“People do things for two reasons: love or fear. If you, in business, are doing something out of fear, you must evolve it to act out of love.” -Virginia Irurita, founder of Made for Spain & Portugal
It is not easy to infiltrate the very exclusive, annual, Las Vegas super soiree known as “Virtuoso Travel Week.” Without a QR code credential lanyard, large swaths of the interconnected Bellagio, Aria and Vdara Casino Hotels, which are also now linked, thanks to a new, chilled corridor, to The Cosmopolitan, are no-fly-zone forbidden cities.
Even by Las Vegas standards, the Virtuoso Travel Week conference is a splashy, swank affair, with colorful, elaborate events, cocktail caucuses and premium presentations from 4,700 of the world’s luxury travel advisors and providers.
Virtuoso’s opening night bash boasted models on stage posing in bright, living art frames while wandering attendees nibbled at stations of seafood; pop art pasta; disco fries; orecchiette; barbeque tater tots with pulled pork and cornbread crumble; Korean waffle fries with mushroom bulgogi and kimchi aioli and sidewinder fries in beef birria. Craft cocktails and champagne were washing it all down, while live music scored some of the scenes.
It would be sexier to tell you that I snuck in, but the media clamored to chronicle the collaborative, news-making meetings and travel adventures being invented and taking flight in the fray, so Virtuoso gathered a group of gadflies to gawk and talk…and tell the tale of travel.
As a radio talk show host, I learn by listening. Shall I share some of the bon mots I heard? Or overheard? Yes, because that is what the “Travel Tattler” does.
Panel Positions and Opinions
Virtuoso Travel’s global public relations director Misty Belles, joined by founder and CEO Matthew Upchurch, hosted an international panel of travel advisors who provided tales from the front.
“Italy is proving to be a bit of a sticker shock. As a result, some travelers might have to go down from a five-star hotel to a four-star, but they are getting over it,” said Cathy Holler, CEO of Momenti Travel. “I have never had a request for Sardinia instead of Sicily, and recently I have had three. I am also hearing a desire from clients to slow down and engage with the culture in places such as Africa. They want to be touched.”
Carolyn Addison, head of product for Black Tomato, was one of four panelists. “Normally our trips now are 12 nights with three stops instead of four. Some travelers acknowledge that with previous itineraries they felt too ambitious and were rushed; travel advisors advise them against this. Our clients also sometimes seek a detox at the end of their trip in a tranquil spot.”
Aussie Roland Howett, director of Frontier Travel, has a tranquil, detox idea. “The most successful hotel for the Australian market was a wellness hotel in Thailand, which is interesting because Australians don’t travel exclusively for wellness.”
Fernando Gonzalez, CEO of First in Service, said the planet’s wellness is also on the minds of his clients. “Travelers don’t ask so much about whether properties are sustainable…because they expect sustainability elements to be there.”
Talking Trends
Belles asked the panelists about trends, and Holler described one she wished would go away: “The last-minute nature of high-end bookings when the traveler assumes things are available. People think they can book Japan two months out, but, even if hotel rooms are available, it is not easy to get drivers and guides who speak English.”
Addison advised traveling at a time when destinations are not overcrowded, but even that, with high demand, is getting trickier. “Extended season and shoulder season travel is a trend – Venice in December, for instance. We have people now booking for the 2027 eclipse.”
Addison wished travelers would stop chasing Instagram photos only to discover, upon arrival, the sometimes surprising, if not disappointing, reality of what places are really like. Having said that, her company, London-based Black Tomato, blurs the lines decidedly between fantasy and reality through its official 007 James Bond trips.
Bond, James Bond Adventures
“Black Tomato was contacted by Eon Productions and approached to develop official James Bond trips,” Addison told me as if she were telling me a secret, in the Aria Conference Center hallway between sessions.
“You may want to go to London and ride the boat 007 did in the opening of ‘The World is Not Enough,’ and meet the stuntwoman who drove that boat. You can spend time with the special effects directors. You can meet people who played cards with Roger Moore during breaks in shooting. You can meet Bond girl Maryam d’Abo, who is in ‘Living Daylights’ and Carole Ashby, who is super fun, and was in ‘Octopussy’ and ‘A View to a Kill.’ These women are fun to have martinis with.”
