Sam Roberts

About Sam

I started travelling seriously in my early twenties with a backpack and a budget that made every decision a trade-off. Twenty years and more than fifty countries later, I’ve swapped the backpack for a carry-on and the trade-offs for a genuine understanding of what makes a luxury hotel worth the investment. That arc – from budget-conscious traveller to discerning critic – shapes everything I write.

Based in London, I work across several industries as a freelance writer, but travel has always been the thread that connects everything else. It’s where I’m most curious, most precise, and most willing to challenge received wisdom about what constitutes a great stay.

My work for PrivateUpgrades has taken me into the world of ultra-luxury hotel design and programming – properties like Airelles Le Grand Contrôle at Versailles, which occupies a building that once served Louis XIV’s finance minister, or the cluster of extraordinary resorts on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah that have genuinely shifted the global benchmark for what resort hospitality can look like.

Dubai is a destination I’ve followed closely for several years. The speed of change there is genuinely without precedent in the hotel industry: properties that would have defined a career in any other market open, mature, and are superseded in the space of a decade. Writing about it requires staying current, and I do.

France – particularly the Loire Valley and the properties in and around Paris – is another area of genuine interest. I’m drawn to the intersection of historic architecture and contemporary service standards, the tension between preserving a building’s soul and meeting the expectations of a twenty-first-century guest. Airelles Le Grand Contrôle navigates that tension better than almost any property I’ve visited.

I write with precision because I think clarity is a form of respect for the reader. You’re making a significant decision about how to spend your money and your time. You deserve sentences that say exactly what they mean.