Tourists Who Stay Close to Home

A decade ago, hotels in the princely palaces of Rajasthan, India, were the preserve of wealthy Western tourists who might've seemed like imperialists. "The only locals you'd see were serving you drinks," says London lawyer Rory White, a veteran India traveler. No longer. These days, you're less likely to see Europeans than wealthy Indians at the Lake Palace in Udaipur and well-to-do Chinese at the Red Capital Ranch boutique hotel near Beijing, with its gorgeous views of the Great Wall.

Across Eurasia, local middle-class travelers are increasingly choosing to vacation in their own countries. They've created a boom in domestic travel that has rapidly raised the level of accommodations and services. Many have traveled on package tours abroad, and are demanding the same amenities they found overseas, whether it's spa treatments or high-thread-count sheets. And their demand for upscale travel is reaching even the remotest corners of the earth, from Tibet to Siberia, where posh hotels are opening in areas once hospitable only to backpackers. Richer tourists want "something more sophisticated than beaches and unlimited buffets," says Svetlana Gracheva of Moscow's exclusive VIP Tours agency. That means trips far off the beaten path, from the once forbidden old city of Lhasa to the mountains of Tuva, on the Russian-Chinese border.

No country embodies the trend toward upscale domestic travel more than China, where the purchasing power of the middle class has expanded at an astonishing pace over the past decade. Currently, there are 320,000 millionaires in the country, worth a total of $1.6 trillion, whose free-spending ways have recently driven the country's luxury-goods market to grow by 28 percent a year. And these big spenders don't just want to buy pretty things: increasingly they want to see beautiful places in their own country. Shao Qiwen, director of China's National Tourism Administration, predicts China's tourism business will be worth a staggering $128 billion this year, much of that coming from an estimated 1.5 billion domestic travelers. Many Chinese "can afford to spend an average of $20,000 per trip per couple," says Lily Liu, one of the organizers of last year's first-ever China Luxury Travel Fair in Shanghai, which brought high-end hoteliers and tony travel providers together with prospective clients.

China's new elite is rediscovering an ancient local tradition: hot springs and spas. Outside Beijing's Sixth Ring Road, far from the turbulent urban sprawl of China's capital, I Spa provides an oasis of comfort and indulgence, centered on a series of roiling pools of mineral-rich water. Last year the spa opened a small boutique hotel called the Napa Club, featuring what the brochure calls "Californian nobleness and elegance." Though the hotel d?cor is distinctly American, the clientele is almost exclusively Chinese; it even has a Hunanese chef to cater to spice-loving guests from southern provinces. Napa's "Escape the City" package is a favorite of beleaguered businesswomen; it includes a detoxifying body scrub meant to remove the pollution from Beijing's air.

Russians, who for decades vacationed in the Baltics, are rediscovering the joys of home as well. "Russians like everything Russian again," says Aleksandr Sarayev of Russia's Federal Tourism Agency. "They want to spend their money at home. Russians' interest for their own history and culture is reawakening." The reason, he says, is growing national pride, as well as the difficulty of getting European visas, now required for former Russian favorites like Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria. Last year domestic travel in Russia grew by 15 percent, while the number of Russians going abroad increased by just 1.9 percent. This year, 25 million Russians are expected to take domestic vacations.

Russian vacationers, understandably, look for warmth and sun. During the winter, they flock to traditional hot spots like Egypt, Turkey and Dubai. But during the summer months, more and more Russians are returning to their own Black Sea coast, lured by cheap flights and Russian-speaking service. Old Soviet-era sanatoriums and resorts around Sochi and Crimea in Ukraine are being refurbished, and new hotels are springing up in anticipation of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. But even Sergey Gorsky, director of the Moscow International Travel and Tourism Exhibition, admits that Russian destinations still have a way to go before they can truly compete. "Egypt is famous for its Red Sea, corals and pyramids; Greece for ruins; Italy for architecture," he says. "What does Russia have to offer to our middle class, spoiled by the luxury and beauty they have experienced abroad? Sochi is not much cheaper than Turkey, and service is still much worse."