“Shaken…not stirred,” I suggested.
“But of course,” Addison answered.
“Can you send up clients in a space shuttle, like in ‘Moonraker?’”
“Not just yet,” she replied. “But you’ll be the first to know. We have, though, created some fun experiences in Mexico City recreating the scenes in ‘Spectre.’ Some people love the Daniel Craig Bond period. Some love Sean Connery or Pierce Brosnan or Roger Moore. Some just love the character and will go anywhere connected to Bond.” (Addison prefers Brosnan.)
Follow the Stars
“The first trip we presented is called ‘The Assignment’ and it starts in London, then moves on to Paris, Monaco, Lake Como and Venice. You can do more ambitious combinations than that. If you want to go to the Atacama Desert in Quantum of Solace and then to Goldeneye, Ian Fleming’s home in Jamaica and finish up at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Franciso, which was in ‘A View to a Kill,’ you can do that too.”
Addison has not driven James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, but she has sat in one and had her picture taken behind the wheel. “They told me the car was worth 4 million pounds, so I was very careful. And I think that may be the only photo my father has ever framed of me.”
Ironically, a little later in the Aria elevator, I met a representative of the Fairmont San Franciso, who started telling me I should try their 6,000-square-foot penthouse suite.
“Isn’t that the suite where they shot scenes from the movie ‘The Rock?’ I asked her.
She was excited to confirm that the suite’s rooftop balcony was, in fact, one of the settings in the 1996 Nicholas Cage movie about Alcatraz.
“Sean Connery got his hair cut on the roof. In the movie he insisted Nicholas Cage get him a suite at the Fairmont Hotel,” I reminded her. Then I tried to deliver my best Sean Connery impression. “I want a suite with a shower and a shave…”
She nodded (and winced a little) and told me Prince Charles, President Kennedy and the Kardashians had stayed there, too.
“Yes,” I said, “but Sean Connery was the original James Bond!”
She seemed to tolerate, if not understand, my fanboy reverence for 007.
More Movie Travel Talk
“Shop talk,” for tourism industry professionals and travel writers on the fly, happens by day over Diet Cokes and turkey roll-ups. It was over a shrimp cocktail that Toronto’s Haddy Wong told me about Tahiti. The InterContinental Hotel executive represents The Brando, on the private Polynesian Island of Tetiaroa.
“Marlon Brando was acting in the movie “Mutiny on the Bounty,” which was shooting on Tetiaroa, and he fell in love with the remote island, so he bought it. He met our owner, an American named Dick Bailey, and asked him to find a way to build an environmentally sustainable hotel. For instance, The Brando uses seawater, through our SWAC system, to generate power for our air conditioning units,” she explained. “And guests at The Brando can go fishing with Marlon Brando’s son. He does not mind answering questions about his father.”
A Movie Maker’s Travel Haven
Francis Ford Coppola, who directed “The Godfather” films at locations near Taormina, Sicily, left a permanent footprint in Italy. “He owns a beautiful hotel, Palazzo Margherita, in Bernalda, a small hilltop town in the Basilicata region of Southern Italy. Many of our guests like to stay there,” said Andrea Grisdale, the founder of IC Bellagio (IC stands for “Italian Connection,”) the world’s premier planner of exclusive luxury travel experiences in Italy.
Grisdale’s team of 35 guest ambassadors and travel planners are headquartered on Como di Lago in Bellagio, Italy, right across a narrow arm of the lake from the award-winning, historic Grand Hotel Tremezzo (circa 1910) where the likes of George Clooney and Taylor Swift have been spotted. The Tremezzo’s beloved manager, Silvio Vettorello, would soon touch down at Virtuoso Travel Week with the hotel’s owner Valentina De Santis.
At Virtuoso Travel Week, Grisdale and I met, mid-afternoon, in Petrossian, the piano bar off the lobby and casino floor at Bellagio Hotel. In deference, I ordered an Aperol Spritz.
“Michael,” Grisdale asked above the din while lifting an eyebrow, “do you really think they can make a proper Aperol Spritz here in Las Vegas?”
“Vero,” I responded (true.)
“Having a glass of wine in Florence, overlooking the Arne River and the Tuscan hills, how can that wine taste the same anywhere else?”
