How Touch of Spice curates the holiday you don’t have to lift a finger for

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t go to New Zealand expecting traditional luxury travel. Jacqui Spice, founder and managing director of high-end travel agency and private villa rental company Touch of Spice, has never seen the country as a place to lie on a sun lounger all day, drinking piña colada out of a coconut. She believes it demands a different kind of luxury—one built for what she calls “active relaxers.”

“You go wanting to be outside as much as you want to enjoy the many luxurious lodges, villas, and hotels,” Spice says. “It ought to be explored—to try what’s on hand, to look at the scenery, to photograph it, to sample it.”

That philosophy was shaped long before she founded her company. Spice spent a decade at sea as a chief stewardess, catering to high-profile guests accustomed to the best of the best in stays and experiences around the world. This exposure revealed a gap in New Zealand’s own tourism market: an opportunity to elevate the traditional Kiwi “bach” or holiday home into something more.

Since founding Touch of Spice in 2005, Spice has built that vision into a business, pioneering a collection of private villas, residences, lodges, hotels, superyachts and other unique stays, curated with luxury providers across the Southern Hemisphere. In this conversation with Boulevard, she covers what their guests are looking for, what they’re expecting when they arrive, and how an “always-on” mindset enables Touch of Spice to go above and beyond.

Homestead Bay is a holiday villa set on the absolute lakefront at Jack’s Point. Top: Hawks Nest overlooks Lake Wakatipu, with Cecil Peak and the Remarkables framing the water below.

Boulevard: What is the current state and perception of luxury travel in New Zealand?

Jacqui Spice: It’s luxury done in an understated way, but in a way that will have you in awe and mesmerised for years beyond your visit. You will talk about it, share it, hold it dear to your heart, and tell your friends, your kids, your grandkids. You will sleep in the finest linens, eat some of the world’s best cuisines, and experience the natural wonders of the world. You may liken it to so many other countries you have visited, but you will say, ‘here, it’s all in one country’. You will love it.

Blvd: Queenstown shuts at 5 pm on a Friday. What did you have to build to get around that, and what is the ultimate service level across your portfolio?

Spice: Basically, to get around that, I keep my phone on 24/7—weekends, nights, long weekends, public holidays, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, every single day of the year. We leap into action at Touch of Spice; we don’t hesitate, we don’t wait for the rest of the country to wake up—we wake it up. We are ‘always on’. We go to any lengths to make every request happen.

Blvd: How is ultra-luxury travel changing? 

Spice: We see a lot of family travel and multi-generational travel, and we are seeing more and more of this year on year. 

This year in particular, with what is going on in the wider world, has motivated people to take that ‘bucket list’ trip and explore the countries they have heard so much about before it’s too late. New Zealand is one of them.

The breathtaking view of Lake Wakatipu and snow-capped peaks from Homestead Bay in Queenstown.

At the top end, guests arrive in private jets, often their own, and they travel from region to region in chartered helicopters or in luxury vehicles with drivers who act as hosts and guides. They stay a minimum of five nights in a villa; this gives them so much more space than a hotel room and the ability to unpack, spread out, relax, recharge, work if they need to, or sip on fabulous wines after an epic day out, all the while watching the kids play in the pool or front yard—something a lot of UHNW and HNW clients don’t get to do every day.

Blvd: If you’re seeing a shift away from the beaten path of hotels, however luxurious, towards private residences, what’s driving that? 

Spice: The key driver is that it keeps everyone together in one space—dining privately, unwinding together, catching up over fine dining, or having a simple pizza night. They want to spread out but still all be together in a property that is like their own home. 

Blvd: Where are your clients coming from, how long do they tend to stay, and do they come back?

Spice: They come from all over the world—Europe, Asia, Australia, Canada, and the US, but they travel primarily for New Zealand’s winter months and for the South Island, mainly Queenstown and Wanaka. We have a lot of Australian clients who love to ski. They generally stay for a minimum of seven nights, if not 10. 

The kitchen (left) and outdoor dining (right) at Hawks Nest.

In our summer months, we have a high volume of US clients who travel around New Zealand with their friends and family, and they desire space and home comforts for part of their trip. They have kids who need to run free and aren’t necessarily allowed in some luxury lodges. We also get a lot of golfers, wine and food enthusiasts, and families or groups of friends wanting to celebrate together. 

Blvd: What are the expectations of your top clients, and how have they changed over the last five years? What is being asked for now that did not exist five years ago?

