Naomi Lake Naomi Lake

How to Travel with Allergies and Dietary Restrictions

Travelling with allergies or dietary requirements can feel daunting when navigating different languages and food cultures. Fortunately, a little preparation goes a long way. From translated allergy cards and advance communication to carrying essential medication, these tips will help you travel confidently, safely and stress-free.

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Benjamin Norris Benjamin Norris

Too Big To Be Special: Why True Luxury Can't Be Scaled

Real luxury takes time to cultivate. It’s stubborn in the best possible way. It often requires a host to forgo aggressive volume growth, simply because their soul is structurally incompatible with scalability. It survives on word-of-mouth, and that word is spoken in a revered whisper. Let’s whisper about it together.

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Benjamin Norris Benjamin Norris

Why Luxury Travel Is No Longer About Money

Many travellers today are drifting towards smaller boutique hotels for a number of different reasons. Most notably, it’s because large luxury brands have become so good at delivering consistency that they’ve forgotten what lies at the heart of the luxury experience: leaving something of everyday life behind at the door.

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Benjamin Norris Benjamin Norris

Why Do Most Luxury Hotels Feel the Same?

I’m growing tired of luxury hotels. Why? Because there’s a moment in every trip to yet another five-star hotel when I realise, quietly and without any particular drama, that I might have in fact been there before. Let’s dig a little deeper into why high-end hotels are losing their edge.

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Benjamin Norris Benjamin Norris

How to Become a Known Guest at Hotels and Restaurants

There’s something that happens when you return to a hotel or a restaurant for the second time. On paper, almost nothing has changed. You check in, you go to your room. You have a drink, you sit down for dinner. Structurally, it is the same stay as the first time you visited. And yet, this time, it really isn’t the same at all.


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Benjamin Norris Benjamin Norris

The Hidden Costs of Luxury Travel

Luxury is sold as a way of ensuring effortlessness; the suggestion being that, once a certain threshold is crossed, struggle and strife disappears: doors open, problems resolve themselves and time bends politely around the traveller. This promise is persuasive, but only partly true.

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