Music Festival Season
Summer is prime time for the year’s best music festivals around the globe. Traveling to experience live music is something I love doing — some of my best memories are built around seeing bands at Coachella, Outsidelands, and even an indie music cruise in the Mediterranean. Here are some festivals worth considering for your next adventure.
Two weekends in the California desert, and the whole Coachella Valley transforms. The lineup draws the full spectrum — from legacy headliners to the acts you'll be talking about six months from now. The aesthetic is part of it: the art installations, the late-night sets in smaller tents, the sunrise walk back to the car.
The logistical reality: Indio is not Palm Springs, and the drive matters. Most of my clients staying at the luxury end do best at La Quinta Resort, The Ritz-Carlton Rancho Mirage, or the Parker Palm Springs — all within 20–30 minutes. If you want full immersion, on-site festival camping exists, but for clients who prefer a shower that isn't a truck and a real bed at 2am, I design the surrounding experience as its own retreat. Spa days, private pool mornings, dinner reservations in Palm Springs before the evening sets — so the festival days are flanked by actual rest.
The oldest, muddiest, most beloved festival on earth, held on a dairy farm in Somerset every five years (with sporadic years off). Glastonbury is in a category by itself — not because of the headliners, though those are remarkable, but because of what it asks of you. The wellies. The rain. The queues. The moment you crest the hill at the Pyramid Stage and see 100,000 people.
For clients who want the full experience, I design around a proper glamping setup: luxury bell tent villages like Worthy View or Croissant Neuf that take the rough edges off without removing the atmosphere. For those who want proximity without the field, there are beautiful country house hotels in Somerset and Bath — a 30-minute drive that feels like a different world.
Glastonbury is also a genuine bucket-list milestone. It tends to sell out in minutes the moment tickets go on sale, so the planning runway is longer than most festivals. Start early.
Primavera is the festival for people who read Pitchfork and also care deeply about where they eat dinner. Held in Barcelona's Parc del Fòrum with the Mediterranean behind the main stage, it's one of the most scenically situated festivals anywhere — and the lineup, which leans toward indie, electronic, and alternative, tends to be genuinely surprising every year.
The timing couldn't be better: late spring Barcelona is warm, not yet overrun, and the city is fully in its rhythm. I design the surrounding days around the neighborhoods — dinners in the Eixample, a morning at the Boqueria before it gets loud, a half-day up to Montjuïc. Hotel options at the luxury end run from the Mandarin Oriental to the Edition; for something more design-forward, the Sir Victor and the Cotton House both punch well.
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is one of the most distinctly American things you can do. It's held at the Fair Grounds Race Course, the lineups span jazz, gospel, R&B, blues, rock, and zydeco — and the food alone is worth the flight. Cochon de lait po'boys. Crawfish Monica. Snowballs from the back tent.
New Orleans during Jazz Fest is also a full cultural moment — second lines in the streets, late nights on Frenchmen Street, dinner reservations at Galatoire's or Compère Lapin. The Garden District and Uptown neighborhoods are where I point clients for the best hotel experience away from the French Quarter noise.
Grant Park. Lake Michigan in the background. A city that eats exceptionally well. Lollapalooza has the benefit of being embedded in one of America's great cities rather than requiring a journey to the middle of nowhere — so the festival days and the Chicago days can overlap without tension.
For clients who want luxury, the Four Seasons Chicago and the Waldorf Astoria are both minutes from the park. The city does the rest: the Art Institute in the mornings, dinner reservations at Smyth or Oriole, day trips to the North Shore.
The music sets the calendar, the location, and the mood. Everything else is an edit.
Music Cruises: A Different Kind of Festival
The first time I understood music cruises, I was on one — Norwegian Pearl, sailing from Barcelona through Sardinia on a Mediterranean music cruise. The premise sounds gimmicky until you're standing on an open deck at midnight watching a band play with the sea behind them, and you realize: there's nowhere else to be. No car to catch, no hotel across town. Everyone on the ship is there for the same reason.
Music cruises run across almost every genre — jazz, rock, country, jam bands, electronic, classical. Sixthman (Norwegian's music cruise arm), Jam Cruise, Cayamo, and the floating festival circuits book years in advance and attract lineups that rival land-based festivals. The format suits clients who want a contained world: one embarkation, multiple ports, performances every evening, and the kind of social atmosphere that tends to produce the best stories.
How I Design Around a Festival
The music is the anchor. Everything else — the hotel, the restaurant reservations, the day-before excursions, the morning-of recovery plan — is built outward from it. The decisions I'm making are: how close do you want to be? How much do you want the festival to be the full focus, versus one act in a larger trip? How much contrast do you want between the intensity of the show and the places you come home to?
Luxury Base Hotel
Usually my default recommendation for clients who want the experience without the elements. A proper hotel 15–30 minutes from the grounds gives you a real bed, room service after midnight, and the ability to actually want to go back the next day.
Glamping On-Site
For clients who want full immersion — Glastonbury especially — there are well-run luxury glamping operations that make the on-site experience genuinely comfortable. Bell tents, proper linens, concierge. The tradeoff is the commute disappears and the atmosphere never does.
Private Villa Nearby
For group trips — friend groups, milestone birthdays — renting a villa or estate nearby creates a private home base with shared space, a kitchen, and the ability to spread out in a way no hotel can match. This is often the best format for music travel groups of 6 or more.
Extended Itinerary
The festival is three days. The trip can be ten. Most of my clients use the music event as the centerpiece of a longer itinerary — arrive early to settle in, leave late to recover somewhere beautiful. The festival gives the trip its reason; the days around it give it its depth.
Music travel is also one of the best formats for milestone celebrations — 40th and 50th birthdays especially. There's something about being at a festival, with people you love, listening to music that means something, that makes the milestone feel earned rather than marked. It's celebratory without being formal. Everyone remembers it.
I've been thinking about this category a lot lately. There's a version of music travel that's still underestimated — where the planning attention goes to getting the tickets and not much else. And then there's a version where the trip around the festival is as intentional as the festival itself. That's the version I like to design.
If there's a festival on your list — one you've talked about for years and haven't done yet — let's make it the year you actually go.
Let's plan yours.
Tell me the festival, the milestone, or just the feeling you're after. I'll take it from there.
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