Expand the remit of this forum? Comments invited.
 

This forum occupies a unique niche on Flyertalk and even in the world of travel-related websites in general. I have been wondering if possibly there is further service we could provide if we expanded the topics we covered and make this into a "Luxury hotels and travel" forum.

Some additional topics that could be formally added:

-- Luxury cruises

-- Private and charter flight services (Net Jets, Surf Air, around-the-world private jet tours, etc)

-- Specialized, high-end train travel

-- Top of the line ground transportation services and private luxury meet-greet

Some of these have already been discussed here in passing but the goal would be to more actively promote and encourage them.

Commercial first-class air travel, even international, would normally not be included since it is already adequately covered in the appropriate airline forum.

I am less sure about whether top end restaurants should be allowed, although (as now) a comment as an ancillary part of a hotel review is fine.

I'd appreciate member thoughts and suggestions on whether this is a good idea or before deciding whether to pass it on to Talk Board for their consideration.

RichardInSF, moderator, luxury hotels

I think it might dilute the focus of the forum quite a bit? I do think high end train travel would fit here quite well. The others not so much. E.g. luxury cruises is better situated in the cruise forum.

I think most would be good additions, as long as there was plenty of structure around things like ground transportation; the scope is so huge that it'd need its own sub-forum, or at least a dedicated thread where we'd be required to post (and search before posting). Allowing individual posts for ground transportation providers/requests seems like it could make things very noisy around here.

Personally, I'd love to see a similar thread for top of the line private tours/guides; many of the destination forums lack in this, and I find myself PM'ing members who post trip reports about this pretty often (and likewise, when I post TR's that mention guides, I get a lot of PM's asking about them).

I personally found this a great idea/addition, including restaurants.

There may well be space on Flyertalk for Luxury niches (particularly private travel), but I think that expanding this forum to everything to do with UHNW travel would really dilute the purpose.

+1

+1

I agree that opening this forum up too much would really increase the Signal-to-Noise Ratio, and make it a more difficult forum to navigate (unless we're discussing sub-fora).

In general, my thoughts/wishes would be this:

- If there are already fora dedicated to specific topics, then those topics remain in said fora (e.g. First Class travel in the airline fora, Luxury Cruises in the Cruise forum, and Fine dining in the Dining forum)

- I do think Private Flights/Charters, Luxury Trains, and Private/Luxury Tours should be included here, as they are not really covered elsewhere.

- This forum relaxes a little bit, which it has been doing, and allows us primarily to focus on luxury trips (even if parts of them are not so luxury). A perfect example would be Musken's threads on traveling the US West. I appreciate RichardSF allowing that thread to include elements that are not typically Luxury.

Further to that final point, if people are seeking advice/posting TRs, I'd be fine with anything luxury related being included, as long as it organically arises. An example of this would be my recent thread requesting help in Spain, and asking for non-hotel advice, such as dining requests.

I guess, in short, I don't want a ton more threads opening up - aside from new ones on Private Jets/Yacht/Villa charters, and Trains - but am perfectly happy, and would even encourage, intra-thread discussions opening a bit to more than just hotels/lodging.

+2. The list of potential luxury-related topics is a great one, and is generally underserved on FT right now (even in potentially-inclusive corollary fora, like Cruises for luxury cruising). But Luxury Hotels has a fairly robust, yet well-defined scope. There seems to be no shortage of activity nor thread creation as it stands now.

So either sub-fora, or a different, new home for some of these topics? I heartily endorse the opportunity to lurk-and-very-occasionally-post in those new areas (as I do now across FT); I'm not sure Luxury Hotels is the place, though.

Thanks for the idea, and for soliciting feedback!

I think if a particular sub-topic became popular it would evolve into a subforum. But concerns that it would automatically happen and dilute content here may be, at the very least, premature. Luxury travel probably interests less than 1% of the members of FT and maybe a lot fewer. Also, we've been open (and announced we were open at the time) to threads on luxury cruises and haven't had a single one yet.

Finally, FT already has forums that overlap. At the opposite end of the scale, the budget travel forum pretty much overlaps all sorts of other forums and things still seem to work out alright.

I think it's a great idea: a forum for all things luxury travel. There won't be a dilution in focus, because quite frankly, it will take a looooong time for this forum to get "flooded" with non-hotel threads.

To think that allowing non-hotel threads will overnight dilute the purpose of the luxury hotel forum (which is probably .01% of FT's readership - and the last reason people come to FT) is laughable at best.

I would urge against including restaurants . . . food is much more of a subjective, personal thing than a recognition of a hotel's hard product and service standards. Your idea of a great meal isn't necessarily mine and, anyway, the restaurant world is notoriously unstable with chefs hopping around constantly from hob to hob.

I'm not too keen on the cruises either and I speak as someone who does about 3 cruises a year - in fact, I'm going on a Seabourn trip next week. Most of the cruises I do are of the expedition variety on small ships which are comfortable but not luxurious yet charge far more than many luxury ships. But that's such a niche market I'd be the only one contributing!

I think it's a good suggestion as well. To focus in on one example, I notice queries or comments sometimes posted about luxury villas which probably fall outside the present remit, except where they form part of a luxury resort. It might make sense to include them. If we needed a definitional threshold it could be villas that come with staff (only because that tends to be standard once you hit a certain level of private villa), or something like that. Threads about particular destinations naturally tend to expand to the other enjoyable aspects of luxury travel, such as dining, and to me it seems logical to allow this in the relevant thread. I doubt it would open the floodgates.

Agreed.

I am in support of expanding the scope of the forum but only on some of the suggestions. I think restaurants are adequately covered by other relevant forums here and I would hate for this forum to be turned into another "Please give me the best celebration restaurant in NYC" or "How do I book this Michelin restaurant?" thread. I would suggest adding other luxury travel experiences such as hiking trips, driving trips, bike trips, ... since they are really an alternative to hotels.