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Travel
Madeline Berg
2023-11-16T10:55:02Z
- Billionaires are predictable — and they like to stick together.
- Each year they attend a pretty standard set of parties, festivals, and conferences.
- Here's where you can find a billionaire at any time of year — and how much it will cost you to join in on the fun.
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There are exactly 2,640 billionaires in the world, according to Forbes. That's about 0.00003% of the global population.
Despite their scarcity, these billionaires are surprisingly easy to find. After all, birds of a feather — especially those of a small brood — flock their private jets together. At the start of the year, they descend en masse on Davos. In July, they fly to Sun Valley. In December, their yachts stop by St. Barts.
Here's where billionaires mingle, wheel and deal, and relax, and how you can join them — for a small price, of course.
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January: Davos
After billionaires shake off their New Year's Eve hangovers, many make their way to Switzerland for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos to attend lavish dinners, hit the slopes, and discuss the global problem du jour.
The official event is invite-only and costs tens of thousands per ticket. But those who want to rub shoulders with attendees — think Bill Gates, Marc Benioff, and Mark Zuckerberg — aren't completely barred from the Alpine resort.
Many of Davos' luxury hotels, like the Steigenberger Grandhotel Belvédère and AlpenGold, are closed to the public, so you'd be better off renting an apartment. Those don't come cheap, though. Local outlets reported that rentals went for 10-times their typical prices last year. One apartment with two double beds and a pull-out sofa cost nearly $27,500 to rent for the five nights of the conference.
And good luck finding food. With most of the restaurants booked up for conference events, you may be left paying $43 for a hot dog.
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February: Super Bowl
NFL teams are among the most popular toys of the ultrarich: Walmart's Rob Walton has the Broncos, hedge fund manager David Tepper owns the Panthers, real estate tycoon Stanley Kroenke boasts the Rams, Jerry Jones controls the Cowboys, and so on.
So it's no surprise that a number of billionaires flock to the sport's biggest game every year, though Super Bowl weekend as a billionaire involves more than just wings and great commercials.
Host committees and travel agencies have curated luxury experiences for the richest football fans that cost six figures and include chartered jets, five-star accommodations, and access to the field after the game. Suites for this season's game in Las Vegas are going for up to $3 million on rental platform Suite Luxury Group.
There are also the private parties, known for their superstar performers — in some cases, ones particularly familiar with billionaires. Last year, DJ D-Sol, also known as Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, reportedly spun a set at a party attended by billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Apollo cofounder Josh Harris.
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March: Hong Kong's Art Basel
Last year marked the grand reopening of Hong Kong's Art Basel after a three-year coronavirus hiatus. Wealthy Chinese carpooled together in private jets to the fair, Bloomberg reported, and spent millions adding to their collections.
In a savvy scheduling maneuver, the 2023 art fair coincided with the Wealth for Good summit. The conference, a push to get more family offices to set up in the city, counted billionaires like Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang, Sequoia Capital China's Neil Shen, and local real estate magnate Adam Kwok as its attendees.
Artsy clocked more than a dozen seven-figure sales at the art fair, including work like George Condo's "Purple Compression" and Kazuo Shiraga's "Kisan," which sold for $4.75 million and $5 million, respectively. One of the fair's most famous sale's came in 2018, when Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen sold Willem de Kooning's "Untitled XII, 1975" for $35 million to a private collector.
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April: The Masters Tournament
Forget Easter. The first signs of spring mean one thing for billionaires: golf.
Each year, the Masters Tournament kicks off the run of major professional golf championships at Augusta National. The famously exclusive club in Georgia — it didn't allow women to join until 2012 — counts a number of billionaires among its members.
Pals Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, as well as Warren Stephens, David Ziff, and Stanley Druckenmiller belong to the club, Bloomberg reported in 2015.
Good luck getting your own members' only green jacket. The secretive club hasn't ever spelled out its membership process, but according to Golf Monthly, it's invite-only and new members can only join when existing ones leave.
You can, though, spectate alongside some of the biggest names in business. Tickets for the Masters are available through a lottery system — or for as much as $10,000 on the secondary market.