Spice: Their expectation is that the villa is of the standard of luxury hotels available worldwide—such as the Aman chain—or they expect that it will share the qualities of their own home or homes around the world. They expect to have a full complement of beautiful bathroom amenities, a stocked kitchen, daily servicing, a chef, laundry facilities, and wellness options such as spas, saunas, and pools in some regions. 

They expect not to have to lift a finger, and with Touch of Spice, we offer such a wide array of in-house services that they don’t have to. A lot of our top-tier villas and residences come with butlers, breakfast hosts, housemaids, chefs, and more.

Blvd: When an owner offers you their house, what do you inspect? What are you looking for, and how often do you say no?

Spice: Firstly, we inspect the décor, the fit-out, the location, the view, the amenities, the configuration of bedrooms and bathrooms. If we ourselves like it, our clients will like it. It must tick all of our boxes. Some properties can be amazing, but they can be in the wrong place or have the wrong bed-and-bath configuration, which will make it hard for multi-generational families or groups of friends staying in together. We possibly say no more than we say yes. We don’t believe in putting square pegs in round holes, so we won’t put the wrong people in the wrong house, nor will we take on something just because we love it—we have to believe our clients will love it. 

The Palm Residence is a beachfront retreat in Waiheke Island, accommodating up to 22 guests.

Blvd: For a trip at the top of your range, what share is the house rental, and what is usually the next largest line item?

Spice: Usually, it’s the curated experiences we create for them and the private air travel we can arrange for them: inbound jets, private aircraft throughout the country, chartered helicopters. They are the next biggest ticket items. For a truly bespoke experience that will never be found in a brochure or hasn’t been done before, clients often invest upwards of NZ$50,000 in these.

Blvd: When budget stops being a constraint, what do you tell clients is unavailable in New Zealand at any price?

Spice: Large well-known hotel chains are not available in New Zealand, such as the Four Seasons, Aman, Ritz-Carlton, W Hotels, and so forth. Certain types of luxury vehicles may be hard to source, but we usually come up with great alternatives. We have Michelin-starred restaurants in NZ, and we have some of the best chefs who have worked around the world at well-known restaurants such as Noma.

Blvd: The foreign-buyer ban lifted above NZ$5m in March—how many of your guests are auditioning New Zealand rather than holidaying in it?

Spice: We have started to see a solid lift in US guests staying and then asking to see real estate, or asking for real estate connections while we are planning their upcoming trip. Because of our extensive networks and underlying core as a concierge business, we can organise everything from real estate connections through to property developers, interior designers, architects, luxury cars—you name it, we can source it.

Designed by renowned architect Andrew Patterson, The Palm Residence offers an exquisite blend of minimalism and monumentality.

Blvd: Which travel experiences outside New Zealand have changed how you run yours? What’s at the bleeding edge, and what inspires you?

Spice: Travelling extensively every year to luxury travel trade shows inspires me and keeps me constantly looking at what we are doing, how we are doing it, what we are offering, and what the luxury traveller is really seeking when coming to New Zealand. Africa really inspires me for its experiential aspect. 

As we are seeing more and more UHNW clients wanting to travel to New Zealand and Australia, we are thinking outside the box more and more, creating truly bespoke experiences that are just for them.

Blvd: What are you still learning about luxury travel?

Spice: Luxury travel is not shiny nor simply expensive things—it’s having the financial ability to experience something truly curated and bespoke, one that hasn’t been done before or can’t be found in a brochure. It’s about how that experience is put together seamlessly and in style, without the need for gold-plated glassware or white-glove service.

Read next:

• Past the Golden Triangle and AI itineraries: Where Miles & Memories is actually sending ultra-luxury travellers, and what they’re looking for
• Bespoke, remote, unrepeatable: How A2A Safaris convinced Asia’s elite travellers to go off-grid

Explore luxury property in New Zealand

In brief: Touch of Spice

The company: Touch of Spice is a luxury travel concierge that curates bespoke stays across private villas, residences, lodges, and superyachts throughout New Zealand and the Southern Hemisphere. The company handles everything from booking private chefs and in-house spa treatments to arranging private air travel.

The founder: Formerly a chief stewardess on superyachts, Jacqui Spice founded Touch of Spice in 2005 after a decade of catering to high-profile guests worldwide.

The destination: New Zealand’s South Island, where Touch of Spice’s ultra-luxury clients typically stay for a minimum of seven to ten nights in private residences, enjoying helicopter transfers, fine dining, wine tastings, and multi-generational family experiences.