When the Leading Hotels of the World group held its convention in Monaco, delegates of five-star hotels gasped when Andrew Sacks, a Manhattan-based expert on high-end marketing, declared that luxury was dead.

That word is now, he says, “a descriptor that is highly suspicious to the very people to whom it is designed to appeal — the affluent.”

“They have earned their money, they are smart and they are demanding. But they are also regular people — usually. The wealthy got that way by being good stewards of a business and of a dollar. Respect their respect for money.”

give more away. Even though wealthy guests can well afford it, don’t charge them for Internet use, bottled water, shoe shines, or laundry service.