The Conscience Was Comped: Confessions from the Travel Junket Jungle
Blame It on the Prickly Pear Rakomelo From an Unspecified Greek Island
It was the kind of week where I’d wake up screaming, then realize I hadn’t even fallen asleep yet. But all my existential dread dissolved the minute I secured a travel column. Sure, the only insider tradecraft I actually knew was that some luxury PR agency had rebranded an overpriced yurt as an “eco-sanctuary,” but the minute my assignment was announced, the world of travel writing turned delightfully obsequious.
PR girls volunteered to be my surrogate mothers. Surrogate mothers volunteered to pitch me press trips to Dubai. Brian Kelly—the Elsa Maxwell of the credit-card-points hustle—had once given me bullfrog eyes when he found me in the swishest of Heathrow’s lounges without having to beg for, um, entry as some say he does, but now he was suddenly begging to co-host my launch party.
Everyone was being so sycophantic, with only Pico Iyer cautioning, “That’s a difficult column to do with a conscience. Good luck.” We all know what “good luck” means in media circles.
Breathlessly, I ran home and scurried through my carry-on luggage in search of a conscience—any conscience. All that turned up was a 120% Lino linen shirt I’d stolen from a press trip in Lake Como, so I wore it to lunch with venerable Rick Steves at the Hotel Costes, still the best place in town to watch people pretend they enjoy $40 sparkling water.
Steves, onetime authority on budget rail passes, now spent the afternoon explaining how he pitches sponsored luggage lines to retirees.
We were seated next to Muriel Zagha, wearing an absurdly oversized vintage bomber jacket as she aggressively negotiated a gifted press stay with a luxury boutique group.
“Pardon my derrière,” she cackled, pivoting to show her best side to a passing photographer.
In barreled Paul Theroux himself, introducing absolute nobodies to “my good friend Muriel.” You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Samantha Brown shake hands with Muriel Zagha while both pretend to care about local culture.
I knew what they were doing because I was doing it too. The only difference was that I still called mine “access.”
Same 120% Lino linen shirt, same jet-lagged face (deeper creases) at the launch dinner for Nomad Ness, the only digital nomad currently pitching an e-book on passive income while living off a trust fund.
Damon Dominique, the only former YouTube star who still insists on filming himself eating croissants in slow motion, said, “You look bloated! It’s the elevation. I look bloated. Tell me it’s aesthetic. My next vlog is about global wanderlust. God, I’m making it sound like a digestion issue.”
The buffet, inevitable, was a lukewarm spread of “farm-to-table” foam.
“I love microgreens,” I said. “They make me feel so authentic.”
It was a vacuous Instagram caption from 2019, but no one seemed to notice. Then I looked down and spotted a huge glob of truffled emulsion on my lap.
“Don’t say we don’t curate your experience,” whispered a PR coordinator, stuffing branded tote bags and artisanal bath salts into my tote.
I wanted to object, but I was already wondering whether the tote came in black. (Spoiler alert: if it came from the House of NYNN, it does!)
Bristling with useless freebies and aching with psychosomatically induced jet lag, I landed at the opening party for the new Fouquet’s Hotel in Mykonos.
On a bad night, a Greek luxury resort lives down to its reality: an overpriced playground built on cheap plaster. But on a good night, it can make you believe in the magic of a comped infinity pool again.
This was a bad night, but every hack with a press pass had heard the only two words that matter in travel journalism:
“Free stay.”
So they went.
All of them.
Taylor Lorenz and Derek Blasberg were charming hosts amid a sea of half-naked fitness influencers and tech bros with veneers. And those were just the people paying out of pocket.
On meeting bucket-list enthusiast Christian LeBlanc, I didn’t dare mention the scathing things Bill Bryson had written about travel vloggers, or the condescending remarks Tim Ferriss had made about location-independent lifestyle gurus. I only asked why he was recording himself doing an unboxing video of a complimentary bathrobe in the lobby.
Did he have no self-respect?
“Yeah,” LeBlanc leered, unconvincingly. “It’s called media conversion rate.”
“Great answer,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Then I gave him a phony air-kiss and fled; the hotel’s dismal DJ was about to drop a deep-house remix of a viral TikTok song, and the complimentary bar was closing in five minutes.
I made it just in time.
And so were those recurring nightmares.
“Even my sponsored luggage tag has a hangover,” I said the next morning to no one in particular.
It was a line I lifted from a poorly written travel memoir.
But I didn’t feel like a globe-trotting jet-setter. I felt like an unpaid billboard for a hospitality group.
Fortunately, my continuing search for a conscience has already turned up a few more free nights. I blame it on the Prickly Pear Rakomelo from an unspecified (?) Greek island.
Anthony Grand (who previously filed for The New York Times as Anthony Grant) is a travel columnist currently accepting comped stays at all soulless global luxeholes, provided they have not been recently frequented by Justin Bieber, any of his fans, Condé Nast pop tarts, or the French.