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May: The Cannes Film Festival
Summer starts early for billionaires, who dock their yachts for the Cannes Film Festival at the end of May. While the event is technically reserved for industry professionals, per its website, the super-rich can, of course, pay to play. For them, the fete is as much an opportunity to get a first look at Oscar winners as it is an opportunity to mingle with stars on the Croisette.
It was one of the first stops on Jeff Bezos' 2023 grand debut tour of his $500 million superyacht Koru, which he disembarked to hit up the Vanity Fair party at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, a favorite venue of the very wealthy and those who court them. Other guests included A-listers Robert de Niro, Naomi Campbell, and Pedro Almodovar. In years past, the likes of David Geffen and Len Blavatnik have turned up at the same event.
Billionaires like François-Henri Pinault and the late Paul Allen have hosted their own parties at the film festival: The former throws the Kering Women in Motion Dinner each year, while the latter was known for his themed yacht parties.
Notably missing from the French Riviera this year? The yachts of Russian Oligarchs.
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June: The Royal Ascot
While a number of billionaires spend June in the Hamptons or crisscrossing the Mediterranean, some prefer to spend it on dryer land. The headline billionaires at the Royal Ascot — an annual horse race held about 25 miles outside London — are, unsurprisingly, the members of the British royal family.
But many other members of the three comma club, and their hats, are in attendance. The rich crowd is different from the one at a typical F1 Grand Prix, and some billionaire horse owners — like Chanel's Alain and Gerard Wertheimer; the shipping scions of the Niarchos family; Tetra Pak heiress Kirsten Rausing; and construction magnate Anthony Bamford — have even had skin in the game.
For over 200 years, the Royal Ascot has been open to the public — about 300,000 people attend the five-day event — but don't expect to get anywhere near the rich and famous. Joining the Royal Enclosure requires a special application process, including having two sponsors. Plus, there's a strict dress code —no spaghetti straps or bow ties allowed — and kids under 10 years old are not allowed.
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July: Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference
Every July, private jets descend on the small town of Hailey, Idaho, for the summer counterpart to Davos: the — also known as billionaire summer camp.
Since 1983, boutique investment bank Allen & Co — its president, Herbert Allen, is a billionaire himself — has hosted the event, which attracts the biggest and richest names in business, including Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and Rupert Murdoch.
The conference has become known for the deals struck in between rounds of golf, guided hikes, whitewater rafting, and tennis matches. It's where Jeff Bezos snagged The Washington Post for $250 million in 2013 and where the seed for Disney's $19 billion acquisition of ABC were planted in 1995.
The vacation-cum-business-meeting is invite-only and pretty much restricted to masters of the universe dressed in vests and quarter-zips — as well as their entourages. Security is strict, with even the press walled off from most of the wheeling and dealing.
But when the conference is not in session, you, too, can stay at the Sun Valley Lodge, the homebase of the retreat that offers a year-round ice skating rink, luxe spa, and pool with a view of the mountains. The most basic rooms cost upwards of $500 a night over the summer, and suites go for upwards of $1,500. But don't feel too bad for the billionaires, Allen & Co foots the bill.
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August: Burning Man
On its face, Burning Man — the anticapitalist art and music festival in the Nevada desert — doesn't really seem like an event for billionaires. But the richest people in the world don't seem to care about whether or not they're wanted.
Since the 1990s, attending Burning Man has become a sort of status symbol of the tech elite. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are longtime Burners — the festival inspired the very first Google Doodle — as is Eric Schmidt, who they chose to be Google's CEO.
Facebook cofounders Dustin Moskowitz and Mark Zuckerberg, and Uber cofounder Garrett Camp have also attended. Even Ray Dalio, the billionaire hedge fund manager, wanted to see what all the hype was about, sporting some psychedelic bell bottoms and joining the party in 2019.
The experiences of many celebrities and billionaires on the Playa lean less into the "decommodification" and "leave no trace" principles of the festival and more into the "immediacy" one — as in instant gratification. They take charter planes into Black Rock City's pop-up airport,a temporary runway constructed for the occasion; travel around in tricked-out art cars (basically fancy golf carts); and forego rustic tents for more fancy camps, complete with furniture, air-conditioning, and personal chefs who charge six-figures for their services.
