Upmarket UK holiday companies are reporting a good year. Despite, 11 September and Bali, life goes on. OK, people are booking very last-minute (something that was almost unheard of for once-in-a-lifetime holidays a couple of years back), but we're going mad on the old luxury front.

Apparently we're trading up, booking ourselves into business class, ordering limo transfers, demanding oriental massages at £100 a time (without so much as a flinch) and demanding the best rooms in the hotel (ie sunset, not car park view).

Just look at the brochures out there - special airport lounges for holidaymakers (not grey suits), butlers to unpack your luggage and make your breakfast, gourmet food in the bush or on the remotest beach. The biggest surprise among luxury tour operators such as Cazenove & Loyd, Elegant Resorts, Kuoni and Abercrombie & Kent has been the increase in young people on flash holidays and whole family clans trekking off long-haul. You can't get a flight or booking in a good hotel in South Africa or Kenya this Christmas for love nor money, according to Cazenove, demand for upmarket holidays there is so high.

If you look at the Maldives, Mauritius and the Seychelles you wonder how many more five-star hotels the world needs - but there is obviously a big demand or they wouldn't keep building them. Newcomers include Le Touessrok in Mauritius (reopening in December), the Banyan Tree and Sainte Anne in the Seychelles and Cocoa Island in the Maldives.

But where is all the extra dough coming from? The stockmarket has crashed, there's supposedly a rich man's recession on (with industries such as telecoms losing large numbers of skilled staff while poor man's industries such as call centres are growing). So who are these people splashing out?

The answer seems to lie in the property boom. According to the Nationwide's figures last month, UK property saw a 22 per cent annual rise and according to the Halifax, house price inflation has been strongest this year in East Anglia (24.9 per cent), the East Midlands (24.3 per cent) and the South West (22.8 per cent).

Even if you're living in the humblest studio flat you can release a quick £10,000, often without paying a penny extra on your mortgage, just by changing lenders.

Many people are taking advantage of the huge rises in the value of their property by remortgaging to make home improvements such as new kitchens and bathrooms and adding a few thousand extra for the holiday of a lifetime without their monthly payments going up significantly thanks to low interest rates.

I know a couple who bought a builder's yard/garage in Deptford (armpit of south London) three years ago for £100,000. They spent every weekend converting it into a loft-style apartment. They sold it two months ago for £360,000 and moved to a farmhouse in Scotland leaving a few thousand spare for a six-week biggy round-the-world holiday. The £260,000 profit on the flat was five times more than they jointly made working full-time as designers during that period (although only a small fraction of that went on the holiday).

So the phrase armchair travel takes on a new meaning. Lie back, see the value of your property soar, travel the world.