Reservations for Italy’s new “La Dolce Vita Orient Specific” prepare open Tuesday.
Luxurious prepare lovers could wish to lock within the present fee now — earlier than it climbs any larger.
Beginning charges for a one-night journey on the luxurious prepare elevated from 2,000 euros ($2,168) per particular person in December 2022 to 2,500 euros per particular person in November 2023. Each charges have been set throughout a pre-sales reservation interval, which required a refundable deposit.
However beginning charges have now jumped to three,500 euros per particular person per evening, in keeping with a press launch revealed in March.
That is an eye-watering 75% value enhance in a 16-month interval.
The prepare is ready to start out operating within the spring of 2025, in keeping with Accor, the French multinational hospitality firm that operates the prepare.
What is going on?
Accor didn’t instantly reply CNBC’s query as to the rationale behind the steep value hike.
A consultant stated, “Pricing evolves in keeping with occupancy, season, route, and cabin sort.”
Nevertheless, once more, the prepare is not working but.
Charges for a deluxe cabin on Accor’s La Dolce Vita Orient Specific prepare have risen 75% since late 2022.
Courtesy of Accor
Ticket costs are nonetheless decrease than one other prepare utilizing the “Orient Specific” moniker in Europe — the Venice Simplon-Orient-Specific. Nightly charges for that prepare, which is operated by the LVMH-owned Belmond firm, begin from £7,060 British ($8,925) per passenger, in keeping with a evaluate of its web site.
Dave Goodger, managing director for Europe, the Center East and Africa at Tourism Economics, an Oxford Economics firm, stated rising costs are brought on by customers’ continued willingness to pay larger charges for luxurious experiences. However, he stated, that is doubtless not the one motive.
The lounge on the Accor’s new La Dolce Vita prepare.
Courtesy of Accor
“Luxurious journey demand is mirrored in some continued value will increase,” he stated. “Nevertheless, the worth will increase will not be profiteering and are broadly consistent with rising prices, together with larger workers prices in addition to elevated debt service necessities.”
Goodger referred to as the La Dolce Vita prepare’s value enhance “one thing of an outlier,” but additionally famous it is reflective of the distinctive service it offers.
The ‘La Dolce Vita’ trains
Accor’s La Dolce Vita Orient Specific is ready to run 9 routes via Italy, together with a coastal journey from Palermo to Rome and one other from Rome to the Tuscan commune of Montalcino.
The “La Dolce Vita” prepare — which interprets to “the candy life” — channels the period of Italian glamour captured by Federico Fellini’s famed 1960 film of the identical identify. The movie is probably finest remembered for the scene by which actor Anita Ekberg frolics within the Trevi Fountain, an act that vacationers might be fined heftily for replicating.
Reservations for the prepare open by way of phone on April 2, and by way of the prepare’s web site from April 24.
Accor has plans to launch one other prepare — named “The Orient Specific” — utilizing restored Nineteenth-century carriages that have been as soon as a part of the historic “Nostalgie-Istanbul-Orient-Specific.”
The prepare will run numerous routes via Europe, together with the long-lasting Paris-Istanbul route.
Initially scheduled to launch this yr, the prepare is now set to start providers in 2026.
