The Expanding Influence of High-Net-Worth Consumers and the Decline of Aspirational Shoppers: Must-Watch Trends for Luxury Resort Destinations and Lifestyle Developments
Healthy longevity, art, and fashion is reshaping luxury development in 2025 and beyond.
The convergence of art, fashion, music, sports, and wellness and longevity are reshaping luxury destinations and why professionals in design, development, and hospitality must pay attention in 2025 - and beyond.
Key Points:
Experiential Luxury: High-Net-Worth Consumers are prioritizing unique, high-touch experiences over the acquisition of material goods.
Health & Wellness: Healthy longevity is the new status symbol. Luxury hotels and resort spas are evolving into high-tech, hyper-personalized wellness destinations, offering longevity treatments, immersive sensory experiences, and holistic fitness. Many of these programs are highly customized to precise wellness therapies with the aid of comprehensive blood panels and DNA workups.
Cultural Activation: Destinations with immersive cultural production opportunities will grow in appeal. Examples would be turbo-charged chef-led foraging for adventurous foodies, crafting your own spirits with a master distiller, extended multi-day pottery schools, and song writers workshops and music recording studios.
Retail Evolution: High-touch retail experiences in immersive non-mall environments, are providing access to one-of-a-kind collections of rarity and meaning. As example, the retail strategy for the Salons of Isla Moda Maison was created to redefine the shopping experience of Ultra High Networth guests.
Cross-Industry Convergence: Luxury design is merging with fashion, art, music, and food culture to redefine modern hospitality destinations.
Introduction
Understanding the evolving luxury consumer is essential for planners, developers, designers, and property operators, yet it presents a unique challenge. Unlike fashion or product trends, real estate developments take years to entitle, design, and construct. The trends that shape these projects must reflect lasting shifts in consumer behavior rather than knee-jerk reactions to fleeting fads.
Successful development of luxury destinations must anticipate where high-net-worth consumers are headed rather than merely chasing what is trending today.
Through decades of my experience in retail, dining, entertainment, and hospitality around the world, I have observed how consumer expectations shape new development concepts, drive new design directions, and influence experiential elements.
But the acceleration of new cultural, technological, and lifestyle forces are redefining commercial, hospitality, and branded residential developments more rapidly than ever. As a result, real estate projects must do more than respond to demand—they must anticipate, lead, and meet evolving consumer aspirations before they are fully recognized.
Here are eight of the many trends I am currently researching and following and very strategically implementing for my client’s projects. Each of the following eight topics provide insights into how luxury destinations, high-touch retail, and immersive hospitality may be transformed by the expanding influence of high-net-worth consumers.
1. Designing for Online Conversations
Retail, resort, and attractions design and marketing must now consider their potential to spark online conversation.
It’s essential that your property presents a clear and creative identity by offering something that unexpectedly stands out – both visually and experientially. The new goal is to inspire the sharing of real-world experiences online. Iconic retail spaces like the new Tiffany’s Fifth Avenue, Starbucks Reserve, and Gentle Monster have mastered this approach by integrating immersive storytelling and highly curated environments. These places become more than destinations; they become digital talking points.
2. Experiential Luxury and Totally Unique Experiences
The term “luxury” has evolved beyond material goods to encompass unique, elevated lifestyles and curated experiences.
High net-worth and ultra-high net-worth individuals increasingly prioritize experiences over possessions. I see this reflected in trends like the Baccarat Hotel in New York, the now under construction Louis Vuitton Hotel opening in 2026 in Paris and Ritz Carlton’s resort club partnership with Missoni in Bali. These ventures allow brands to deepen their connection with their core markets within their lifestyle destinations.
3. Health and Wellness as a New Status Symbol
The growing demand for direct access and highly personalized preventive health care and longevity wellness has become a defining trend.
The quest for longevity and healthy aging has emerged as a significant status symbol among high-net-worth individuals. As a result, the importance of travel for overall well-being is increasingly acknowledged by the travel, hospitality, and luxury brands.
Luxury hotels and resort spas are evolving into high-tech, hyper-personalized wellness destinations, offering longevity treatments, immersive sensory experiences, and holistic fitness. Highly customized wellness experiences derived from comprehensive blood panels and DNA workups, allow for precise wellness therapies. Longevity 8, by Canyon Ranch, has a four-day package for approximately $20,000. Likewise, an annual membership model that is gaining traction with celebrities is Wild Health.
Closer to the home, pharmacies are evolving into access points for healthcare, while wellness amenities like cold plunge spas, saunas, and high-end fitness studios are spreading into upscale neighborhood lifestyle centers.
At the store level, health & beauty shops like Dutch brand, House of Rituals has totally redefined the storytelling around cosmetics and personal care products.
