I just attended a luxury travel conference attended by expensive hotels and tour companies catering to the wealthy. This is nothing new, but the focus of this one was new: the “creative class” travelers who want their fine linens and concierges to come with a ladle full of cool.

Boutique hotels have gone from occasional oddities to a class of hotel that has sprouted like a forest of mushrooms in the past decade. In most any city of somesize, those who want their hotel to be as creative as they themselves feel have multiple hip hotels to choose from.

The LE Miami conference brought together many of the best of this breed to meet with travel specialists catering to this group of wandering creative workers surfing on the edge of the new and now.

Here’s how Serge Dive, founder of the conference sees it. “The growing creative class is “creating a demand for travel products and services that are unique, design-oriented, cultural, bespoke, and in tune with the local neighborhood.”

We’re seeing this change in the new hotels and resorts we’re reviewing lately in many spots, from Cartagena to Patagonia, joining those who hopped in early in Buenos Aires and Mexico City.

Hotels for the Creative Class

Who stays at these design hotels? Rock stars, museum curators, fashion designers, app creators, executive chefs, manga artists, architects, and-here’s the key part-people who wish they were one of the above. (And let’s be fair, that includes the trust fund kids and moguls’ offspring who have long kept Ibiza, South Beach, and Punta del Este pumping

The funny thing is, judging by the look of most of these hotels, the creative class is a pretty well-defined bunch. Not in their own individual looks perhaps, but in their sensibilities. They obviously like modern furniture, sleek lines, electronic music, dramatic lighting, and a good bar scene with all of the above. They read Wallpaper and Wired, live in progressive cities, and all use Apple products (so much for non-conformity).

The hotels can’t just follow a playbook and attract this crowd like hipsters to Brooklyn, however. Otherwise any well-designed boutique hotel anyone threw up would be an instant success. Instead many on the travel magazines’ “Hot List” or “It List” are out of business a few years later. They look good in photos, but you’re not wowed enough by the experience to spread the word.

Artsy Hotels in Latin America

Which brings us back to the hotels that were a part of this conference. Many of the properties from Latin America attending LE Miami were long-running ones we’ve reviewed. They’re iconic, interesting, and have a personality. Hey, one’s even called Unique. Here’s a sampling:

Unique – Sao Paulo
Fasano (in Rio and Sao Paulo plus Punta del Este)
Faena Hotel and Universe (Buenos Aires)
W Santiago
Habita Group Mexico (Condesa df, Downtown Mexico, and Purificadora)

Several tour companies were also there, including Mai 10 in Argentina (see this story we worked with them on the lake district of Patagonia), Journey Mexico, Catherwood Travels of Merida, and Matueté in Brazil.

I discovered several hotels there that we hope to check out soon. Blue Diamond in Mexico took over the closed Mandarin Oriental in the Riviera Maya. Nizuc recently opened nearby, after years of delays. Kenoa Resort on the northern coast of Brazil looks heavenly. We’ll be keeping an eye on P Hotel Mendoza too when it opens. Also Nayara Springs in Costa Rica, slated for November.

I got to see a personal hero of mine speak, the marketing wunderkind and author Seth Godin, who had a lot of profound things to say about the state of hospitality today and the competition. “Anyone can provide a quiet dark room away from home, so that’s not worth $400 a night.” “High standards are a given; it’s what you provide on top of that-the experience-that sets you apart.”

The second night I was there was South Beach at its best: Guatemalan rum, a couple Cuban guys rolling cigars, and a party at a fabulous hotel: W South Beach. For a night anyway, I was rolling with those who roll with the in crowd.

Rio de Janeiro is getting safer. Is that the whole story though?

NPR has been running some excellent Morning Edition reports this week specifically focused on violence in Latin America. Travel publications and news outlets both tend to either ignore or over-hype the crime situation in various places, but we try to keep it real here on this Luxury Latin America blog, pointing out the shades of gray.

So I’m linking to this story because it’s one travelers to Rio and other parts of Brazil should be checking out: Criminals feeling Rio crackdown set up shop in the suburbs.

You may have heard a few years ago that Rio de Janeiro is one of the most unsafe cities south of Caracas. You may have also heard things are getting better, especially in the favelas—those slums above the tourist zones that have often been controlled by gangs. That’s true, but as this story shows, there’s more to the story. Sometimes criminals don’t quit; they just move.

Brazil’s government has no choice but to invest heavily in cleaning up Rio though. They know the spotlight will be shining on them twice: first for the World Cup, then again for the Olympics. If they don’t get crime under control by then, it’ll be a nightmare. They’d love to get it under control everywhere—who wouldn’t—but without unlimited resources you have to prioritize.

