The Worst High End Travel Advice That Somehow Keeps Getting Repeated

There is no shortage of bad travel advice in the world. Most of it is easy enough to spot from a safe distance—the sort of well-meaning nonsense dispensed by people who’ve been on exactly two international holidays and now believe they’ve unlocked the secrets of the universe. You’ve heard it all before: roll your clothes instead of folding, bring a reusable water bottle, avoid touristy areas, travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.

But the truly insidious advice—the kind that refuses to die—doesn’t come from travel rookies. It comes from people who should know better. Frequent travelers. Lifestyle columnists. Self-proclaimed insiders. It comes cloaked in self-satisfaction, spoken with the authority of someone convinced they’re letting you in on a rare secret.

It’s in the group chat. It’s in the hotel bar. It’s in that inevitable moment at dinner when someone starts waxing poetic about “how I always travel.”

And every time it’s repeated, it spreads like french better on fresh loaf of Gail's Sourdough.

These are the myths that somehow keep making the rounds, no matter how often they’ve been disproven by anyone who has actually traveled well.

Private Jets Are Always Superior to Commercial First Class

One of the biggest myths one will encounter is that flying private is the ultimate travel experience, as if saying otherwise would mark you as some hopelessly provincial traveler, trapped in the cattle class of mere mortals.

It’s a tempting fantasy, of course. No security lines. No boarding passes. No waiting around for delayed connections or arguing with gate agents. Just you, your monogrammed luggage, and a discreet crew waiting to whisk you away to wherever you please.

But here’s the reality: private aviation isn’t always better. And in some cases, it’s objectively worse.

Long-haul private flights (particularly intercontinental ones) simply aren’t built for comfort in the same way that commercial first class is. Flying from London to the Middle East or Southeast Asia? You’ll be far more comfortable stretched out in Emirates First, sipping Dom at the onboard bar, before taking a shower at 35,000 feet. The seats are larger, the cabin is quieter, and you’ll have an actual bed instead of a seat that tries to look like a bed but feels more like a high-end dentist’s chair.

Then there’s the price. It’s not even close. A round-trip first-class ticket might set you back five figures. A private jet for the same journey? Multiply that by five or six, minimum, and that’s assuming you can even find the right jet with the right range, at the right time, and not one stuck halfway across the world because its last client decided they wanted to detour via Ibiza.

Private aviation has its place - short hops, hard-to-reach airports, time-sensitive business trips - but for long-haul travel? Commercial still reigns supreme, and anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t flown both.

Trains Are Only for Budget Travelers or Nostalgic Tourists

Trains are often treated as either a romantic novelty or a regrettable necessity—fine for a scenic detour, perhaps, but hardly the stuff of serious itineraries. This is nonsense.

The best rail journeys in the world are not about nostalgia or efficiency. They are, in fact, a form of deliberate indulgence. They exist for the pleasure of slowness, for the sheer luxury of watching the world unfold through panoramic windows while you sit, unhurried, with a drink in hand.

Some of these trains are justifiably legendary—the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, the Royal Scotsman, the Eastern & Oriental Express—but even the less-famous routes can deliver moments that no jet, no matter how private, can match. You dine on multi-course meals crafted by chefs whose names you’d actually recognize, served on linen-draped tables as landscapes shift outside your window. There are cabins with real beds—not converted seats—and observation cars designed for nothing but watching the scenery in absolute comfort.

Even in more modest forms, the right train can surprise you. The First Class carriage on the LNER route from London to Scotland, for example, includes complimentary whisky, an astonishingly good menu of regional dishes, and enough peace and quiet to actually finish a book—or ignore it entirely in favor of staring out the window while the countryside scrolls by.

This isn’t about saving time. It’s about reclaiming it. And anyone who still treats rail travel as a second-tier option has likely never done it properly.

Pack Light and Stick to a Capsule Wardrobe

There’s a particular strain of travel advice that’s treated almost like gospel: pack light. Master the capsule wardrobe. Fit everything into a carry-on, no matter how long the trip. The less you bring, the more “free” you’ll feel...or so the mantra goes.

And in some cases, this is perfectly reasonable advice. No one wants to be the person dragging three oversized suitcases through cobblestone streets, especially when a short city break could be handled with far less.

But there’s a difference between sensible packing and the kind of self-congratulatory minimalism that’s become its own strange status symbol. Somewhere along the way, packing light stopped being about convenience and started becoming a competitive sport - a contest to see who can live out of the smallest bag, as though traveling well is measured by how little you bring.

This logic simply doesn’t hold when you’re traveling with proper infrastructure. If you’re staying somewhere with laundry service, luggage porters, or even a butler to unpack for you, why would you deliberately limit yourself to a wardrobe that’s been whittled down to neutral basics and quick-dry fabrics?

