Handled in Confidence: What the market now asks of a Luxury DMC in Italy

For anyone choosing a luxury DMC in Italy, the most useful definition of tailor-made comes from tailoring itself, where the words still mean something exact. The Savile Row Bespoke Association asks its members to cut every garment from an individual paper pattern, and a two-piece suit typically takes at least fifty hours of hand work. Made-to-measure is a different product: an existing pattern, adjusted to fit.

Travel borrowed both words and has used them as if they meant the same thing. Much of what is sold as tailor-made is made-to-measure: a standard week in Tuscany with the hotel changed and the cooking class moved to Thursday. For years that was enough. The figures published over the past year suggest that, at the top of the Italian market, it no longer is.

This article is written for travel advisors and tour operators who send clients to Italy. It sets out what those clients now expect, according to the data, and what you should be able to expect in turn from the company that looks after them on the ground. We are that company, so we will be specific about what we do, and about what we will not do.

Where the value in Italian luxury travel sits

Virtuoso's 2027 Luxe Report, published in October 2026 and drawn from more than 3,100 advisors at Virtuoso agencies in over fifty countries, ranks Italy second among global destinations. Japan takes first place for the first time, replacing Italy, which held it in previous editions. Second place is not a crisis, but it is a signal: the clients who choose Italy now have a credible alternative, and the difference will be made by how the trip is built rather than by where it goes.

The domestic figures show what happens once that demand arrives. Foreign travelers spent €56.7 billion in Italy in 2025, 4.6 percent more than in 2024, and the Bank of Italy attributes almost two thirds of that growth to visitors who came for the Jubilee. Without the Jubilee, the increase would have been modest. The change worth watching is not how much is spent, but where.

Italy's five-star hotels recorded 14.9 million nights in 2025, 5.7 percent more than the year before, and 77.7 percent of those nights were spent by foreign guests, according to figures published on Italia.it, the national tourism portal. Across all Italian accommodation, the foreign share is 55.3 percent, Istat reports. And Thrends, the hospitality consultancy, estimates that five-star hotels earned more than €8.3 billion in 2025, about 21 percent of Italian hotel revenue, from about 5 percent of the rooms.

Read together, these figures describe a segment where a small share of capacity produces a large share of the value, and where more than three nights in four go to guests from abroad. It is also where a template does the most damage, because these clients have usually seen it before.

What these clients are buying

The wider luxury market points the same way. Bain & Company's annual luxury study, produced with Altagamma, puts global luxury spending at €1.44 trillion in 2025. Luxury experiences grew by about 3 percent while luxury products fell by about 1 percent, and since 2023 experiences have been the only segment adding to the market's growth. Luxury hospitality alone reached €251 billion. About 20 million consumers left the luxury market during the year. Fewer clients, choosing experiences over possessions: that is the market an advisor now sells into.

Virtuoso's advisors describe the same clients from the inside. In the 2027 report, privacy and hyper-personalized experiences both rank among the top five ultraluxe travel experiences, after all-inclusive trips and celebration travel, and 47 percent of advisors say ultraluxe travel is on the rise. Celebrating a milestone is the leading reason to travel for the third year running: the kind of trip that cannot be lifted from a catalogue. Advisors also describe clients moving away from off-the-shelf experiences toward ones shaped around their exact preferences, and toward longer itineraries across several cities. Every added base multiplies the handoffs, and the handoffs are where a template breaks.

How these trips are put together shows up in a Phocuswright study published in April 2026, which looked at U.S. travelers who had taken a leisure trip costing $1,500 or more per person per day, flights excluded, in the previous twelve months. On their last trip at that level, 43 percent chose a customizable package and only 13 percent a fully prepackaged one. Among respondents with a net worth of $1 million or more, 61 percent said they avoid mentioning what their trips cost. Phocuswright's own summary is that these travelers resist trading privacy for personalization, and that travel advisors matter more as wealth rises.

Why tailoring and discretion cannot be sold separately

That tension between personalization and privacy is the one we would ask every advisor to keep in mind. To cut a trip to measure, someone has to take the measurements: who is traveling and with whom, what the occasion is, how the group likes to spend a morning, what the budget is, what must not happen. The more personal the trip, the more the people building it know about your client.

This is why we treat tailor-made and discretion as one discipline rather than two selling points. Our homepage puts it in a line: "Where luxury is not ostentation. It is exclusivity, attention to detail, total privacy." In practice, what we learn about a guest is used to plan their trip and for nothing else. Each supplier is told what it needs to know to do its part, and no more. We have written about the guest's side of this, and about what a client is actually paying for when nothing has to be asked.

Discretion also runs in a second direction, toward you. When a client reaches us through an advisor or a tour operator, the itinerary is still drafted from a blank page, and it is delivered ready to present under your brand and your commercial terms, which we agree with each agency case by case. You know your client better than we do, and the answers to our first questions often arrive with your first email. The client relationship stays where it started: with you.

What working with us looks like

For an advisor, tailor-made is less a promise than a sequence of steps that either happen or do not. Ours are these.

• Questions before a quote. Where, when and for how long; the budget; the occasion; who is traveling; whether they want a grand hotel, a Relais & Châteaux address or an agriturismo; what they want to do with their days. A proposal written before these answers is a template with a new cover.
• A blank page for every client. Two requests for a week in Tuscany can come back with different hotels, a different pace and different days, because they come from different people.
• A proposal that names what it includes. Not "food and wine experiences", but dinner at that producer's estate, on that date, for that number of guests.
• Relationships built over more than eighteen years, from the Alps to Sicily and Sardinia. A winery that opens for a private dinner, a guide who knows the hour a museum empties, a driver who knows which road to avoid on market day.
• One dedicated contact for your client, around the clock, for as long as the trip is running.
• Your brand, your terms. The itinerary arrives ready for you to present as your own.

What we will not do

We accept a limited number of requests each year, for reasons we have explained. In the weeks everyone wants, some requests receive a no, and we would rather give it on the first day than in the sixth week, after your client has heard yes.

We do not confirm what has not been confirmed to us. A private opening, a dinner in a cellar, an evening in a palazzo that is still a family home: each depends on a person agreeing, and sometimes the answer is no, whatever the budget. For May, June or September, four to six months gives us room to secure what makes the difference. Shorter notice is often still workable; it narrows what we can promise before your client lands.

Common questions

What does a luxury DMC in Italy do for a travel advisor?

It designs the itinerary around the advisor's client, secures the suppliers and the access, and runs the trip on the ground, with one point of contact while it is under way. At Italy First Class, the itinerary is delivered under the advisor's brand and commercial terms.

Can the itinerary be presented under our own agency's brand?

Yes. It reaches you ready to present as your own, and commercial terms are agreed with each agency case by case.

Do you work with tour operators and corporate clients as well as advisors?

Yes. The method is the same for an advisor booking one family, a tour operator with a client who needs Italy built to measure, a personal assistant planning on behalf of a principal, or a company organizing a reward trip for its team.

Which parts of Italy do you cover?

The whole country, from the Alps to Sicily and Sardinia, islands included. The itineraries on our Get Inspired page are examples of the detail we work at, not a catalogue to choose from.

Working together

Tailor-made and discretion are the two things the rest of our work depends on. On the evidence above, they are also what your clients will judge their next trip to Italy by.

If you design trips to Italy for clients who notice the difference between made-to-measure and bespoke, we would like to hear from you. Write to us at info@italyfirstclass.it or through our contact form, with a few lines about your agency and the clients you send to Italy, and we will arrange a call to explore how we might work together.