After ten years and more than one hundred 5 stars hotels experienced, I made the first step behind the scene of what it means luxury travel and discovered its most important dedicated fair.
Imagine a shop full of the best chocolate cookies just waiting to be tasted! So many as you are certain a life is not enough. Now switch chocolate with perfect destinations and you have the feelings inside the International Luxury Travel Market. The event marked its 16th edition in Cannes this year and it proved once again it is the place to be for everything noted as 5 stars in the world. Settled for four days on the magnificent shores of the French Riviera, it already speaks magic by the wonderful sunsets you receive as a bonus. ILTM gets even more ambitious as to pretend the same address – Palais du Festival – as Cannes Film Festival. One thing is sure. Once you are here, you are with the Stars of the Travel industry. As for the word Luxury, out of too many phrases that destroy its meaning, for ILTM it is as justified as it is next to a Hermes bag or to a posh Rolls-Royce interior.
But another thought came to my mind from the first second I stepped inside. The thought of how the plane pilots are always the first to be envied. They are somehow always better looking. They seem to smile more, their teeth are whiter and their faces glow of positive energy. I am pretty sure their charm doesn’t come from the adrenaline, but from the opportunity to always have the best views in front of them and the sun shining in their face. They are not the best payed people and for sure their job isn’t an easy one. But again. They are privileged to feed their souls with the beauties of this planet as they are seen from the skies.
Back inside the hundreds of stands at ILTM, I see another kind of „pilots” who perfectly fit the description above. They smile more and they send you a positive energy that helps you think we are living on a Wonderful Planet after all. ”The pilots” from the Luxury Travel industry are maybe not the best payed people but they carry the best views in their hearts. Whether is a boutique hotel from Paris or London or a heavenly resort in Maldives or Sardinia, their offices are overlooking emotions. They know how it feels to have breakfast on a terrace facing Tour Eiffel and they experienced a SPA treatment while admiring the Ocean. So they got to the essence of what Luxury should be about. This is the reason for which they look at the world a little bit more open than the rest of us. They know a perfect destination remains the universal cure for any bad thought that might drag us down from the sky.
Indeed, the magnificent people inside the 5 stars stories are driven by passion. And all those details, sometimes very small, you admire while being their guest are the proof. Those perfumes you pick on the way to your room, the way the carpet feels while you are barefoot in the bedroom, those sweet grapes you find in your welcome fruits basket. Each of the properties represented at ILTM is a Wonderful World in its unique way, because of the human imagination and sensibility. There is technology flooding the travel industry but, in the same time, it is a place where „pilots” will always be needed.
