Karl-Henry Edström gives a preview of Robb Report Monaco & Côte d’Azur’s anticipated annual Ultimate Gift Guide edition—out now across Monaco and the French Riviera.
Travel, today, is a more edifying human endeavour than ever. Learning has become as important as lazing, and those fortunate enough to indulge in travel freely and frequently are collectors of the intangible: silence, space, first footprints, and what American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson called “that delicious, slightly disorienting clarity”.
All of which has contributed to our decision, this issue, to devote our cover feature to giving readers a vicarious—and soon, we hope, actual—experience of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast: a place where flourishing coral ecosystems, boundary-nudging design and game-shaping approaches to hospitality are conspiring to make this as much of a top-ofbucket- list destination as ever before.
As seasoned travel journalist Lauren Keith discovers on page 92, this is a part of the planet where soul-stirring natural beauty, world-class cuisine, design exuberance to marvel at and a general sense of life-recalibrating calm are key ingredients in the experience. All are factors that Robb Report has celebrated since 2019, when our relationship with the Red Sea Global development began, and we are excited to share its enduring charm, gravitas and appeal with our readers.
Elsewhere in this, our annual celebration of upscale travel, Nick Scott and Rachel Ingram identify the latest trends you should be buying into (page 103), while the latter also curates the upcoming hotel openings discerning travellers really need to explore the next time their agendas allow it (page 126). Ming Liu, meanwhile, reveals the best world timer watches our favourite manufactures have recently dropped (page 32), as well as Van Cleef & Arpels’ fresh update of its Zodiaque highjewellery collection on page 30.
Turn to page 66 for the first article in a new series which examines the eternal charm of iconic items from the world of fine living: expect other venerated artefacts from the Robb Report universe to come under our gaze, in keeping with the themes of each issue, in the coming months.
This edition being devoted to itinérance, expect, too, our usual investigations into the developments which are making the future ever more exciting in the realms of aviation. Rachel Ingram forecasts what attendees at EBACE in Geneva will learn about tomorrow’s air travel on page 82, as well as previewing Bombardier’s new Global 8000 (page 88) and Cessna’s next-generation Citation craft (page 84), and offers a first-timer’s guide to yacht chartering in the Mediterranean this summer, with expert help from Moravia Yachting and Cecil Wright & Partners (page 118).
The new Tiffany Timer Chronograph’s stunning dial aesthetics (page 62), Dominique London’s exceptional new London outpost (page 46), Flavio Briatore’s life-defining rituals (page 54) and Fujifilm’s latest contribution to readers’ globe-trotting pursuits being documented with rich clarity (page 81) are also in the mix, in an issue which will hopefully reinforce the enduring relevance of sentiments uttered by Saint Augustine a millennium and a half ago: “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
Karl-Henry Edström
CEO & Publisher – Travel Issue editor
Directeur Général & Éditeur
