File image File image
New York - For your next vacation, forget about taking
inspiration from Instagram. You’re going to go where nobody has been before, on
a trip that nobody has ever taken—and that nobody after you will ever take
again.
That’s the promise of Blink, a new ephemeral vacation
service that the high-end travel outfitter Black Tomato is launching
Thursday. Here’s how it works: You pick a country or region, and Black Tomato
will find a pristine parcel of land on which to build you a fully customized
pop-up hotel, complete with staff and meals and excursions. You choose
everything from the view to the bed linens to the bottles in your pop-up wine
cellar. It’s tailor-made travel in the most literal way ever.
“People use the words ‘tailor made’ so ubiquitously these
days. What does that even mean anymore?” said Tom Marchant, co-founder of Black
Tomato, who conceived of Blink as a response to the traction he saw from
pop-up retail concepts. “Temporary experiences really excite people,” he said.
“They create a sense of urgency.”
For Marchant, this is the direction that luxury is moving
in. He says his personal definition of luxury is something that’s truly unique
and can’t be replicated, and hoteliers far and wide agree. But there’s only so
much customizing that a hotel can pull off. “Bespoke bath amenities” will be
bespoke to a property’s design, not to the guests’ individual wishes;
“customized excursions” are often just tweaks to tried and true itineraries.
But those who create a trip using Blink will have—by
Marchant’s calculations—751 074 508 800 total trip combinations to
choose from after all the granular details are factored in.
So where to begin? An epic location. Black Tomato has
built its name off exceptional access to remote places, and Marchant’s
team has spent roughly 18 months laying the groundwork for this new project.
“Blink is available anywhere in the world,” Marchant said—and he means it.
(Yes, that includes the Arctic.) But he and his team will inspire clients with
such far-flung and exotic locations as the salt flats in Bolivia or
Australia’s Kimberly region. Safari-goers might set up in Namibia or the
Kalahari; culture fiends can head to Rajasthan or Myanmar’s Inle Lake; and
action fanatics can choose from ski trips in Switzerland, northern lights
spotting in Iceland, or riding the sand dunes in the Moroccan desert. These are
all among Marchant’s favourites—and hardly compromise an exhaustive list.
Once the general location is set, travellers can get into
the nitty gritty of designing their pop-up hotel from the ground up. In an
effort to leave no trace behind, Marchant chose semipermanent (but high-design)
tents as the format for all Blink pop-ups, but you can choose from a variety of
styles: canvas, domes, bubbles, yurts, tropical villa tents, and a few more.
Then everything from the layout of the beds (yes, real beds) to the patterns on
the seat cushions and the brand of bath amenities is up to your personal whim.
The process can take place online—Marchant likened
the experience to “choosing from a room service menu”—or over the phone with an
expert, though he also clarified that guests can be as hands-on or hands-off as
they want to be. (Even the customisation process is customisable.)
Depending on the remoteness of the location and how
established Black Tomato is in that area, it can take three to five months to
execute a client’s vision. Not only does it require a logistical superstorm to
get all your preferences lined up and installed on site; Black Tomato also has
to staff each camp individually. For some guests, that might mean daily
housekeeping and a couple of great guides; for others, it could mean a
sommelier, chef, and an astronomer for expert-led stargazing sessions. Blink
trips include meals, excursions, transfers, and everything in between. “We
create the full package,” Marchant explained.
Blink took a lot of work to get off the ground—but it
will quickly become a well-oiled machine, Marchant hopes. Black Tomato expects
to start small, commissioning roughly 10-20 trips in the service’s first year
and ultimately scaling it into the hundreds. “We have the infrastructure to
support growth on this,” Marchant assured, but he also recognized that it’s not
a trip that everyone can (or will) take. “It’s not a mass proposition—it’s
about the right people at the right time in the right place.”
As for the pricing, that’s fully bespoke, too. According
to Marchant, prices can range from $65 784 for a group of six that wants to
spend three nights in Morocco to $177 600 for a group of six spending four
nights in the Bolivian salt flats. “Neither of these are including airfare, but
Black Tomato can arrange flights from anywhere in the world,” he said.
And while these sample bills were both
representative of group trips, Blink is as appropriate for couples as it is for
larger affairs. “I can see a lot of proposals and engagements happening with
Blink,” Marchant half-joked. “The concept works on many levels: honeymooners
looking for the ultimate secluded and private experience, family groups looking
to celebrate a milestone event or birthday, groups of friends looking to escape
together.” After all, it’s as easy to create a single tent as it is to set up
five domes or bubbles in a row for your own private pop-up lodge.
Regardless, each camp will be dismantled as soon as you
leave—removing every last trace of its existence—and it’ll never be built the
same way again. In other words: Blink, and you’ll miss it. “That’s what gets
the hairs on the neck standing up,” said Marchant. “Right now travellers just
talk about hotels and Airbnb. Just wait, in 10 years’ time there’s a chance
people will be talking about this—semi-permanent tents—instead.”