Robb Read: Race For Supersonic Flight
With futuristic Mach-1 jets promised, can supersonic’s challenges keep up with its lofty goals?
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When United Airlines announced earlier this month that it had made a deal to purchase 15 airliners still under development from Denver-based Boom Supersonic, the airline became the latest entity to place a bet on one of aviation’s sexiest and most quixotic propositions; flight that is faster than the speed of sound and affordable to the masses.
Opinion is mixed on the feasibility of supersonic commercial flight in the near future. But one of the concept’s biggest boosters, Boom’s CEO, Blake Scholl, insists the goal is achievable. “We get as much speed as possible, for as many people as possible, to as many places as possible, as quickly as possible,” he told Robb Report.
Scholl is enthusiastic because we’ve already been there. Boom’s demonstrator aircraft, the XB1, and its bigger sibling the commercial jetliner, Overture, are leveraging technology from the days of the Concorde, “rather than starting from scratch,” he said. Scholl expects the Overture to be certified by 2029 and take its first commercial flight in 2030.
United Airlines’ recent order for 15 Overture jets shows it’s betting on a supersonic future. Fractional providers NetJets and Flexjet also ordered $11 billion worth of Aerion’s AS2 business jets. Courtesy Boom Supersonic
It was nearly half a century ago that British Airways and Air France flew the Concorde across the Atlantic in half the time of subsonic airliners. Fourteen of the droop-nosed, European-made SST’s continued in commercial service until 2003. Before the Concorde there was the Russian-built Tupeluv 144D. Two fatal crashes—one in 1973 at the Paris Air Show and another in Russia in 1978—spelled the end of that aeroplane. The few remaining are housed in museums where they still fuel a yearning to fly tomorrow on newer versions of these artifacts from the past.
If there is to be a new generation of supersonic jetliners, success is inextricably tied to how well their creators can navigate through the obstacles that plagued the Concorde.
These include the sonic boom, the noise created at the speed of sound threshold (Mach 1.0 or 1234km/h) which prevented supersonic flights over land. Then there is the copious fuel consumption and carbon emissions of supersonic flight. When weight is everything, the limited passenger-carrying capacity and scaled-down cabin interior could make it difficult to sell enough tickets to make SST flights profitable. Finally, there is the need for regulatory approval using standards that do not yet exist, from dozens of governments.
The last Concorde lands in Germany in 2003. The aircraft proved that supersonic flight was possible, but with challenges like limited interior space, sonic booms and heavy fuel burns. Photo: Uli Deck/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images
These issues populate the to-do lists of the SST engineers. Boom, with its plans for a 40- to 50-passenger airliner, touts its planned use of biofuels like sustainable aviation fuel, as does California’s Exosonic, with its 70-passenger jetliner. Boston-based Spike Aerospace is focusing on an 18-passenger business jet with a proprietary technology it claims will keep the sonic boom at the level of vacuum cleaner. It recently received FAA approval for limited testing of its design over land.
Norris Tie, CEO of Exosonic, says before his company produces its airliner, it will move incrementally towards refining its technology with a small research contract it has with the U.S. Air Force. It recently announced plans to develop an Air Force 2, a supersonic jet for the vice president and cabinet-level officials.
“That helped put our company on the map for supersonic aviation and benefited us by letting us grow, hire people and do wind-tunnel testing that’s been really helpful,” he said of the work being done on a supersonic government personnel aircraft.
The poster child of supersonic flight, Aerion had been working on a supersonic jet for almost two decades, but ran out of cash in May. Courtesy Aerion Supersonic
Even small government contracts offer companies bragging rights and insight into research and regulatory agencies. In March, Subaru, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and several other companies formed Japan Supersonic Research with a goal of having an SST passenger jet by 2030. They partnered with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and have access to JAXA research going back to 1997.
“No single nation can develop supersonic transport on its own, since this requires an enormous amount of capital and the integration of many advanced technologies,” Dr. Takashi Ishikawa, director of the space agency’s aviation program, wrote on the government website.
To deal with noise, fuel inefficiency, and the many other significant technical issues, what every aspiring SST maker needs most of all is money.
Spike Aerospace says it will neutralize the sonic boom on its 18-passenger business jet so it can fly to cities like London. Courtesy Spike Aerospace
“The only thing that matters is cash and so far it isn’t there,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation consultant who publishes the widely distributed Teal Monthly Aircraft Letter.