And while there’s always something quietly satisfying about the fantasy of packing for a week away in nothing but a Uniqlo crossbody bag (one of my personal essentials, to be fair there’s no reason to treat that as some universal ideal.

Some trips require options. Some destinations demand a certain standard of dress—whether it’s formal dining, unpredictable weather, or simply the desire to look as good as the hotel you’re walking into. That isn’t about vanity or excess; it’s about practicality, comfort, and, frankly, enjoying yourself.

There’s no prize for suffering through your holiday in the same three outfits on rotation. Pack what you need, bring what you’ll wear, and stop treating luggage like a moral issue.

Always Get a Local SIM Card

There is a certain satisfaction to landing in a foreign country, marching over to the mobile kiosk, and emerging fifteen minutes later with a local SIM card and an unlimited data plan. It feels savvy. Worldly. A little rebellious.

It’s also completely unnecessary for most seasoned travelers.

Global roaming plans, concierge data services, and even in-flight WiFi have rendered the local SIM card largely irrelevant for anyone who isn’t planning to stay for weeks on end. The difference in price is negligible once you factor in the hassle—and at the higher end of travel, time almost always trumps cost.

There is also the matter of convenience. Who wants to spend their first hour in a new destination hunting down SIM cards, translating prepaid plans, or swapping tiny plastic chips in and out of their phone while crouched on an airport floor?

Better to arrive connected, stay connected, and let someone else deal with the logistics.

Travel in Shoulder Season to Avoid Crowds

Ah, shoulder season—the phrase that refuses to die. Every travel article, every glossy magazine feature, every pseudo-insider guide repeats this with religious fervor: travel in the shoulder season, they say, when the crowds have vanished but the weather is still lovely.

At some point, you start to wonder if anyone actually knows what shoulder season even means.

For years, I assumed it referred to that sweet spot when it’s just warm enough to wear an off-the-shoulder sundress without sweating through it—a perfectly reasonable interpretation, and frankly, a far more appealing one. But no. “Shoulder season,” in travel-industry speak, simply means the awkward purgatory between peak season and low season. The time when the weather is unpredictable, the attractions are half-closed, and the air has the faint scent of desperation.

More importantly, this advice assumes you’re traveling in the same way as everyone else—queuing for museums, fighting for restaurant reservations, elbowing through markets.

But if you’re traveling well—staying in places with priority access, booking through consultants who understand how to bypass waitlists, or simply having the sense to choose private experiences—you don’t need to dodge crowds by playing calendar roulette.

Some places are meant to be enjoyed in high season. They’re meant to be lively, full, and unapologetically busy. That’s the point.

You don’t have to settle for lukewarm travel just because someone told you it was clever.

Boutique Hotels Are Always Better Than Large Brands

There’s an almost religious fervor around boutique hotels these days—the belief that smaller automatically means better, that independence equals authenticity, and that anything with more than forty rooms must surely be soulless.

This line of thinking conveniently ignores the many boutique hotels that, while charming in theory, are little more than design projects with mood lighting and underpaid staff scrambling to keep up when anything actually goes wrong.

Equally tiresome, however, are the self-satisfied loyalty point devotees—the ones who will proudly tell you that they refuse to stay anywhere they can’t earn status. These are the travelers who will turn down an exceptional hotel—one with actual character, impeccable service, and a team that knows them by name—because they’d rather collect points at a Hilton near the motorway. They will look you dead in the eye, as a travel consultant, and tell you that they “only stay where they can get the perks.” As if free breakfast vouchers somehow outweigh a genuinely extraordinary experience.

Neither camp has it right.

The truth is that both boutique and branded hotels have their place—and the smartest travelers know when to lean into each. Boutique properties can deliver something singular and unforgettable—but they can also be wildly inconsistent. Meanwhile, some of the most discreet, elegant hotels in the world technically belong to larger groups—but operate with a level of polish that boutique properties can’t always match.

This, incidentally, is also why you ask someone like me—because a good consultant knows the difference. And knows exactly when to ignore the points program.

Avoid Touristy Spots at All Costs

Few pieces of travel advice sound as smug as “never go where the tourists go.” It’s often presented as a badge of honor, a sign of having graduated to some higher plane of traveler consciousness where you drift through obscure alleyways and eat in nameless backstreet cafés known only to the locals.

And while there is certainly something to be said for exploring beyond the obvious, this fixation on “avoiding tourists” can become a form of self-defeating snobbery.

Some places are popular because they are, quite simply, extraordinary. There is nothing inherently noble about missing the Eiffel Tower just because everyone else wants to see it. The same goes for the Colosseum, the Grand Bazaar, or the temples of Kyoto. These places are iconic for a reason—they hold history, beauty, atmosphere, or sheer scale that cannot be replicated elsewhere.

