Rich Chinese tourists paying $40,000 to hunt elk in Utah or booking the entire first-class cabin for a family flight to France show China's economic slowdown has yet to thin the wallets or dull the appetites of its deep-pocketed elite.
China's "Golden Week" holiday, a popular time for overseas travel, starts today. This year, it coincides with the Mid-Autumn Festival to create a rare eightday break, and visitors to Europe will not be there to get a taste of austere living.
Helen Shen, a travel planner in Shanghai, said a private business owner had booked the whole firstclass section of a Lufthansa jet to fly his family of four to Paris this month.
Shen is one of many luxury travel organizers who still see the money rolling in from executives and members of the "fu er dai" - the second generation of wealthy families - despite China's economic uncertainty.
"If you look at your affluent Chinese overseas, they are your tourist, your shopper, your investor all in one," said Christine Lu, co-founder of Affinity China, a Shanghai-based luxury travel firm.
"Even though there is all the talk of a slowdown in China, the luxury sector we are dealing with is a segment that can still afford to travel," Lu said.
This is good news for luxury brands facing the prospect of weaker demand within Greater China as Beijing cracks down on conspicuous consumption at home.
In the rest of the world, rich Chinese tourists are famed for their lavish spending. To avoid steep sales taxes at home, many of them unleash the cash on deluxe goods and premium cosmetics with every stamp of their passports.
"Most of the people who are going abroad already have quite a bit of wealth and buying things overseas is still much cheaper than buying things in China," said Renee Hartmann, a luxury retail consultant based in Los Angeles.
Tax-free shopping firm Global Blue said in July that Chinese travellers were the biggest spenders in duty-free shops, racking up 2.1 billion euros ($2.70 billion) in sales in 2011, up 68 per cent from last year.
"The [weakness] of the euro and the pound, plus the post-Olympic effect, is increasing the draw of Europe as a tourist destination and enticing wealthy Chinese to shop in Europe," said You Jinzhang, chief executive of HHtravel, a luxury travel brand under China's top online travel firm Ctrip.com International Ltd.
The firms that sell coveted brands do not see their Chinese customers suddenly discovering asceticism.
Italian fashion designer Brunello Cucinelli, whose eponymous firm sells cashmere sweaters for almost 2,000 euros ($2,600), shrugged off concerns about a slowdown, saying Chinese demand for old-world luxury remains strong.
Some of Beijing's better-heeled are not content with adorning their wardrobes with fine cashmere. Cucinelli told a story of a group of Chinese investors who once visited his company in its hilltop home of Solomeo in central Italy, and were so smitten by the place that they asked how much it would cost to buy the whole village.