Government contracts of one or two million dollars are meaningless, he said. “The funds we’re talking about are incredibly trivial in the world of aerospace.”
Reno-based Aerion Corporation is a case in point. In May, it issued a stunning announcement. After nearly two decades of working on a supersonic business jet, it said it was shutting down. It had a plane that could fit seamlessly into airports, an engine deal with GE and an operational procedure that it claimed would allow the plane to pass through Mach 1 soundlessly, though not necessarily consistently. It had purchase commitments totalling US$11 billion from FlexJet and Netjets. It had a partnership with Boeing. It had a plan to launch its first commercial flights by 2026. What it did not have was money.
The S-512 has a lavish business-jet interior designed to compete with first-class cabins. Courtesy Spike Aerospace
“It tore my heart out,” said Steven Berroth, who joined Aerion in 2018 and was senior vice president of operations when the announcement was made. “It was three years of my life, it was 170 employees, their livelihoods and their dreams. It is a terrible outcome.”
“They had put together amazing talent,” said aviation consultant Rollie Vincent, who did work for Aerion. “The number of PhDs per square foot was off the charts,” he said. “But they weren’t building things, they were trying to refine design and purify aerodynamics. At some point, everybody, including investors, want to see parts.”
That is the route Boom Supersonic took. It spent US$150 million, more than half of US$270 million it raised, building the XB1 demonstrator dubbed “Baby Boom.” Though Baby Boom’s design may be unrelated to the Overture jetliner sold to United and Japan Airlines, just having something to fly enhanced Boom’s profile. Still, to build Overture, it needs investors willing to fork over US$6 to US$8 billion.
Exosonic is working with the US Air Force to develop a supersonic jet to transport the US vice president and cabinet-level officials. Courtesy Exosonic
“It is absolutely obtainable. Think about the investment required in relation to the size of opportunity,” Scholl explained. An investment in Boom, he says, is a billion-dollar investment for a multi-billion-dollar payoff.
Not everyone is so sure that business-class travellers will beat a path to a supersonic aeroplane. Noting the enormous improvements in premium cabins today, the wide seats and privacy pods, Aboulafia wonders if cutting flight time in half is worth the step down in comfort.
“Why are you rushing? Why are you paying such a big premium?” he asks. “You won’t have a lie-flat bed or that fantastic screen. You’re not going to have all that.”
While functional, the Concorde’s interior is barebones compared to today’s business-class cabins. Courtesy Jetlinercabins.com and Spiritofconcorde.com
Jennifer Coutts Clay, who was British Airway’s Controller of Corporate Identity when it was operating the SST, has photos of the Concorde interiors in her book, Jetliner Cabins. While not exactly spartan, she describes the environment as similar to today’s premium economy. But what she says is more important than seat size is VIP service and faster movement through the airport on arrival and departure.
“Who wants supersonic if we’re going to be stuck at the airport for 3 hours before and 2 hours after and the distress that you get in a normal airport? There is a need for a new handling procedure,” she says. This is her message to aircraft manufacturers.
Even so, SST developers say supersonic air travel is the inevitable next step. And even among sceptics, there is a sense of nostalgia for the Concorde-era’s age of innocence, what Rollie Vincent called a “time of infinite possibilities.” Innovation was wholeheartedly accepted with an obliviousness to the environmental consequences.
The first flight of Boom’s XB1 supersonic demonstrator is scheduled for early 2022. Courtesy Boom Supersonic
“Suddenly, we started embracing the notion so that we might have to take care of the planet,” Vincent says, adding that he thinks today’s aeronautical engineers are up to the task.
The proponents of SSTs claim to be conscious of the impact of their products, though, and solutions are a lot more complex than just switching to biofuels. SSTs will have to do what the Concorde did not—meet global fuel-efficiency standards. This could be difficult, according to the predictions of environmental scientists Anastasia Kharina and Tim MacDonald, who write in a study for the International Council on Clean Transportation that “commercial SSTs could be three times as fuel-intensive per passenger as comparable subsonic aircraft.”
“We’re making sure we’re not going to make the problem any worse than it is,” Exosonic’s Tie told me. “There are no answers today, but those are issues we want to work to make sure our aircraft is as environmentally friendly as possible.”
The interior of Exosonic’s Air Force 2 includes a situation room with advanced communications to handle world crises in real time. Courtesy Exosonic
When I asked a knowledgeable insider just how likely SSTs were to fly in the near future, he replied that one must strip away the aspirations and look only at the current capabilities. Then, he said, it is clear a revival of supersonic flight now is inconsistent with the huge challenge of climate change.
