While tech valuations wobble and AI commoditises more of the digital stack every quarter, a different category of business is quietly outperforming, one built not on code, but on craftsmanship, presence, and human connection.
Global luxury spending held firm at €1.44 trillion (~$1.66 trillion) in 2025, but the real story is where the growth came from. Personal luxury goods went flat. Experiences surged. Luxury hospitality reached approximately €250 billion in 2025, up 5%, while gourmet food and fine dining rose 7%, a category that has grown 40% since 2019. Luxury cruises jumped over 10%. Bain calls it a “tectonic shift”, consumers globally are pivoting away from conspicuous ownership toward what they describe as “experiential indulgence”: wellness, connection, and self-reward.
The logic is simple. In a world flooded with AI-generated content and instant digital everything, human experiences are becoming genuinely scarce. A handcrafted dinner, a private journey, an intimate event, these cannot be automated or delivered via an app. Scarcity is where value lives. 36.2% of luxury executives now identify travel and hospitality as the category with the highest growth potential, ahead of any goods segment.
Customer experience and loyalty have emerged as the top growth opportunity cited by luxury executives globally, according to a survey of 420 senior leaders across ten countries.
The most defensible position in an AI economy is not built on data or distribution. It is built on moments that cannot be copied. The businesses that understand this earliest are not simply selling luxury. They are selling the one thing technology has made genuinely rare: a reason to be present.
Sources
Bain & Company / Altagamma —Bain-Altagamma Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study, 2025
Bain & Company —Finding a New Longevity for Luxury, December 2025
Deloitte — Global Powers of Luxury, 2026