All of this may be why there was a hefty dose of schadenfreude when Burning Man went underwater, quite literally.
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September: The Monaco Yacht Show
There are yachts, and then there are the superyachts — and those are aplenty at the Monaco Yacht Show in Monte Carlo, where billionaires gather at the end of the summer to scope out their new toys. (There are also, technically, megayachts, but for plebeian purposes, they are one and the same.)
The 100-plus boats on display have an average length of 165 feet, and feature elevators, bars, spas, pools, gyms, hot tubs, and helipads — sometimes more than one. Jet skis and submersibles are popular add-ons.
In the past, yachts owned by billionaires like Paul Allen, Steve Wynn, and Pier Luigi Loro Piana have been exhibited at the show — with some available for sale or to charter. The event also used to be a favorite of opulent Russian oligarchs, though sanctions have prevented them from attending for the past couple of years.
If you're looking to peruse boats that you can't afford— or maybe meet a billionaire who will invite you on theirs — you're in luck: The Monaco Yacht Show is open to the public for the small price of 600 Euros, or $640, a day.
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October: The Frieze Art Fair
The Frieze Art Fair, held annually in London, draws the rich —and the staff of the rich — from around the world looking to add very expensive contemporary art to their collections. (For those who prefer pre 21st century art, there's the nearby Frieze Masters.)
In years past, collectors like Point72's Steve Cohen, Diamond titan Laurence Graff, and the wife of hedge fund legend Louis Bacon, Gabrielle, have all been spotted. While exactly which works these patrons have bought tend to be kept under wraps, pieces go for millions of dollars each year.
While anyone can buy tickets to the fair itself — this year for as low as £46, or $57 — the fetes surrounding Frieze Week are a more surefire place to spot a billionaire — or their younger, edgier heirs. A look at party snaps from the last few years show Gordon Getty's granddaughter Ivy Getty, Cohen's daughter Sophia, and Roger Penske's granddaughter Sophia mingling with art-world celebrities, and possibly looking for some six-figure works of art to add to their starter collections.
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November: Le Bal des Débutantes
Le Bal des Débutantes continues the centuries-long tradition of rich, famous women reminding society that they are, well, rich and famous.
The ball is invite-only, and no one, not even billionaires, can buy their way in — at least that's what Ophélie Renouard, the founder of the ball's current iteration, told Insider. Renouard handpicks the cohort of about 20 women each year, who go to Paris for a weekend of photoshoots, makeup and hair appointments, and traditional waltzes.
Past debutantes have included royalty like Princess Hélène of Orléans and Princess Aksh*ta Bhanj Deo; children of Hollywood elite like Forest Whitaker's daughters Autumn and True, and Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillipe's daughter Ava; and, of course, the heiresses of billion dollar fortunes like Araminta Mellon, Kayla Rockefeller, Laila Blavatnik, and Amanda Hearst, usually with their very wealthy and very powerful parents in tow.
As is often the case for the rich — and rich nepo babies, in particular — things come free: The weekend's dance lessons, couture gowns, glam squads, and jewels are paid for by sponsors.
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December: New Year in St. Barts
Billionaires ring in the New Year seemingly anywhere but at home. And while Aspen and Maldives are popular choices for the wintering elite, there is perhaps nowhere with more billionaires-per-square foot during the holidays than St. Barts.
In years past, the Caribbean island, formally Saint-Barthélemy, has attracted yachts owned by the likes of David Geffen, Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg, and Bernard Arnault for year-end festivities.
Unfortunately for the poor rich, one of the most infamous St. Barts New Year's parties will be canceled this year. Roman Abramovich — the former Chelsea FC owner, sanctioned Russian billionaire, and unlikely hero of St. Barts — will not be hosting his multi-million dollar extravaganza, which has featured performances from Prince and Beyoncé; millions worth of food and alcohol; and guests like Orlando Bloom and Rupert Murdoch.
Guess they'll have to buy tickets to Nikki Beach's party like the rest of us.
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