Supersonic flight “looks like it should be a thing,” Aboulafia told me. “Aviation insiders, writers, and the Richard Aboulafia’s say, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be great if…’ but don’t scratch too deeply.”
That said, the companies that have raised millions and stake their brand names on faster flight, have scratched deeply enough to have seen supersonic’s potential to reinvent itself. Will it happen? Watch this space.
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How the Most Rare and Valuable Watches Are Traded Among Elite Collectors
Some of the world’s most interesting watches spend decades being traded privately before we learn about them.
Before social media became the lingua franca of the watch world, there were forums. And on those forums, collectors—especially collectors of vintage Rolex—often traded timepieces amongst each other.
The advent of Instagram in the early 2010s, coupled with the explosion in interest in vintage timepieces, drew attention to this corner of the watch world, and with that attention came increased competition for the finest examples. In the case of six- and seven-figure watches, high-end dealers, like James Lamdin, founder and vice president of vintage and pre-owned watches at Analog:Shift, became trusted intermediaries, negotiating sales for pieces not once or twice but often multiple times as they made the rounds of the collector community.
“There are watches out there that may not be massively rare by reference, but are by example,” Lamdin tells Robb Report. “Tropical patina, ghosted bezel, or celebrity provenance—it’s that watch. When those watches go into a collection, usually it’s with the implicit understanding that they’re valuable and people will want them from you and will make you a profit when you sell them.”
The best dealers have built relationships with collectors around the world and often have first right of refusal when those pieces come back to market. But even still, the most coveted models can still slip through their fingers.
Eric Wind, of Wind Vintage in Palm Beach, Fla., has lost and found some of the world’s most storied watches. In 2015, when he was vice president, senior specialist at Christie’s in New York, Wind came across a “super rare” 1957 Audemars Piguet Ref. 5516 perpetual calendar that had languished in rural Florida until the nephew of the original owner consigned it to Christie’s. The first perpetual calendar wristwatch to feature a leap-year indicator, the piece was one of just nine made by Audemars Piguet in the 1950s. Wind considers it “the one in the best condition.”
He showed it to one of Christie’s better-known clients, Patrick Getreid, owner of the OAK Collection, who purchased it in 2015 for $545,000. In 2023, Getreid consigned it to Christie’s in Hong Kong. That’s when Wind decided to give the piece another shot.
“I had registered to bid on it but at the last minute, I got cold feet,” Wind continues. “It was starting kind of high compared with what Getreide had paid for it. I was bidding remotely from Florida, but when no one else is bidding, you’re kind of wondering if you’re a genius or a fool. Is there something everyone else knows that I don’t? The question was about market value. The watch ended up passing and I purchased it via private sale—or private treaty, as it’s known—after the sale. I had two clients who really wanted it. I offered it to both, but one was more ready to pull the trigger and he got it. It never saw the light of day.” That Audemars Piguet perpetual calendar, Wind says, “remains one of my top five watches on the planet.”
As he reflected on the piece’s winding journey, Wind considered his own role in its comings and goings. “It was fun to be part of the lifecycle of that watch, from when it was discovered in rural Florida and consigned to Christie’s, and then sold to a great collector, who sold it again,” he says. “I imagine it will come back to me at some point. I don’t know if it will be two years from now or 40 years.”
Another grail watch that Wind helped shepherd to a client was an exceptional Paul Newman Rolex Daytona Panda reference 2623 with a full set and a tropical dial that was sold by a small Swedish auction house just under a decade ago. “Another dealer got it,” Wind explains. “I was still at Christie’s, and I fell in love with the watch. This dealer who had it for a year then sold it to an Italian dealer, who then sold it to a collector in Asia. I was tracking the watch on Instagram and saw the collector post it. By that time, I had become a dealer.
“I made an offer to the collector to purchase it on behalf of my client,” he adds. “It had been owned by a Swedish boat captain and had been given to him by the family he worked for, the equivalent of the Rockefellers in Sweden. We had to arrange shipment to the U.S. by Malca-Amit armored transport. Whenever these high-value watches move around, you have to deal with armored shipments, customs, proper transportation, and a lot of paperwork. It takes some time but it’s well worth it.”
Both the AP perpetual calendar and Daytona were original and unpolished—“the kind of watches I look for,” Wind says. “It’s funny how watches circle around. Within the high-end watch world, we’re not talking about thousands and thousands of watches. We’re talking about a relatively small amount of great watches.”
