Where the World’s Richest People Spend the Holidays

• Many people spend the holiday season at home with friends or family.
• The world’s richest people, meanwhile, jet off to ski towns, second homes, and destination resorts.
• Here’s a look at some of the most popular destinations for the ultrawealthy around the holidays.

There may be no place like a second home for the holidays — or a luxury chalet in Gstaad, a yacht off St. Barth’s, or a $3,000-per-night hotel in the Caribbean.

Some of the world’s richest people do choose to spend the actual day of Christmas at home, multiple wealth experts told Business Insider, but often not their primary residence.

Whether it’s a ranch in Wyoming or a beach mansion in Martha’s Vineyard, they try to go to their biggest gathering space, Nicole Pollard Bayme, the founder of luxury styling and shopping firm Lalaluxe, told BI.

“A lot of people build big houses in Aspen for that exact reason — so the whole family can go and spend that time together,” she said. “Every gift under the sun flown in, already under the tree before they get there.”

The Colorado ski resort has the highest density of those worth $30 million or more in the US, according to Wealth-X, with one for every 67 residents, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell have been spotted there.

Other popular ski resorts in the US include Tahoe and Vail, says Winston Chesterfield, the founder of Barton, a consulting firm focused on luxury and the wealthy.

In Europe, Gstaad and Verbier in Switzerland; Kitzbühel in Austria, famous for its annual alpine skiing race; and Courchevel 1850 in the French Alps, reign supreme. The latter has been known to host VIPs like David and Victoria Beckham, Elton John, and Prince William and Kate Middleton.

“They like to go into places that have an established town with established places to go that are high-end,” Chesterfield said of the ultrawealthy. Kitzbühel has a branch of the Japanese restaurant Zuma, for example, and Courcheval has an outpost of the luxury hotel Cheval Blanc.

For those who prefer the warmth — or want to tack a beach week on to defrost after the slopes — the Caribbean remains a popular destination, whether by land or sea.

St. Barth’s, a particularly popular destination for New Year’s Eve, has played host to Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sanchez, and yachts belonging to billionaires David Geffen, Barry Diller and his wife Diane Von Furstenberg, Sergey Brin, and Bernard Arnault have all been spotted off its coast.

Others choose a specific resort and flock to it year after year.

“They want to not do anything,” Chesterfield said. “They want to be waited on; they want to be looked after.”

Jumby Bay, a resort in Antigua where Oprah Winfrey and Richard Branson reportedly have homes, is a popular one. Rooms there start at $2,700 a night, though billionaires likely splurge on the $13,300-per-night villa. The Aman in the Dominican Republic, which has rooms costing $2,900 to $4,200 per night, is another popular option.

On the other side of the warm-weather equation is Africa, a popular destination for both couples and families, Elisabeth Brown, a New York-based client manager at travel and lifestyle concierge company Knightsbridge, told BI.

The wealthy rent private villas in conservancies, like Ol Jogi in Kenya or Saanane Island in Tanzania, which can run up to $40,000 a night.

If that’s not far enough, there’s always space. As Pollard Bayme said, going into orbit is “the ultimate flex for the billionaire class.”