Asian cities are more expensive partly because “Covid didn’t become an epidemic quite the same way it unfortunately became in the other cities in the index,” said Rajesh Manwani, Julius Baer’s head of markets and wealth-management solutions in Asia-Pacific. “So they were able to function more normally than the others.”

Published om April 9, Julius Baer’s “Global Wealth and Lifestyle Report” analysed the price inflation of 20 luxury items indicative of the lifestyle of high-net-worth individuals in 25 cities across regions. To adapt to the changing world, the 2021 edition replaced categories including personal trainers, wedding banquets, Botox and pianos with bikes, treadmills, health insurance and a technology package.

While the collapse in tourism led to a 9.3 per cent plunge in the cost of hotel suites last year, business-class plane tickets became 11 per cent more expensive, the biggest jump among luxury categories as airlines had to make up for a scarcity of sales, Julius Baer said. The price of fancy shoes for women slumped the most, dropping 12 per cent.

In Asia, the cost of goods and services for the wealthy has been much lower than the region’s consumer-price index since 2013, it added.

Shanghai became the most expensive city as prices rose 6 per cent last year, while those in Hong Kong were flat, according to Mark Matthews, head of research for Asia-Pacific at Julius Baer. In Shanghai, there was “quite an anomaly” where business-class flights went up 82 per cent and hotel-suite prices climbed 15 per cent, he added.

Overall, though, living a luxury lifestyle around the world became only about 1 per cent more expensive in 2020, with the rich increasingly turning to conscious choices that may result in fairer prices for producers, according to the report.

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