Eric Ku, a high-end vintage dealer in Northern California, certainly knows the drill.
About 15 years ago, he was offered a first-of-its-kind 1996 Rolex Cosmograph Daytona “Rainbow” reference 16599 in white gold on a leather strap.
“I’ve been hunting jeweled Rolexes for a really long time, before it was a cool thing,” Ku, cofounder of the online auction site Loupe This, says. “The watch first surfaced to me around 15 years ago. It was offered to me by a dealer in the Middle East and was coming from, allegedly, a member of a royal family. At the time, the pricing was completely different than it is today. After going back and forth, I offered $130,500 and the seller wanted $136,462. I lost the watch. I was gutted. I’d been stalking the watch. But at the time, relative to the market, it didn’t make sense for me. It was a really tough time, might have been around the financial crisis. I felt confident it would come back to me, but it didn’t.
“Then, in 2012, Rolex introduced its new rainbow Daytona,” Ku says. “I had no doubt about the authenticity of the watch I’d lost out on, but seeing the new rainbow Daytona completely validated me and erased any scintilla of a doubt that I had about the watch. Fast forward a couple years: The watch was offered to me again privately, by a different person in the Middle East at a significant multiple of the original offering—let’s say in the mid six-figures. I bought it.”
In 2017, Ku sold the watch to an important collector based overseas, “a person of very high taste and connoisseurship who appreciated the rarity of that watch,” he says. The collector, by Ku’s reckoning, also appreciated the story of its journey. “Dealers and old collectors always like trading war stories,” he says. “What’s the one thing that got away and then it came back? The collector got sold on the story.”
Now, the watch is coming back to market on Nov. 8 at Phillips Geneva, where it’s being offered in a sale dedicated to neo-vintage timepieces (Reloaded: The Rebirth of Mechanical Watchmaking 1980-1999) and is estimated to fetch in excess of $5.93 million.
“It’s probably the sexiest watch of the season,” Ku says.
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Champagne Bollinger Just Released a Limited-Edition, James Bond–Inspired Bubbly
The Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition comes with its own carrying case and glasses.
When it comes to drinks, James Bond may be best associated with a martini—shaken, not stirred, of course. But the secret agent has been known to enjoy a glass or two of bubbly as well.
Champagne Bollinger has long been the Champagne of choice for Bond, and now the house is honouring that relationship with a special-edition bottle that commemorates the 60th anniversary of Goldfinger.
Whether you’re a Bond fan or a Champagne connoisseur, the $5,950 Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition package is meant to appeal to both sensibilities.
The star of the show is the Champagne, of course: Here, Champagne Bollinger is offering a 2007 vintage Magnum, made from hand-picked grapes and aged 17 years in the house’s cellars. Spicy aromas on the nose are contrasted with notes of fruit, brioche, and honey. The Champagne has been packaged in a bespoke Globe-Trotter Air Cabin Case and comes with four Champagne Bollinger 007 glasses in which to enjoy the bubbly. Limited to just 200 individually numbered pieces, it’s a true collector’s item.
Champagne Bollinger has enjoyed a lengthy relationship with the James Bond franchise, dating back to when Roger Moore popped the first bottle in 1973’s Live and Let Die. Since then, the two have become almost inseparable, and Champagne Bollinger is proudly being served at the very first official James Bond bar, which just opened in London. If you can’t snag the limited-edition set for yourself, you can at least imbibe in a glass of the good stuff at the 007 at Burlington Arcade.
That bar and the special Champagne Bollinger package are all part of the festivities celebrating 1964’s Goldfinger. The film and Bond’s ensuing legacy have established him as one of the biggest (fictional) names in the luxury world, with his love of expensive watches, fast cars, and fine spirits.
While it’s unlikely that many of us can channel the special agent when it comes to his escapades and hijinks, we should delight in the fact that we can embrace our inner Bond by sidling up to the 007 bar or throwing back a glass of the Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition. It’s exactly how our favorite M16 agent would want us to honour him.
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Golden Touch
Discretion is the better part of glamour at the glittering Maybourne Beverly Hills.
Los Angeles does not want for star wattage, but for years now, the city’s hotel scene has been a little lacklustre. So news that the beloved Montage hotel has been completely redone under the Maybourne brand (the British powerhouse that operates Claridge’s, The Connaught, and Berkeley Hotels in London, and the recently opened Maybourne Riviera on the Côte d’Azur) should come as a boon to Australians looking for a new Tinseltown bolthole.
