Four Seasons’ private jet experience takes luxury to a new level

Let’s put aside our troubles for the moment over the creeping wealth gap in this country and what that will mean for democracy and our ability to have a say in the political decision-making process, shall we?

Let’s talk instead about money and some of the sinfully delicious ways the filthy rich can spend their mountains of treasure (when they aren’t rolling around in a bed of gold and diamonds).

The Four Seasons is the latest to reach into the global luxury market with a brand new product to tempt the well-heeled to part with their fortunes. The hotel chain announced this week the launch of the Four Seasons Jet, a specially retrofitted Boeing 757 and the industry’s first “fully branded private jet experience.”

Flight delays? Over-booking? Please. These are business-class problems.

For about $130,000 per person (a mere $118,000 per person for double occupancy), the Four Seasons jet will transport up to 52 guests on specially tailored journeys to destinations around the world, complete with a on-board chef, in-flight Wi-Fi service and dedicated concierge to ensure that martini you just ordered is shaken, and never stirred.

Pack your bags. The first flight departs in February 2015. Beginning in Los Angeles and concluding with a celebratory dinner in London, it’s a 24-day, nine-destination journey from the Taj Mahal to the Sydney Opera House.

Art aficionados will want to consider April’s flight: a 16-day, six-city tour museums, opera houses and galleries from Milan to St Petersburg. Meanwhile, the “Around-the-World” tour in August is fairly self-explanatory, with featured stops in Beijing, Marrakech and the Maldives.

The hotel company made its initial foray into the jet-set world of international travel in 2012, offering transport between Four Season global properties organized on a classic Boeing that had been retrofitted to remove excess seats and give passengers a whole new definition of ample leg room.

The airline has since been customized inside and out to fit company branding, complete with a formal logo on its tail.

Susan Helstab, the company’s executive vice president of marketing, called the jet experience a “natural extension” of what the hotel has been providing to its guests since its inception in 1960.

Luxury market offers choice

Catering to the rich is nothing new in the world. Heck, if money is no object, then neither is gravity. People are lined up to buy a flight to space onboard Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. The company claims it has accepted more than $70 million dollars from 580 people for the planned journey.

Closer to earth, and to home, Toronto’s chic Hazelton Hotel began in 2012 offering a travel package, complete with a private jet ride from your home to Toronto and two nights' stay in the hotel’s best suite, for $199,000.

"People are looking for unique experiences," David Mounteer, the hotel's general manager, told Yahoo Canada Finance at the time.

Most of us will only ever be able to dream of the kind of pampering these exclusive vacations offer, despite signs of general health in our overall wealth here in Canada.

Recent data from Statistics Canada shows we’re riding a wave of unprecedented fortune, with the median net worth of Canadian families up 44.5 per cent from 2005 to $243,800 in 2012. That’s an 80 per cent jump over the 1999 median of $137,000, adjusted for inflation.

Holding us down, however, is our tendency to overspend. Between mortgages, car loans, lines of credit and credit cards, Canada's debt-to-income ratio remains close to a record high of 164 per cent.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives recently published a paper that found the country’s wealthiest families held the same amount of wealth in 2012 as the bottom 11.4 million Canadians combined – up from 10.1 million Canadians in 1999.

To put it another way: our richest families have so much money they could buy everything owned by every person in the province of New Brunswick, and still have millions of dollars leftover.