Fancy a $2.5 million game of paintball?
That’s what two dozen guys paid for a trip to Utah to turbocharge their annual buddy trip. The group arrived to meet eight Navy SEALs in the desert, who schooled them in special ops techniques for a day before the main event. That contest required those guys to split into teams and rescue hostages being held captive by an army of bad guys — in reality, hired actors — guarded by 100 or so pro paintballers.
“The first team to get their hostage to the extraction zone got helicoptered back to an epic dinner,” said EXP Journeys’ Kevin Jackson, who arranged the trip. “The others had to drive. They live in a world where they can have whatever they want, and my clients thought it was one of the coolest things they’d ever done.”
Jackson is one of an exclusive niche of agents who specialize in handling the persnickety vacation requests of the world’s wealthiest. You’ll need to spend at least $75,000 on a trip for him to work with you, and he’s handled budgets up to $3.5 million for a single vacation.
One of the biggest expenses: buying out an entire hotel for the group’s exclusive use, which many trips like this require. For the paintballers, he took over all 44 rooms at Amangiri, which start at $5,000 per night; hotels also often levy a fee of 5% to 10% on top of the tally for the inconvenience of closing the property to other travelers.
Jules Maury of Scott Dunn Private also often handles buyouts of this kind; she said a group might not even use every room of a safari lodge it’s privatized — discretion is priceless, after all. There’s such a surge of interest in these trips, especially in Africa, that Maury said many top lodges there aren’t available for buyouts until next year.
Her clients don’t hesitate to consider privatizing the 28 cabins on the Orient Express’s ultra-luxe train. The price tag? From around $230,000 per night.
Maury’s travelers also often incorporate philanthropic elements into their gadabouts.
She’s booked groups — often friends who share the same charitable interests — on blowout trips to Antarctica or Ireland; they then undertake a challenge when they get there, like a one-percenter’s sponsored walk. “Instead of doing a normal fundraiser, they’ll do something fun to raise money,” she said. “Say it’s Antarctica: They might all jump over the side of the ship for a polar plunge and put in $20,000 each.”
Fishing in Panama? It’s a donation of $20,000 per person to compete over who will land the biggest catch — but there’s no prize other than the pride of winning.
Nick Davies of Cookson Adventures, which charges a minimum of $150,000 per trip, also said charity is often essential to the itineraries he plans. The Galapagos, for example, does not allow commercial helicopters. If you strike a quid pro quo with the Ecuadorian government, though, there’s a workaround via a conservation permit.
His deep-pocketed nature lovers could sail around with a chopper on their yacht, Davies wrangled, in exchange for allowing rangers to use it to bring giant tortoises back from the hatchery to the side of the volcano — much quicker than lugging them up manually. “It’s a win-win for the client because that’s a fun experience to be involved in.”
Sometimes, the issue is making sure a remote location has all the luxuries these travelers demand, like a sauna. Davies has delivered one via helicopter to an Alaskan glacier for a post-lunch ritual combining a sweat session with a cold plunge (the group sold the kit to a local after its one-time use).
Another client was keen to snap that perfect shot of countless hot air balloons hovering over the desert formations of Cappadocia in Turkey. The only problem was that he wanted to visit outside peak season, so there would only be a handful at sunrise. “He inquired about us putting 50 or 60 hot air balloons in the air for him so he could get the shot.”
That amateur shutterbug should have brought a social media manager to outsource that problem, of course — Cookson said many of his clients travel with an entourage that includes a personal photographer, a go-to personal trainer and, likely, a nanny. He’s even rostered a teacher to accompany a family who took their kids out of school for an eight-month, round-the-world sabbatical by yacht and private plane. “He was a tutor and older-brother type, who took them to play football with the local team.”
Kevin Jackson just fulfilled an even more specific ask, which came from a one-percenter with a passion for surfing. He was desperate for his 10- and 13-year-old daughters to share his hobby, and asked Jackson for help ensuring they would. He hired Brisa Hennessy, a 20-something two-time Olympian, to be their hands-on tutor.
The tally for the trip: $250,000. “They loved it, and he said it was the greatest thing to watch his kids gain a passion for a sport that he loved,” said Jackson. “At the end of the day, price is just irrelevant to some people.”
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