Situated within Beverly Hills’ famous Golden Triangle, just north of Wilshire Boulevard and Four Season’s Beverly Wilshire, and one block from the world-renowned luxury retailers, restaurants and celeb-spotting of Rodeo Drive, The Maybourne Beverly Hills offers a chic retreat from the designer flexing at its doorstep; a rare escape in the heart of this storied enclave that flies under the radar like a cap-wearing celeb dodging the paparazzi.
Set amid the manicured, Mediterranean-style Beverly Cañon Gardens plaza, which unfolds from the hotel’s west entrance, the new incarnation of Montage Beverly Hills (55 suites and 20 private residences, each with a balcony or patio with a courtyard or city view) still evokes the grand estates of Old Hollywood while feeling like you’re in a European mainstay.
Revealing a restrained new guestroom and suite design by Bryan O’Sullivan, a blue-chip art collection and some of the most solicitous staff in town, the Maybourne speaks in a laid-back Californian accent but still holds true to the luxury touchpoints of five-star service for which one of the world’s most exclusive neighbourhoods—and hotel brands—is known.
“It’s reassuringly British when it comes to service—it’s a culture of yes,” says Linden Pride, the Australian restaurant and bar owner behind the award-winning Caffe Dante in New York and Bobbie’s, the new speakeasy opening this month below Neil Perry’s new Song Bird restaurant in Sydney’s Double Bay (page 40). Pride should know; he lived at the Maybourne for almost a year while he and his partner, Nathalie Hudson, set up Dante, the stunning new restaurant and bar on the hotel’s ninth-floor rooftop. “Looking out from the roof onto lemon and olive trees, it’s easy to forget that you’re in Southern California, not Europe.”
Opened last year, Dante has quickly become one of the hottest reservations in town, luring in celebrities from Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin to the entire Real Madrid soccer team. Like its sister outposts in New York (besides the Greenwich Village original, a West Village location opened in 2020), the focus here is on non-threatening antipasti and aperitivi in a produce-driven menu of fresh familiar stalwarts, with the addition of wood-fired dishes from a giant pizza oven at the heart of the room. Just as it does in New York, a negroni cart does the rounds, and each afternoon is welcomed with a martini happy hour.
It’s all fittingly Cali-chill. The only drama in the place is a striking ceiling fresco by Los Angeles artist Abel Macias, which dominates the 146-seat room. “Nathalie and I had just been to Europe when we decided to open up here,” Pride recalls, “and the Sistine Chapel blew us away. When we saw the domed ceiling in this room it was a no-brainer.”
Dante joins a string of newcomers in the area, including New York transplants Café Boulud, Marea and Cipriani. Don’t look now, but with arrivals like the Maybourne and Dante, one of the world’s stuffiest cities—yes, Beverly Hills is its own 14.8 km² metropolis—might just be entering a new golden age.
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Hibiki 40 Year Old Resets the Bar for One of Whisky’s Most Exalted Names
The legendary blender reasserts itself in the industry’s uppermost pantheon with its oldest and rarest blended release ever.
Over the last decade, whiskies from Suntory’s famed Hibiki stable have gone from a top-shelf staple to the new byword for luxury in the increasingly rarefied world of Japanese whisky. As stocks of its famed age statement blends drew ever lower, the air of exclusivity around the distillery grew and grew – something that has stuck around even as the brand’s new flagship blend, Harmony, became more readily available once more.
It’s becoming clearer, however, that Hibiki still has a few exceptional tricks up its sleeves. Twenty-one and 30-year-old age statement whiskies have released in the past few years to critical acclaim, confirming that Suntory still has some particularly rarefied output yet to unveil. Now, in the brand’s boldest move yet, a 40-year-old blend is set to hit the market in extremely limited quantities, taking Hibiki’s already lofty benchmarks of rarity and lineage to new heights.
As with Hibiki’s other blends, Suntory’s Chief Blender, Shinji Fukuyo, has spent years perfecting a blend that brings some of Japan’s oldest and finest spirits into perfect harmony – achieving a smoothness and complexity that takes the brand’s hallmark qualities to a new plane. Single malts from Yamazaki, Hakushu, and Chita all feature, having been individually aged for four decades to form a true expression of the place they were made, before making their way into the final blend.
Truly a multi-generational blend, Hibiki 40 Year Old is designed not just as an expression of the skills and expertise passed down through generations of individual distillers, but that of Fukuyo’s forebears, legendary Suntory blenders Shingo and Shinjiro Torii.