More importantly, well-connected travelers know that even in the busiest spots, there is always a way to experience them differently. It might be a private after-hours tour, a table with a view reserved weeks in advance, or simply the knowledge of the right time to visit—early morning, late evening, or in the quiet lull between group tours.

Avoiding crowds isn’t about skipping destinations altogether. It’s about accessing them intelligently, and enjoying the best parts without the queues.

Never Book Through a Third Party / Always Go Direct

There is a certain romance to the idea of booking everything yourself, directly, with no middleman involved. It feels clean, streamlined, self-sufficient. You get to imagine that you are somehow bypassing the noise and going straight to the source.

But in reality, the most seasoned travelers rarely book entirely on their own—and those who insist on doing so often leave money and benefits on the table.

Many luxury travelers work through consultants, private concierges, or members-only booking platforms that unlock perks unavailable through direct reservations. These perks aren’t just room upgrades or late check-outs (though those help). They include access to suites that never appear online, flexible cancellation policies, and on-the-ground problem-solving that no front desk will handle for you.

The best third-party arrangements aren’t about finding discounts. They’re about securing better versions of what’s available to the public—and having someone to fight your battles should anything go sideways.

Booking direct isn’t always wrong—but insisting on it out of principle is the kind of false economy that only looks savvy from a distance.

Luxury Travel Means Five-Star Hotels and Michelin-Starred Restaurants

Luxury has been flattened, in recent years, into a checklist: five-star accommodations, Michelin-starred meals, business-class flights, and private transfers waiting with your name on a sign.

It’s the same tired formula, dressed up differently depending on the destination—but always delivered with the same hollow promises of exclusivity. And for some, that’s enough. They’ll happily toss their Lamborghini keys to the valet at the Savoy, order the tasting menu, and believe they’ve unlocked the pinnacle of sophistication.

But anyone who has traveled extensively—or traveled well—knows that true luxury has little to do with official star ratings or grand gestures.

Some of the most exquisite travel experiences happen in places with no recognition at all: private estates that never advertise, family-run villas that have been discreetly passed through generations, countryside inns where the owner greets you by name and serves you dinner in their garden.

The same goes for dining. Michelin stars are a useful guide to certain styles of cooking—but they are not a universal metric for quality, nor do they guarantee a satisfying meal. Many of the world’s best meals are served in places with no website, no sommelier, and no marketing budget—just skill, tradition, and a refusal to cater to passing trends.

True luxury is knowing when to lean into polish, and when to abandon it entirely in favor of something rarer and harder to describe.

More Expensive Always Means Better

This is perhaps the oldest, most persistent myth in travel, and also the hardest to kill.

It’s easy to assume that the most expensive option is automatically the best. After all, in many parts of life, price does correlate with quality. A well-made handbag costs more than a fast-fashion knockoff for a reason. A custom suit fits better than one off the rack.

But in travel, price often signals something else entirely: trendiness, scarcity, or pure hype.

There are hotels charging €5,000 per night that offer nothing more than a moody color palette, an “it” crowd in the bar, and a staff that acts like they’re doing you a favor by checking you in. There are beach clubs demanding €300 for a sun lounger simply because they were featured in a magazine spread last summer. There are restaurants with eye-watering prices serving food that’s been on autopilot since 2019.

The savvy traveler doesn’t avoid expensive places - but they do ask why something costs what it does. Is it because of genuine craftsmanship, privacy, and service? Or because someone decided that a €200 plate of pasta would look good on Instagram?

More expensive isn’t always better. Sometimes, it’s just better marketed.

So Why Does This Advice Persist?

The simplest reason these myths survive is because they are easy to repeat. They sound wise, concise, and experienced. These little mantras are passed around as if they contain ancient truths about how to travel well.

But more often than not, they reflect an outdated idea of what high end travel should be - either rooted in a scarcity mindset, a consumer mindset, or a false belief that suffering a little bit somehow makes a trip more authentic.

The real art of travel doesn’t lie in clever hacks or contrarian posturing. It lies in knowing your own tastes, your own limits, and your own goals - and being willing to discard bad advice, no matter how often it’s presented as gospel.

Bring the extra suitcase. Book the direct flight or the one with a stopover lounge you actually enjoy. Stay at the iconic hotel because it makes you feel something, not because it ticks a box. Skip the Ferrari. And for the love of God, stop worrying about whether it’s “shoulder season” or not.

The only real rule worth following? Travel in the way that feels most like you -unbothered, unhurried, and entirely immune to other people’s recycled wisdom (except mine, of course).