Always wanted to be lord of the manor? Now you can pretend you are a real-life Scottish Laird with celticcastles.com, which lets you rent palatial abodes like this magnificent pile on the shores Loch Ness. The Aldourie Castle has 15 bedrooms and the staff can either leave self-catering guests to their own devices, or provide an entire entourage of chefs, cleaners and managers to cater to your every whim. Prices start at £25,000 plus VAT for a seven-night stay.
Love the idea of a cruise but can't stand the thought of being marooned in the ocean with a shipload of burger-munching seasick tourists? For a mere £170,000 a week you can hire a private charter yacht from bluewateryachting.com and send it where you like, from Corsica and the South of France all the way to Australia and Alaska. The Mosaique has 12 cabins and comes with snorkelling and scuba equipment, jet skis, fishing gear and a gym as well as 12 crew members to look after you and your party.
Riads are beautiful, traditional and quintessentially Moroccan. But they can also be incredibly loud as noise from the central courtyards tend to float up straight into guest's bedrooms. Hipmarrakech.com��seems to have solved this problem by renting out entire riads complete with English-speaking hosts and mobile phones in case you get lost in the labyrinthine souks of Marrakech. Riad Papillon is a short hop from the central square and has five luxurious bedrooms, a dipping pool and a roof terrace complete with sun beds, dining areas and a Moroccan tent.
If you want a cheap holiday and have a few thousand spare friends then Alton Towers will give you the keys to the park for your exclusive use. Tickets cost £17 each if you book for 5,000 people. While this might sound like a lot, the park can actually hold up to 28,000 visitors so it would feel practically empty, apparently. For the cash-rich and conscience-free, forget your friends, just pay £85,000 and have the park to yourself.
Try claiming your slice of LA and book out the whole of the boutique Shangri-La hotel. This art-deco edifice overlooks Santa Monica Pier and can be all yours to share with a select group of friends for £16,325 a night. This includes exclusive use of Suite 700, the panoramic roof-top bar and a full compliment of staff to cater to your every need. Excludes all food and drinks. Bookings are subject to availability and, at the moment, are only available from 5-10 January 2014.
How could you make a safari in Africa's untamed wilderness more luxurious and exclusive? By doing it aboard a private jet, obviously. Join Abercrombie & Kent and 40 other guests for a 19-day, 5,000 mile African odyssey from one edge of the continent to the other. Depart from Rome and travel to Ethiopia's rock churches, Uganda's gorillas, the plains of the Serengeti and the Victoria Falls and get closer to the wildlife than a tourist-laden jeep ever could. What price a once-in-a-lifetime adventure? Around £55,000 per person...
If you're flush with cash but don't feel like sharing on holiday then consider renting an entire resort, or better yet, rent David Copperfield's. Musha Cay is a 700-acre, ultra-luxe island resort in the Bahamas, bought by the magician for a cool £32,650,000. Everything here is exclusive: the resort can only be rented as a whole with a 24 guest limit. Guests can chose to stay in their own manor houses on the crest of the densely-forested hills, villas with outdoor Jacuzzis or in thatched-roofed beach houses. Island rates start at £24,500 a day for 12 guests, which includes all meals, drinks and unlimited use of the island's facilities and a night at Dave's Drive-in move theatre.
If you can't imagine anything more relaxing than lazing by a lake with a fishing rod draped over the calm waters stained peach and golden by the slowly setting sun, then imagine what it would be like to own the entire lake. Forestlakecarpfishing.com rents their lake out for exclusive hire from March to October. The three-acre, tree-lined lake is stocked with a variety of fish from 40lb carp to catfish and black bass and is available to rent to a maximum of five guests at a time. Visitors can camp in bankside bivvies and use the fisherman's cabin, which comes with a bathroom and kitchen. From £850 for a 7-night self-catered holiday.
Let's face it: the worst part of the holiday is the getting there: endless queues at check-in and security and then spending hours with someone's knees in the small of your back while eating terrible food is hardly the stuff dreams are made of. To avoid this, you can hire your own domestic charter plane, which you can direct anywhere in the world. Swiss.com hires out their aeroplanes, from the giant A340-300, which can carry up to 219 people, to the more modest 97-seater the Avro RJ100. Swiss lists a few of their clients on their website and they are an exclusive bunch: General Motors, Swiss national football team and Credit Suisse. As you'd expect, chartering your own plane is hard to do unless you're a millionaire, but if you fancy stopping by the Guggenheim in Bilbao before spending the afternoon shopping on the Champs Elysees in Paris, then this is the ultimate way to travel. Price on application.
What's even better than a castle? Why, a chateau of course. Indulge your inner Louis XVI with the extravagant excesses of Chateau De Robert in Provence. Set in olive groves and vineyards, this ridiculously opulent abode is a symphony of Versailles-style marble floors, Napoleon III crystal chandeliers and cavernous rooms, which include 16 ensuite bedrooms, a ballroom, orangerie, chapel and salons, not to mention the three swimming pools and the helipad. A concierge, housekeeper and chauffeur are also on hand (Marie Antoinette would have approved!). Prices start at around £22,000 per week for two people so you could chose to share with some loyal subjects if you were feeling magnanimous…
Once upon a time palaces were the sole domain of monarchs, fairytale princesses and, in this case, Hollywood royalty. The five-star Gstaad Palace overlooks acres of chocolate box scenery of the Swiss Alps and was once patronised by Roger Moore, Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren. Gstaad's 101 rooms, including the four one-bed suites, two-bedroom tower suites, five restaurants and spa are available for hire. All of this can be yours (plus 99 of your nearest and dearest) for the princely sum of £235,338 a week.
How does this itinerary grab you: London – Dubrovnik – Aswan – Abu Dhabi – Udaipur – Agra – Luang Prabang – Da Nang – Hoi An – Sandakan – Lombok – Broome – Ayers Rock – Sydney. How could you possibly one-up a round-the-world tour of this calibre? Would taking a private jet all the way do it? Bill Peach Journeys are celebrating their 30th anniversary with this £19,883, 18-day trip called Passages through Ancient Cultures. The jet can carry a maximum of 34 passengers and takes under three hours to get to each of the destinations so, for the price of a VW Passat, sit back, crack open the champagne and revel in this opulent adventure.
If you've got more money than you know what to do with and ultimate seclusion is your aim then why not bypass the resorts and hotels and simply hire an entire village? Xnet - the company famous for putting Liechtenstein up for rent in 2011 - rents out impossibly pretty villages in Europe. The locals are on hand to show you around and provide activities and you can even change the street names and introduce your own currency for the duration of your stay. Brand in the Eastern Alps, for example, can house 400 guests, while Goldegg in Salzburg accommodates a more modest 150. Playing a feudal lord will set you back £834,372 a week, while Goldegg is a bargain (if you're a millionaire) £223,000.
The ideal that tops most people's holiday wishlist: a remote, tropical island, submerged in turquoise waters and fringed by silver-sanded beaches and peppered with swaying palms - think a five-star Robinson Crusoe experience. Turtle Island is a 500 acre haven with 14 villas, each with their own private beach and their very own 'Bure Mama' - a sort of Fijian butler. The island can be yours exclusively, or, if you're feeling generous, can be shared with a select group of family and friends for a budget-busting £124,000 a week. This includes all meals, drinks, snacks and a host of activities like beach picnics, sunset cruises and reef fishing.