Editor’s Letter: Our Travel Issue, Launching The Vault… and Saying Goodbye

While it might be true that many industries hit a go-slow in the month of August—a good chunk of Europe simply turns off the lights and decamps to the beach for four weeks—that’s certainly not the case at Robb Report. There’s a lot going on with this, our annual travel issue, full of adventure, exploration, and some pretty hard-core decadence, too. But before you dive into that, two bits of news to announce. 

I’m delighted to feature The Vault in these pages for the first time. The Vault is Robb Report’s exclusive new e-commerce platform, the rarest shopping destination in the world. We’ve worked with top brands in the luxury sector to create gifts, products, and experiences you simply won’t find anywhere else, no matter how good your Google-search game is. They’re available for a limited period—and being one-offs, once they’re gone, they’re gone. 

For instance? Well, you can sample the very best of LVMH hospitality with a never-done-before Champagne and shopping adventure. From private tastings at Dom Pérignon, Krug, Ruinart, and Veuve Clicquot to stays in private properties owned by Moët Hennessy to unique experiences in Paris with some of the biggest names in fashion… this is a real blockbuster. And you even get around 60 rare vintages of Champagne and spirits to take back to your cellar. Or you can create your own hypercar with Pininfarina’s chief design officer and then drive it around Italy with the marque’s CEO before it’s delivered to your home anywhere in the world. Alternatively, you might choose surf lessons on a four-day trip to Costa Rica with the head coach of the U.S. Olympic surf team, world champion Shane Dorian. Or throw a private dinner for eight friends at Spago in L.A. with Wolfgang Puck. 

We can even unearth rare vintage finds, too—I’m still smarting from missing out on an ultrarare Cartier martini set from the 1950s that was live on the site for about a minute before it was bought from under my nose (Don’t worry, there’s more cool vintage Cartier coming). Visit robbreport.com/thevault to check out the weekly drops of exclusive new offers. 

The Vault has been a long time coming. It’s an idea I first had about four years ago, and so there’s a pleasing element of completism to its debut on these pages right now, as this issue will be my last as editor in chief. Due to illness in my family, I need to return permanently to the U.K. I moved to New York City from London six years ago with my wife and baby boy to take the reins at Robb Report, having launched the British edition a few years earlier, and being here has been both a pleasure and a privilege. One of my first decisions was to relocate the editorial HQ from L.A. to N.Y.C., which involved hiring an almost entirely new team—editors, writers, digital gurus, and designers at the top of their game who could bring the stories, ideas, and opinions that readers of Robb Report, the global authority on luxury lifestyle, deserve. 

By any measure, they have done a phenomenal job: According to Ipsos, which measures this sort of thing, Robb Report’s brand footprint is up 360 percent over the past five years; its digital footprint has grown 590 percent and its print audience 250 percent. We have won countless awards (I’ve genuinely lost count; I think it’s around 25) for investigative journalism, columns, features, covers, and—my personal favorite—“general excellence.” I can’t thank them enough for their ideas, dedication, ambition, humor, and willingness to go the extra mile, sometimes literally, for the sake of a good story. 

Just as significantly, I’d like to thank you, the readers, for your support. And a special hat tip to those who wrote in or spoke to me at various events over the years. Hearing what Robb Report means to you—the value you place in the community you’ve found here, the pleasure and inspiration you derive from the articles and photo shoots, and particularly the sense some of you recounted of finally being seen in this environment—is something I shall never forget. 

I’m not going entirely, however. I’ll still be overseeing The Vault and getting involved in a few other projects, including maintaining oversight over the UK edition, which is why for now this is just so long, not goodbye. 

Enjoy the issue.