Can Luxury be found in Virginia Beach?, Lorre White

Can Luxury be found in Virginia Beach?

It had been a long time since life had called me back to the shores of Virginia with its wide soft sandy beaches and it’s shallow gentile shores great for wave jumping. Virginia is a beautiful state and it’s coastal region is magnificent.

Each destination must be judged individually for its unique personality. Often business, family, or events cause us to travel to destinations for other reasons than a luxury quest. Mine did, so here is some notes about what you can expect should you find yourself at Virginia Beach.

It is not like the beaches in the Hamptons where they don’t have any chain hotel and discourage outside tourists, but instead thrive off a super wealthy local NYC population that own second homes (or at least rent). This keeps the Hamptons “charming“, safer and much more picturesque. The Hamptons has thick white fluffy sand and beautifully beaches lines with only multimillion dollar homes and has a very strict code for building. On the shore line of Virginia Beach, the long stretch of hotels that line the shore (on the aptly named Atlantic Ave), are mostly budget hotels like Econo Lodge, Holiday Inn,

Best Western, Travel Lodge etc. Most of them appeared to be well maintained, but certainly are not beautiful to look at. The beaches were very clean and well manicured. The beach area is kid friendly (including four legged ones). There are no real 5 start hotels, but there are a few 4 stars and they are brands like Hilton that have slid from luxury to premium (best of the mass market) status. The typical mass market “beachy” budget bikini shops, the mandatory miniature golf, bike rentals, ice cream parlors, fast food chains, salt water taffy confectioners, etc., are lined up on Atlantic Ave across from the hotels, or on Pacific Ave that runs parallel to Atlantic Ave. The majority of the hotels and tourist dining places all seem to be owned by the same conglomerate, so be careful when using the concierge to make recommendations as they just refer other businesses owned by the same developers. We were much happier when we went outside the touristy restaurants.

The best meals we had there was at a restaurant call The Coastal Grill, and the most over rated and could not live up to the hype was Catch 31 in the Hilton. (See individual reviews I did on each one). For the most part we were underwhelmed by the food at all the price points, with the exception of The Coastal Grill.

Years back, Virginia Beach had declined and was predominantly blue collar area with a high crime rate. They have done a great deal to raise the cities profile. The 3 1/2 mile board walk with separate bike path, is nicely landscaped and well lit. The area has been well designed with frequent accesses to the beach, so there is not bottle necks where the beach gets crowded. There is a lot of US military based in that general area and there is a constant stream of fighter pilots taking off day and night. We could not hear the jets in the hotel or restaurants, and they served almost as an airshow to the sunbathers. So in short we did not find them a draw back in any way.

The natural beauty is well worth the trip.

It is only about an hour from the historical Williamsburg and Jamestown area if you wanted to make it an educational voyage. The beaches are very well maintained, everything was clean. It is a very laid back, low key, casual destination, but defiantly more targeted for the mass market instead of the luxury market.

Can Luxury be found in Virginia Beach? The short answer is no, but you can find solid upper middle class / lower upper class options. As long as you manage your expectations you can have a very enjoyable time with the best that this location has to offer….we did!

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Lorre White – WOMAN of ACTION™, has been a international luxury marketing expert for 2 decades and is the founder of White Light Consulting an international luxury marketing consulting firm working with luxury brands to reach the worlds wealthiest 1%. She is the founder of a luxury blog with an exclusive UHNW followingwww.LuxGuru.Typepad.com and the only internationally recognized luxury media personality “The Luxury Guru”. Lorre frequently contributes to luxury magazines globally, including having had her own monthly column in Portugal’s #1 rate luxury magazine. For more information just Google her.