What I’ve learnt about luxury

What do you look for in a luxury hotel? For me it's the quality of the pillows every time. You can keep your fancy hair products, exotic fruit bowls and hooded towelling robes; give me two perfectly puffy goose down pillows and I can forgive almost anything – well, maybe not a lumpy mattress.

Luxury enticements don't come much more lavish than Dubai's Burj Al Arab, the self proclaimed 'seven star' hotel that featured on the BBC's Inside Dubai and wears its decadence on its sail-like sleeve. The Burj is the only hotel I'm aware of that offers a menu containing seventeen different kinds of pillow including an Anti-Ageing Premium Down option lavished with ‘traces of vitamins’. After some agonising indecision I personally plumped for the enticing 'Body Roll' filled with a combination of pure white goose down and siliconised, hollow fibre balls.

For all its extravagance – £5000 cocktails, Aston Martins on tap and an embarrassment of gold leaf (2,000sqm to be precise), the Burj comes across as a relic of more carefree times when flash was king and more was always better. There are no mere rooms here of course, only suites with glittering staircases leading to capacious bedrooms with mirrors on the ceiling and pink champagne on ice.

Anyone who has spent time around opulence knows that the novelty can soon wear thin. Several years ago, I accepted a job sponsored by British Airways and Hilton Hotels, which involved three months flying first class around the Middle and Far East stopping off at various glitzy five star resorts. My stay included all the booze, food and pampering I could desire and for the first couple of weeks I felt like a newly minted celebrity, lapping up all the attention, indulging every whim including some I never knew I wanted such as nightly massages and all day lobster bisque. By week five my tolerance for 'anything, anytime' had begun to flag – there's only so much fine dining you can imbibe before permanent indigestion sets in.

By month two I had become one of those horribly entitled brats, clicking my fingers at waiters and throwing temper tantrums when staff forgot to turn down the bed. Expectations rise exponentially when everything is laid on; glamorous lifestyles when glimpsed from the outside can feel frustratingly pedestrian once inside.

After three months all those buttered lobsters and fancy cocktails had taken their toll; I'd lost sight of my feet and more worryingly my sense of perspective. When it comes to meaningful, lasting satisfaction it seems 'homely' is all most of us require. Frankly, I couldn’t wait to get back to my London flat and nightly bowl of spaghetti.

My idea of extravagance might seem boringly simple. But in these more austere times, I sense our love affair with high end novelty is beginning to shift away from ostentatious displays to something altogether more discreet.

For many western eyes, it can all feel out of step with post pandemic concerns. Perhaps even the Burj senses change might be in the air; their £23,000 a night royal suite, once the preserve of boy bands and oligarchs is no longer accepting paying guests but has instead become a popular tourist attraction where for £80 you get to see what having too much money looks like. The tour ends with a £15 cappuccino topped with, you guessed it, gold leaf.

This move away from bejewelled ostentation can be seen in the rise in popularity of more discreet resorts favoured by the sort of A-lister who doesn’t feel the need to flash the cash, although status is signalled in countless other ways: eco credentials and privacy being key. 

You will pay about the same as a suite at the Burj, but you won't find any heli-pads or personal butlers at California's Post Ranch Inn for example. Hidden away in a tranquil glade overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur it’s the sort of five star resort that likes to hide its starriness under a bushel. The vibe here is more upmarket hippie hideaway than glamorous celebrity roadhouse. Guests stay in simple tree houses and wooden eco cabins built into the landscape. Rather than chocolates on pillows and chilled champagne, you'll find a modest pile of logs and a box of matches waiting for you outside your cabin ready for those chilly Santa Ana nights. Guests come here, not to show off on social media, but to hide out in glorious nature far away from the Instagramming masses.

Today's elites will pay for off-grid privacy and a return to nature; resorts that can create an aura of the rustic are the ones that attract the highest price tag. Pandemic or no, it seems unfettered luxury has a shelf life.