“Punto,” I responded (point made.)
Magical Memories
Grisdale, who was sipping from a glass of non-alcoholic wine, is a serious businesswoman but also an industry diplomat. She has greeted her share of luminaries but is understated about the experiences because she is more excited about the magical memories her team creates in Italy for IC Bellagio’s traveling clients.
“I met Barack Obama in Saville at the World Travel and Tourism Council. I met British Prime Minister David Cameron in Bangkok, Thailand. And, at Buckingham Palace, I met then Prince Charles, now King Charles, thanks to a hotelier friend of ours.”
The world’s most powerful economic leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden, gathered, in June of 2024, in “the heel of the boot of Italy,” in the Southern Puglia region for the G7 Summit, hosted by Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is from Puglia. She welcomed the leaders to Borgo Egnazia, a medieval-style luxury resort popular with celebrities, which is therefore now becoming popular with IC Bellagio clients.
I asked Grisdale if I could somehow meet Meloni, but I got the feeling she was not taking my request very seriously.
Authentic Luxury
“Travelers want to meet local people and make cheese and pasta. Our clients want the finest in life, but they also want authentic, local experiences. We work at the luxury level, and people want the finest in life, but they want authentic local experiences,” she said. “For instance, there are more olive trees in Puglia than anywhere in the world.”
It is not surprising that first-time visitors to Italy typically visit Rome, Florence and Venice: Roma, Firenze and Venezia.
“But they return and go to the Amalfi Coast, Tuscany and Lake Como. Then they will come back to the Dolomites, Bolognia and Sicily, which is especially very big right now.”
Grisdale, in her own travels, has trekked to Mount Everest Base Camp and checked into the real “Hotel Rwanda,” but for IC Bellagio’s clients, every experience in Italy is the trip of a lifetime.
Made For Spain and Portugal
While Grisdale had grazed on a charcuterie board at Petrossian, it was noodles, at Noodles, the Asian restaurant just a stone’s throw down the Bellagio Casino floor, for Virginia Irurita and her colleague Leticia Carrascal. The duo, representing Irurita’s company “Made For Spain & Portugal,” were tirelessly running around the Virtuoso Travel Week meetings like Pamplonans trying to escape the bulls on the cobblestone streets.
Irurita’s clients traveling through Spain & Portugal are exhibiting similar desires to those visiting Italy, she said. “Travelers have grown tired of churches and museums.”
I found her statement ironic since Spain has one of the most famous churches in the world and one of the most prominent museums: the great genius Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona and, in Madrid, Museo Nacional de Prado.
“Si, si,” Irurita allowed, “But then they prefer authentic experiences in food, wine and culture with local people.”
Spain and Portugal have diverse destinations and cultural experiences ranging from the techno nightlife of Ibiza to the Moorish mood and Fado music of Lisbon. Tasting tapas and the savory social experience of pintxos and a good glass of the Rioja region vino tinto are essential to life in San Sebastian and Saville and Bilbao.
Irurita, leading her protégé through her first Virtuoso Travel Week, reflected on a lesson she learned from a voice in her past. “My mentor taught her people do things for two reasons: love or fear.
If you, in business, are doing something out of fear, you must evolve it to act out of love.”
Media Mingling
I picked up this and that flitting from here to there over the three days of deep diving into Virtuoso’s world.
I spoke, beside a globetrotting session, with Harriet Baskas, editor of AtTheAirport.com.
She suggested people travel to states that have enacted “back-to-school “sales tax-free days.” And that very day Baskas told NBC News that there were plenty of travel bargains still to be had at summer’s end.
As an industry airport expert, Baskas lauded Nashville Airport, which had enacted a system that grants 300 people per day, without booked airline tickets, the ability to go past TSA screening into the airport to enjoy the shops and restaurants.
Most people can never do that at other airports, despite modern terminals being built on the premise passengers and their families and friends could be customers. Remember the touching sight of families kissing goodbye at the gate at the last minute?
Or the romantic first sight for a disembarking passenger seeing a spouse with a dozen roses waiting for them when they emerged from the jetway?
Or how about a child waving out the terminal window to his grandparent who has been spotted in an aircraft window seat?