Just don’t get lulled into a false sense of security when you venture elsewhere after being in Rio. Leave the Rolex watch and diamond necklaces at home. There are places where it pays not to flaunt your wealth. Brazil’s economy is lifting a lot of boats, but there are still plenty that are way underwater.

See our reviews of the best luxury hotels in Rio de Janeiro and the rest of Brazil.

We don’t write a whole lot of feature stories on cruises, since most of them aren’t all that high-end, so perhaps its fitting that our latest is on an “Un-cruise Adventure.”

Our contributor Ellen Barone took off from La Paz, in the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico, for a seven-day luxury cruise around the Sea of Cortez, also known as La Mar de Cortes. The 232-foot Safari Endeavour was no mega-ship, but it’s big enough for elbow room and the all-inclusive plan meant no sweating the bar bill. A true luxury small ship tour.

This is a cruise for observing nature without the chatter: snorkeling with sea lions and seeing whales without people who feel the need to record it all with tweets and status updates. It’s an unplugged adventure the way it’s supposed to be, without technology getting in the way to remind passengers a thousand others have been there, seen that before.

“The Sea of Cortez plays host to nearly every species of whale on the planet: sperm whales, fin whales, killer whales, California gray whales, and the world’s largest animal, the blue whale. On one afternoon a humpback, embedded within a frenzy of feeding dolphins, loitered near the ship well after the pod had moved on, keeping us mesmerized every time it came up to breathe or gave us a flash of its massive tail on its way back down.”

Read the full adventure story and see that, even if you’re not normally a “cruise person,” this Uncruise Adventure off the Baja Peninsula might be the kind that will get you on a boat for a week.

See Baja Unplugged With Un-Cruise Adventures.

Gold info that is. While it’s tempting for many to declare the death of guidebooks and pretend you can get everything you need from a travel app or your social media contacts, savvy travelers know better.

There are few purchases in the world that can give you a quicker, surer return on investment than a travel guidebook selling for less than 25 bucks. This hardcover $22 (list price) Footprint Panama guide is easy to pack and is full of the kind of insights you’re only going to get from someone who has spent a lot of time on the ground doing research.

Author Richard Arghiris has done the hard work so you don’t have to. He’ll save you time, hassles, and money so you can enjoy your vacation or retirement without relying on trial and error. (Or bad advice from virtual friends.)

Richard has written a few stories for narrative webzine Perceptive Travel that are quite good, like this harrowing tale of a Bocas del Toro serial killer. Or this one on decaying Bluefields, Nicaragua. So he knows how to recognize and tell a good story.

More importantly for you, he knows how to get the facts straight and since he’s been living in Panama for years, he knows them better than most. Footprint Panama naturally covers all the spots the readers of Luxury Latin America are likely to visit or invest in, from Bocas del Toro to the Azuero Peninsula, Boquette to Panama City. You get great background info, tips on tour local tour companies, and advice on where to eat and what to do.

I really like the feel of this book, with it being a sturdy hardcover but being just a tad larger than a mass-market paperback. It’s very easy to stuff into a daypack with your camera like I did on my most recent trip to Panama. It’s a bit over 300 pages, and they’re thin pages, so it’s not too thick.

My only complaint, besides the tiny type necessitated by the small book size (my eyes aren’t what they used to be) is the frequent omission of top hotels in the listings. For mid-range properties it’s fine, but there’s no Valle Escondido in Boquette, for instance, and many of the top hotels in Panama City are MIA. So this guidebook is highly recommended for everything except high-end lodging. Stick to checking with us on that.

We’ve been spending a good bit of time in fast-growing Colombia recently and for good reasons. The country’s tourism numbers are increasing rapidly as people update their expectations and new hotels are going up at a frenetic pace.

Our latest tour story, from writer Judith Fein, is about a return to Colombia with Adventure Associates, going beyond the usual first-timer’s route to dive deeper into the culture and the people.

She landed in Bogota, as most visitors do who aren’t flying direct to Cartagena, but her trip took her to interesting villages far away, including Villa de Leyva. Well, after taking part in a cooking course in the capital.

The city of Medellin gets a bad rap, like many cities where the reputation of 10 or 20 years ago is a very hard perception to change. Really this is an attractive, vibrant city with low crime and a favorite for expatriates choosing Colombia. Nevertheless, our correspondent did go on a Pablo Escobar tour after returning from the Antioquia region.

See the full story here: Cooking, Culture, and Cobblestones in Colombia