Imagine you’re with friends in the VIP at the hottest nightclub in Buenos Aires. The next table strikes up conversation; they’ve bought too many bottles of champagne, they say, would you and your group like one? By night’s end, you’re fast friends with his whole crew, who offer to take you out on a yacht the next day then watch the Boca Juniors soccer team play in their private box — they’ll even bring you into the stadium via the players’ entrance. This scenario is real. Kind of. It happened to one group, but it wasn’t kismet, though, that brought them together. Those locals weren’t connected Porteños, but paid actors. The entire experience was devised by a travel agent, hired by American clients to help turn a workaday trip to Argentina into something more unforgettable – and entirely synthetic.
That trip was organized by Gregory Patrick, the Texas-based founder of House of Dreammaker, which specializes in trips like this — think of them as equal parts White Lotus and Punk’d with a dose of Minority Report thrown in for good measure. They’re also increasingly popular among UHNW travelers, keener on world-building than globe-trotting.
Patrick, whose clients typically pay around $200,000 or so per trip, has a command center overseeing the scenarios he devises, live-monitoring every one of them from the Philippines to ensure that nothing goes awry. He’s done everything from staging a pickpocketing in London – the family opted in to that experience willingly – to booking a magician to sit at an adjoining table in a restaurant who struck up conversation with House of Dreammaker’s clients, entertaining their kids with spoon-bending and other tricks.
Patrick isn’t the only travel specialist I know who’s frequently asked to devise scenarios more than plan traditional trips. UK-based Shift + Alt, an events firm with a fanbase in the Bay Area, has created elaborate kidnappings where C-suiters have been snatched from their offices before being dropped, defenseless into a faux-hostile landscape with only their wits to help them get home. Not all these experiences are sprung on travelers, though — they can also knowingly opt in to a world devised just for their amusement. Kevin Jackson, the adventure specialist who runs EXP Journeys, has built everything from a James Bond-style adventure for three couples keener on derring-do than doing nothing, to a multi-million dollar paintball getaway where a group of friends had to rescue hostages held captive in hideaways dotted round the Utah landscape. He’s even created replicas of the Pirates of the Caribbean ship for travelers to channel their inner Jack Sparrow marauding around the Bahamas.
See also: The Personal Touches That Matter to the World’s Most Elite Travelers
So what’s driving this craving for artifice instead of immersing yourself in the destination? I’ve long played a game in travel I called Balderdash Bingo, inspired by the meaningless pablum that litters so much copy in this world – “sense of place”, perhaps, or “experiential”. But no word is more overused, or more meaningless, than “authentic”, a catchall deployed with shameless abandon. I wonder if the relentless emphasis on authenticity has sparked a backlash, with trips like these at the forefront of this new zeitgiest: they are knowingly, unapologetically artificial, a chance to relinquish any worry over whether or not you’ve engaged with local customs with appropriate gusto.
Such trips remind me of AI before AI, where you can bring to life what’s in your mind — and step into it, without need for inconveniences like Oculus glasses. And if overtourism makes it virtually impossible to enjoy Rome in midsummer, why not opt out entirely and instead sail the Greek Islands and meet different gods and goddesses every time you wander ashore? (And yes, I know a family who tasked another firm with such a trip, hoping to teach their reluctant children a little ancient history in more digestible form.)
Some folk are so keen to vacation in their own mini-movie that they’ve built permanent sets for those fantasies. You may know of The Town, in Colorado, a 50-building Wild West replica with everything from saloons to cabins, that billionaire Bill Koch constructed on his 5,500 acre ranch just south of Aspen (he’s now allowing a select few to rent it out and play cowboy, too, if you’re willing to spend $900,000 for four nights’ exclusive use).
Sometimes, though, travelers can embrace their roles in these vignettes with a little too much enthusiasm. Take the friends who sent an agent a brief with one word: Westworld. They wanted to step into that theme park-like world, albeit with real people rather than mutinous androids. The travel advisor rented out another ranch for the trip, rostering it with a full quota of actors to play every part, as well as a videographer to shoot their own footage. The problem came as they were boarding their charter, and pulled the cameraman aside. They’d not mentioned to their wives how committed they were to replicating the TV series so completely, including a fully staffed brothel. Could he ensure that the final edit omitted any footage that might suggest its presence? Even in such artificial adventures, it seems, there’s danger in too much authenticity.
