83% of ultra-high-net-worth individuals plan to increase travel and hospitality spending. 35% plan to increase real estate investment. Why the shift toward experience over assets makes Greece the most timely acquisition in the Mediterranean.
The composition of ultra-high-net-worth spending has shifted meaningfully. The headline numbers from the most recent data point to something that anyone considering property in the Mediterranean should understand well.
LUUX Media's 2025 Ultra Affluent Report asked 145 verified UHNWIs — including 46 billionaires — which luxury categories they planned to increase spending on over the next twelve months. Travel and hospitality came first at 83%. Wellness and spa retreats followed at 49%. Real estate investments ranked at 35%, ahead of automotive (32%) but alongside fashion (45%) and home design (41%).
The pattern is instructive. The categories commanding the greatest share of new spending are experiential — things that are lived rather than owned. The traditional markers of wealth accumulation (watches at 42%, yachts at 21%) rank lower, not because they have fallen from favour, but because this cohort's attention has rotated toward personal enrichment and quality of life.
"83% of UHNWIs plan to increase travel and hospitality spending in 2025. The shift is clear: from accumulation to experience, from assets to life quality."
For buyers considering Greece, this spending hierarchy is not incidental. It maps almost precisely onto what the Greek islands offer. A private villa on Corfu or Paxos is not simply a real estate asset — it is a base for exactly the categories of expenditure that matter most to this cohort right now: exceptional travel, private leisure, proximity to sea and landscape, and the kind of unhurried pace that constitutes genuine luxury in 2025.
Buyers who acquire in Greece are not retreating from the experiential economy — they are embedding themselves in it permanently. The property becomes the enabling infrastructure for the life. That is a fundamentally different frame from treating it as a portfolio line item, and it is reflected in how the most considered buyers approach their search.
83% plan to increase spending on travel and hospitality
49% plan to increase spending on wellness and spa retreats
45% plan to increase spending on fashion and apparel
42% plan to increase spending on watches and jewellery
41% plan to increase spending on home design and interiors
35% plan to increase spending on real estate investments
32% plan to increase spending on automotive
28% plan to increase spending on aviation
21% plan to increase spending on yachting
The shift also has implications for how property at this level should be understood. A villa described purely in terms of square metres, rental yield potential and capital appreciation is speaking a language that is increasingly secondary to this audience. The more resonant conversation is about what the property makes possible: the summers, the family gatherings, the ability to arrive at short notice and find everything exactly as it should be.
This is not sentiment in place of substance. The financial case for Greek property — particularly in the Ionian islands — remains compelling on its own terms: consistent capital appreciation (Bank of Greece data shows prime property values rose significantly in both 2024 and 2025), constrained supply in the locations that matter, and a Golden Visa programme offering structured residency benefits from €250,000. But the buyers most likely to act are those for whom the numbers confirm a decision already made on grounds of life quality, not those waiting for the numbers alone to compel them.
35% of UHNWIs planning to increase real estate investment in 2025 represents a significant pool of motivated capital. In the context of Greece specifically, this sits alongside renewed international interest in the Ionian and Aegean, a reshaped Golden Visa programme, and a supply of genuinely exceptional properties that remains tightly controlled in the locations that matter most.
The buyers moving in this market are not speculating. They are establishing something. The spending data confirms that the frame is lifestyle first — and for Greece, that is precisely where the strongest case begins.