The result is a final liquid rich with sweet fresh fruit, light citrus zest, and spice, supported by a luxurious undercurrent of acacia honey and dried fruit. Each crystal bottle is adorned with a mother-of-pearl inlay and decorated with a handcrafted label from Japanese washi artist Eriko Horiki.
While age statement single malts in the four- and five-decade category have become increasingly the vogue in recent years, never before has a blended whisky been attempted with such old stock—a unique challenge for its maker.
“Behind the elegance and bloom that is typical of Hibiki, there is a sense of subduedness,
like that of an old temple, and a wabi-sabi patina due to the long aging process,” says Fukuyo. “I would like people to enjoy the pure and pure aroma that has been sharpened over the years; the tranquility of old temples and storehouses and the nostalgic warm feeling that accompanies them.”
Limited to just 400 bottles, Hibiki 40 Year Old will release on October 4th, with bottles retailing at $75,000.
Australian fans of the brand will have the unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the Hibiki 40 Year Old experience, including a taste of the exalted liquid, at an exclusive event at Clare Smyth’s Oncore on October 24th, 2025. Tickets are available for $1,800 per person.
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White Lotus-ing? How Hit Films and TV Shows Are Inspiring Elite Travelers to ‘Set-Jet’ Across the Globe
It’s not just The White Lotus. Prestige TV and blockbuster films set in far-flung destinations are driving bookings like never before.
“As seen on TV” may have lowbrow connotations, but the recent glut of award-winning shows and films set in alluring, far-flung locations is causing an unprecedented run on the world’s best hotels. Call it set-jetting: planning your vacation around a destination featured in a popular series or movie. And while romantic suites and beloved characters have gotten people on planes since the golden age of film, what has changed is how central beautiful venues have become to plots.
“The way that The White Lotus used the destination to tell the story was really unique,” says Misty Belles, an executive at the global travel-adviser network Virtuoso. It also made its settings—the Four Seasons resorts in Maui and Taormina, Sicily—nigh un-bookable. And it’s hardly the only example: “Paris wasn’t hurting for eyes, but Emily in Paris showed the city in a more playful way,” Belles notes. “And people weren’t exactly flocking to Richmond before Ted Lasso.”
Giulia Parmigiani/Netflix
The trend is so strong that a property doesn’t even need to be connected to a show to benefit from its boom. Henley Vazquez, cofounder of the New York–based travel agency Fora, points to Bridgerton’s impact on English estate hotels.
“Heckfield Place [used to be] a hard sell,” she says of the five-star Georgian mansion in Hampshire. “Now, people are dying to go there. It wasn’t featured in Bridgerton, but it’s just that kind of place.”
Others insist on the real deal. Jennifer Schwartz, managing director of Authentic Explorations, works with one family to build trips based on the Game of Thrones universe.
HBO
“They went out of their way in Portugal” to visit Monsanto, the setting for Dragonstone in House of the Dragon, she notes. “It’s definitely a criterion on which they choose where they want to vacation.”
For travelers who want more than simply to follow in their favorite character’s footsteps, London’s Black Tomato takes things several steps further. Since 2023, it has planned high-octane itineraries based on the James Bond franchise and works with the films’ producers, Eon Productions, to make you feel like an MI6 agent. (Some trips even offer lessons with Daniel Craig’s stunt double, Lee Morrison.)
The 007 success has inspired more such trips. “We’ve just recently launched itineraries inspired by Yellowstone and Ripley, focusing on Montana and Wyoming and Italy, respectively,” says cofounder Tom Marchant.
Netflix
Still, it’s important to remember that sharp camerawork—and editing—accounts for a lot of the on-screen magic. Schwartz, of Authentic Explorations, notes that “the White Lotus hotel” in Sicily is “not super accessible, but it’s filmed as if the beach is right there.” In reality, the shore club from the show’s second season is 133 miles away. “People go to the place and they’re like, ‘You have to get in a car to go to the beach? What do you mean?’ ”
So where shouldn’t you go? Netflix’s The Perfect Couple will likely send hordes to Nantucket next summer, and The White Lotus’s third season, set on the Thai island Koh Samui, has already caused a local spike—and it’s not even on the air yet.
Bookings of Virtuoso’s properties in the region are up 38 percent since the show was announced. Luckily, Belles says, the effect doesn’t linger. “We typically see a good two-year impact on a set-jetting destination.”