Perhaps Nashville will set a new trend in this, but I understand why it may have to be limited so as not to overwhelm security checkpoints or limited seating, not to mention the already stuffed airport luxury lounges.
Cruising for Luxury
Toronto travel writer Toby Salzman, the queen of covering cruises, arrived at Virtuoso Travel Week after completing four consecutive cruises. “I didn’t know ships stopped in Las Vegas,” I told her.
Dondra Ritzenthaler, of Azamara Cruises, told me why, at age 60, she came out of retirement to accept the role of cruise line CEO.
Crystal Cruises senior vice-president of marketing, Jacqueline Barney, reminded me that, when it comes to cuisine, her cruise line has the only “Nobu at sea.” A Crystal ship would also soon be setting sail in late October with disco queen Gloria Gaynor, who sang the groovy anthem “I Will Survive” aboard.
“It’s one of the things that differentiates Crystal Cruises. We bring aboard actors, singers, and world-renowned experts in areas such as science, art, and history,” said Barney. Her long career in the cruise industry was, in a sense, born when she was four years old. “I grew up in Florida, the cruise capital of the world, and my parents took me on weekend Bahama cruises and we’d go to the beach, so at an early age I loved the water. It’s part of my DNA.”
Barney smiled when I recognized those two-day Bahamas cruises were likely a far cry from the Crystal Cruises she now represents.
“At Crystal Cruises and Abercrombie & Kent, we don’t even use the word ‘luxury.’ We consider ourselves exceptional.”
Discover Puerto Rico
The last time I had set foot in Puerto Rico was nine months earlier during an Oceania Cruise when I took a shore excursion to the historic Castillo San Felipe del Morro and jumped ship for a walk through Old San Juan.
Brad Dean, from Discover Puerto Rico, was in Las Vegas again for Virtuoso, and we talked about the passing of the colorful, sword-dancing PGA Tour player Chi Chi Rodriguez, who was Puerto Rico’s greatest-ever golf star.
“The first time I met Chi Chi, he said, ‘Let’s not talk about golf. Let’s talk about what you are going to do for my island,” recalled Dean, illustrating the pride and love Rodriguez had for Puerto Rico.
“He became such a brand ambassador. He understood how travel can transform. He never forgot where he came from and lived.”
As for his golf swing, Dean joked Rodriguez took one look and advised him to abandon golf and try another sport.
Commissioner Contursi’s Lip Smacking Foodie Tours
It wouldn’t be a visit to Las Vegas without touching base with Donald Contursi, who was appointed to the Nevada Travel Commission because the native Chicagoan became a tireless Las Vegas ambassador when he founded “Lip Smacking Foodie Tours.”
The sensational, breezy, tasting and toasting tours became the talk of the town when Contursi collaborated with competing restaurants to move as many diners – individuals, small gatherings and large corporate groups – through as possible with immediate seating for one course and a cocktail each setting.
Why choose one famous Las Vegas restaurant – if, that is, you can get a table – when you can sample four on foot in two hours with some fun and history while strolling between them in air-conditioned comfort, led by a professional guide?
In the case of the Aria-based tour, start with a spicy margarita at Javiar’s and, after tapas at Julian Serrano and a savory bite at Catch, close it out with butter cake and a suite of desserts as Mastros.
Culinary Community
Lip Smacking Foodie Tours has options at the Venetian; Resorts World; Freemont Street downtown Las Vegas, and plenty of others, including tacking on a champagne chopper ride over the Strip after dessert.
The Arts District tour is Contursi’s latest Lip Smacking sensation, traversing a distinctive and colorful neighborhood 18 blocks halfway between The Strat and Fremont Street. Esther’s Kitchen; celebrity chef Todd English’s Pepper Club; Main Street Provisions; and more surprises are on the menu.
Lip Smacking Foodie Tours was selected as a Preferred Partner member by Virtuoso, the invitation-only member network catering to luxury travelers. The Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority is also a member of Virtuoso’s Culinary Community program, which promotes epicurean experiences that are immersive, interactive, educational, and thoroughly exceptional.
Read more of Michael Patrick’s work at The Travel Tattler and contact him at [email protected] Order his book Travel Tattler – Less Than Torrid Tales at https://amzn.to/3Qm9FjN
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