The sun feels different at 7:02 AM. It doesn’t have the lazy, hazy warmth of a vacation afternoon; it’s a tactical sun, an accomplice. Its light slices across the manicured hibiscus, illuminating the mission. My target is a pair of cushioned lounge chairs, third from the left, under the wide canvas umbrella that doesn’t have a suspicious-looking bird stain on it. There are 232 chairs arranged around this shimmering blue rectangle of water, and by 7:42 AM, every single one will be claimed by a neatly folded towel, a paperback novel, or a single, orphaned flip-flop-the silent, flimsy sentinels of reserved territory.
The resort charges over $2,222 a night. And this is my morning’s work.
We’ve accepted this as normal. We call it luxury. We post photos of the turquoise water, the artfully arranged acai bowl that cost $42, the sunset that seems engineered to bleed into the precise shades of the resort’s branding palette. But we don’t post the photo of the alarm set for 6:52 AM. We don’t talk about the low-grade, simmering anxiety of resource competition that runs like a hidden electrical current beneath the entire experience.
The Manufactured Experience
I was talking about this with my friend, Jade P.K., a few months back. Jade designs lighting for museums and galleries, and she thinks about space in a way that most people don’t. She’s paid to direct the human eye, to make a room feel intimate or overwhelming, to tell a story with photons. We were at one of these so-called five-star beach clubs, music throbbing just enough to make conversation a conscious effort, and she pointed at the string lights woven through the palms.
And then I couldn’t unsee it.
The real product isn’t the comfortable bed or the pristine beach. The product is the feeling of having gained access to a space where scarcity is managed in your favor-for a price.
The New Luxury: Monetized Frustration
This is the new luxury: a tiered system of opting out of inconveniences the system itself creates. The base-level inconvenience is the 7:02 AM chair hunt. For an extra $422 a day, you can reserve a cabana, which is just a chair with a little roof and two curtains. You’re paying to bypass the game. For another $822, you can get access to the ‘exclusive’ rooftop pool, which is just a smaller, more crowded pool with a better view of the other people who also paid to feel special.
Every frustration is a monetization opportunity.
I hate this dynamic. I find it transparent and cynical and a fundamental violation of what a vacation is supposed to be. I also have to admit that on day two of that trip, after losing the chair battle to a man who looked like he could run a 4.2-second 40-yard dash with a stack of towels under his arm, I paid the $422 for the cabana. I bought my way out of the game I was already paying thousands to play in the first place. I criticized the system and then I wrote it a check. It’s easy to have principles until you just really want a place to put your stuff in the shade.
The velvet rope used to hang at the entrance of a nightclub. Now, it’s everywhere. It’s invisible, but it’s partitioned the entire consumer world. It’s the difference between basic economy and premium economy-a few inches of legroom sold as a luxury. It’s the subscription service that removes the ads from the other subscription service you’re already paying for. We’ve become connoisseurs of micro-comforts, experts at navigating byzantine systems of manufactured privilege.
The Luxury of Being Left Alone
What we lost in this process wasn’t money. It was privacy. It was the simple, profound luxury of being left alone, of not having to perform or compete. A few years ago, completely burned out, a friend convinced me to try something different. Instead of a resort, we booked one of the los cabos villa rentals for a group of us. I was skeptical, worried about the logistics, the lack of a concierge to solve my trivial problems. My entire framework for a vacation was built around being served, not being self-sufficient.
The first morning, I woke up naturally, with the sun, around 8:12 AM. I walked out to the patio. There was a pool. There were chairs. They were all empty, waiting. Not for the swiftest or the richest or the one with the earliest alarm. Just waiting. For us. There was no one to perform for, no micro-economy of towels and territory. The only sound was the wind and the distant surf. We had the one thing that no resort, no matter how many stars or how exclusive the beach club, could ever truly sell: autonomy.
The Subtractive Luxury
That’s the core of it. We’ve been taught that luxury is additive. It’s more service, more amenities, more thread counts, more tiers of access. We pay for things to be done for us.
What if true luxury is subtractive?
What if it’s the absence of things? The absence of a schedule. The absence of a crowd. The absence of a velvet rope, visible or otherwise.
The absence of the need to have an opinion on the 12 different kinds of complimentary infused water in the lobby.
The Ultimate Luxury: Invisibility
The ultimate luxury isn’t being seen in the right place. It’s the freedom to be invisible. It’s a pool chair that doesn’t require a strategy. It’s a quiet dinner on a patio where the only soundtrack is your own conversation. It’s a door you can close that separates you from the world, not just from the people in the cheaper rooms down the hall. It’s the simple, uncomplicated, and increasingly rare state of being left completely, wonderfully alone.