Even high fashion is entering the wellness space, with examples like Hermès Yoga highlighting the convergence of luxury and health.
Whether through spa experiences, refined merchandising strategies, or spaces that encourage quiet reflection, developers must incorporate all aspects of healthy living and wellness into their developments to meet this demand.
4. The Desire to Be “Alone but Not Alone”
One of the more subtle yet significant shifts is the trend toward creating gathering places where individuals can feel connected while still maintaining a sense of solitude.
People do not necessarily desire to be alone, but circumstances such a new job in a new city, independent business travel, learned social distancing, delayed marriage, divorce, loss of a spouse, and lack of spouse mobility, are creating more instances where people find themselves alone but want to be in public. This “alone but not alone” phenomenon is a call for developments with a balance of community and personal space. Whether it’s a cozy corner in a luxury hotel lobby or a thoughtfully designed space for one in a public plaza, the trend is about making people feel secure, yet part of a larger whole—without feeling like they are loners.
5. Cultural Immersion and Activation
Destinations with immersive cultural production opportunities—turbo-charged chef-led foraging for adventurous foodies, crafting your own spirits with a master distiller, extended multi-day oil painting workshops, song writers and music recording studios, and glassblowing workshops—are growing in popularity
Travelers are seeking immersive cultural experiences that allow them to participate rather than simply observe. This kind of cultural activation creates deeper engagement and transforms a place into a living, breathing expression of its heritage and community.
The most advanced forms of creative production technology will find their way into exclusive resorts and destinations of cultural productions.
6. The Merging of Retail, Hospitality, and Entertainment
The lines between retail, hospitality, and entertainment are increasingly blurring, giving rise to new types of destinations that integrate these elements seamlessly.
The convergence of spaces where shopping, dining, relaxation, and entertainment coexist in ways that feel organic and interconnected is an emerging trend. For example, COSM’s mini-Sphere in Dallas’s Grandscape exemplifies how technology and entertainment can be woven into a food & beverage destination. I can see COSM experiences in exclusive club-like destination resorts.
To this point, the acquisition of products for a price, often purchased through the "keyhole" of a handheld device, has created a reverse demand for experiences, high-value branded goods, and services in high-touch environments. Consumers now crave tangible, immersive experiences that provide value beyond the transaction itself. Developers can respond by creating environments that offer depth, engagement, and memorable storytelling—things that a small handheld screen simply cannot replicate.
7. The Shift Away from Aspirational Shoppers
High-net-worth individuals continue to drive demand for unique experiences as there has been a noticeable decline in spending among aspirational customers in recent years.
The growing gap between the aspirational buyer of entry-level luxury and the high networth big ticket buyer is expanding and it underscores the importance of targeting those who value authenticity and authority, rather than building a brand on broad aspirational appeal.
In response, luxury brands are expanding their limited editions, exclusives, and levels of rarity, complemented by enhanced craftsmanship. Adopting this new approach to luxury, high-end boutique hotels are now offering exceptional branded residences. Great examples include Aman Residences, Amangiri at Canyon Point, Utah and the new Shore Club by Auberge opening in Miami in 2027.
8. Art, Architecture, and Storytelling
Art gallery-inspired spaces and architecture that tells a story, but not necessarily themed environments are becoming central to innovative luxury retail, 5-star hotels, and resorts.
Consumers are drawn to places that evoke emotion and spark curiosity. Example include Dolce & Gabbana’s baroque sensibility expressed in a sixteenth-century palace with mosaics and frescoes on Rome’s Piazza di Spagna and Miami’s Faena Hotel which evokes the heydays of Miami lavish hotel club culture of the 1950s and 60s.
The takeaway: whether its monumental public art, immersive installations, or the thoughtful integration of local culture in developments adds depth and meaning to a space to make it a place and eventually a destination.
Summary: Building for the Future
The future of lifestyle shopping centers, high streets, adventure destinations, hospitality, and branded residential development lies in creating places that go beyond function to places of meaning that inspire connection, wellness, and wonder.
From immersive cultural experiences to wellness-oriented retreats, the goal is to craft environments that resonate on a personal and emotional level. The integration of luxury retail experienced in non-shop showcases, 5-star hospitality with extraordinary culinary theater, and intimate entertainment venues in immersive cultural destinations will characterize the most sought-out places.
Developers who understand the preferences of emerging consumers choosing to live fashionable, healthy & athletic, and experience driven lifestyles, and the corresponding convergence of wellness, art, and immersive cultural and adventure travel, will shape the most memorable environments of the future.
#LuxuryDesign #ExperientialDestinations #RealEstateTrends #HospitalityInnovation
