Annecy, France: The Difference Between Real and Performative Luxury
There are places and experiences that impress you immediately. And there are places that stay with you long after you’ve left.
During a recent visit to Annecy, France, I found myself unexpectedly emotional as I was leaving. Annecy is unquestionably beautiful. The lake, the mountains, the old town, the famous church on the hill said to have inspired Disney. It looks almost impossibly picturesque. At times, it genuinely feels like stepping into a fantasy.
But what moved me most was not the fantasy of it. It was how real it felt.
For all its beauty and tourism, Annecy still felt like a real place where real life was happening. The town clearly belonged to the people who lived there, not to the tourists visiting. Locals slowly walked the shaded promenade, families strolled with babies at sunset, and miles of bike trails were inviting. People sat for long lunches without appearing rushed. You could feel the rhythm of ordinary life continuing uninterrupted despite visitors like me arriving to admire it all.
You got the distinct feeling that you were visiting their town, not a manufactured experience built for tourists. And increasingly, I believe that distinction matters deeply in luxury.
True Luxury Is Not Manufactured
Many luxury brands, hotels, and destinations today are becoming extraordinarily skilled at “performance”.
Everything photographs beautifully. Every corner feels intentionally “Instagrammable.” Experiences are perfectly designed to create moments that can be captured, shared, and admired. Hospitality teams are trained to perfection. Design firms create increasingly stunning spaces. Marketing language has become emotionally elevated and polished.
And yet, despite all of that, many experiences feel strangely hollow. Not because they are poorly executed, but because they feel overly conscious of being luxury. It’s not luxury just because it's created under some pretense of what luxury is supposed to be. It’s not luxury because you claim it to be so.
You begin to feel the choreography instead of the care. The strategy instead of the sincerity. The performance instead of the presence.
One of the reasons Annecy affected me so deeply is that nothing about it felt manufactured, even though it is almost absurdly picture-perfect. It simply is what it is. The aged buildings, the alpine culture, and their Savoyard cuisine remain as points of pride. Even though it would have been easy to abandon those roots in favor of something more fashionable or typically touristy, they kept it real.
Honestly, some of the alpine knick-knacks could almost feel hokey at times. There’s even a heart motif that you’ll see everywhere. It’s obvious it means something to the town, perhaps a nod to the Pont des Amours or the romance of the town, but it’s not overused as a symbol. And yes, I bought a heart-shaped Christmas ornament. Or two. Instead of feeling commercialized, the alpine pride somehow made the place feel more trustworthy. It felt rooted rather than polished.
That is becoming increasingly rare in luxury.
Too many luxury experiences today feel as though they were created primarily to be admired or posted on Instagram rather than genuinely lived. And affluent buyers are beginning to feel the difference, even if they cannot always articulate it.
The Details That Actually Matter
I stayed at the Impérial Palace Annecy. It was not the fanciest hotel I’ve ever stayed at, or the most luxurious. Yet the attention to detail was among the best I’ve encountered anywhere. Not because the details screamed luxury, but because they felt intentional and thoughtful.
There was a beautifully designed coffee maker that actually made a good cup of coffee. A small trash can placed exactly where you needed it after opening sugar packets, something astonishingly overlooked in many supposedly high-end hotels. In the afternoon, banana bread quietly appeared. In the evening, delicious amaretto cookies. The dining staff quietly placed a particularly stylish bag stool near the table when needed. Even the wall behind the bathroom toilet seat had a soft protective bumper to prevent noise. The hallways had a subtle fragrance that never crossed into invasive.
None of these details felt performative. They spoke of intention and thoughtfulness. I speak at many hospitality events and often challenge management by asking them, “When is the last time you stayed in one of your own rooms?” These are the details that matter. They communicated care instead of calculation. A hat tip to Impérial Palace!
I recently stayed at a five-star resort that failed at nearly every one of these details while offering far more typical luxury cues. The design was impressive. The visuals were attractive. But the experience itself felt strangely disconnected from actual human behavior and comfort. Everything looked luxurious, yet very little felt naturally accommodating.
Everything worked, but almost nothing felt thoughtful.
That distinction matters enormously because thoughtful luxury creates emotional ease. You stop noticing the mechanics of the experience because the environment feels actually aligned with human behavior.
The irony is that the most meaningful luxury details are often nearly invisible. They are not the details people post online. They are the details people feel.
Luxury Risks Becoming Emotionally Generic
I believe one of the greatest risks facing luxury today is not declining quality. It’s sameness.
As brands, hotels, restaurants, and destinations compete for attention, many are slowly drifting toward the same look of luxury and the same emotional experience. The same muted palettes. The same perfectly styled lobbies. The same carefully curated “wow” moments. The same Instagrammable vignettes. The same promises of exclusivity, transformation, and personalization.
Luxury, in many cases, is becoming emotionally interchangeable. And buyers are getting bored. And ironically, the harder some brands try to appear luxurious, the less emotionally believable they become.
This is especially important for emerging luxury destinations trying to establish themselves globally. There is enormous pressure to compete visually with legacy luxury markets and iconic destinations. The temptation is to manufacture perfection, polish every edge, and create environments designed entirely for admiration. But the danger is creating places people photograph more than they feel.
Annecy reminded me that the destinations and brands that stay with us emotionally are often the ones that remain connected to themselves. They preserve their identity, humanity, and a sense of lived reality. Not staged authenticity. Not curated reality. Not manufactured local charm designed by committee. Real identity.
The future of luxury may depend on this more than many realize, because affluent buyers themselves are changing. Increasingly, people are looking for emotional resonance, not just visual excellence. They want experiences that feel grounded and emotionally connected. They want places that leave them feeling something more meaningful than just admiration.
In the end…
As I left Annecy, I realized why the experience affected me so deeply.
It was not because it was the most glamorous destination I have ever visited. Nor the most extravagant. Not even necessarily the most beautiful (but close). What stayed with me was how human it felt.
The town had rhythm. The hospitality had restraint. The details felt carefully considered instead of performative. The experience simply felt lived in, rooted, and emotionally moving.
In many ways, Annecy reinforced to me that the future of luxury depends less on impressing people and more on understanding them.
Luxury has always been good at impressing. The next evolution is realness and a sense of belonging. Because ultimately, people rarely remember luxury experiences only for how they looked. They remember how they felt while they were there. And perhaps even more importantly, they remember how they felt after they left.
At a time when luxury is increasingly shaped by performance, there is nothing more luxurious than something that feels genuinely real.
Jeffrey Shaw is a keynote speaker, luxury brand advisor, and author of Sell to the Rich, LINGO, and The Self-Employed Life. His perspective on luxury buyer behavior comes from more than 40 years serving affluent families as a portrait photographer. As he says, “I don’t just know this market, I was in their closets.”
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