If the tabloids are to be trusted, the retail magnate Sir Philip Green spent £6.5m on his 60th birthday party in 2012, flying out more than a hundred friends and celebrities (among them Naomi Campbell, Leonardo DiCaprio, Simon Cowell — and they were just the Cs), 155 staff and a security team trained by the Israeli secret service, for a four-day bash at the Rosewood Mayakoba hotel on Mexico’s Caribbean coast. Stevie Wonder came to sing “Happy Birthday”; caviar and Kobe beef were washed down with Puligny-Montrachet La Garenne 2009 and 2001 Cos d’Estournel; the fireworks alone cost £150,000. And a “full service event management” company called Banana Split handled the logistics, just as it had when he turned 50 and 55 with parties in Cyprus and the Maldives.
Three years on, such head-turning celebrations are no longer unique. Where once it was enough just to go on holiday somewhere exotic to mark a milestone anniversary, piquing envy in your friends with photographs and stories once you were home, the fashion among those with means is now to take them with you. No surprise then that travel companies are increasingly undertaking to lay on ever more fabulous celebrations overseas, and several new operators have sprung up to cater specifically to that demand.
Fancy a private performance by Cirque du Soleil above Lake Pichola in Udaipur, India, looking on from the Taj Lake Palace hotel? Then Kit Harrison, managing director of Dreamsmith, a newly launched offshoot of the London-based tour operator Cazenove+Loyd, is your man.