accommodations"
Vague
No hotel named
Star ratings are local
Mystery reads as evasion
name the property
Specific
Hotel named every time
True tier on the label
The client knows what she's buying
How I do it
Claire's three-tier product test
- 1
Luxury
Named five-star properties and service to match
- 2
Upscale
Beautiful, elevated, but not top-tier product
- 3
Cultural
Extraordinary experience, local infrastructure
Name the tier honestly before you name a price. Mislabeling is where client disappointment is manufactured.
Source: Claire B. Soares, from her own travel business and live trainings.
Luxury, upscale or elevated: pick the true word
The second discipline is labeling your own product honestly. Save "luxury" for trips built on real luxury product: Four Seasons-level stays and service to match. A beautiful trip through places where that tier barely exists is upscale, or elevated, and those are strong words to own. Call it the wrong thing and you set the wrong expectations, and that's where disappointed clients come from. The advisors I coach who adopt the truthful word almost always find it sharpens their marketing instead of shrinking it.
So say the hotel, and say the true tier. With so many vague promises out there, being specific is one of the easiest ways a travel advisor can stand out.
A note before you try this
Pull up your current itineraries and marketing and read them the way a client would. Anywhere a luxury trip says "deluxe hotel" without a name, put the property in. Then check every place you use the word luxury and ask if the stays match it. If they don't, pick the true word now, before a client finds the gap for you.
Say it with confidence
Naming your tier honestly is the start of marketing that sells. Inside Travel AI University I help you position your trips so the right clients say yes.
Common Questions
What makes a trip actually luxury?
Named properties you can verify, and service that matches them. Star ratings vary by country, so a five-star claim without a property name tells a traveler nothing.
Should a travel advisor name the hotel in the itinerary?
For luxury trips, yes, every time. Transparency is the luxury signal, and the property's own reputation sells alongside you. Withholding names has a place only on value-priced group departures.
What is the difference between luxury, upscale, and cultural travel?
Luxury means genuine top-tier product and service. Upscale means beautiful and elevated but not top tier. Cultural means an extraordinary experience built on local infrastructure. All three are worth selling; only one of them is luxury.
Written By
Claire B. Soares
Claire B. Soares is the founder of Travel AI University, a 6x Condé Nast Traveler Top Travel Specialist, and a Certified AI Consultant with a B.S. in Computer Science. A top 10% enterprise sales executive, she sold $3.4B+ in enterprise software to Google, Microsoft, IBM, Boeing, the federal government, and the DoD, then built $16M+ in leisure travel sales.
About Claire
