It’s reassuring to hear even rich listers bargain when staying at luxury resorts. Curious about the endless buzz around Fiji’s ultra-exclusive Laucala Island Resort, Lang Walker – Australia’s 17th-richest man, with an estimated personal wealth of $2.02 billion – dropped by in 2015 to see if the hype was justified. Laucala, opened in 2008 by Austrian billionaire and Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz, had long been popular with the fashionable set, who like both its privacy and its private runway. Elle Macpherson even flew her entourage in to get married there.

Arriving by chopper with wife Sue, Walker paid the then asking rate of about $4000 for night one. But when Sue wanted to stay on, the founder and executive chairman of Walker Corporation, Australia’s largest privately owned, diversified property development company, put his hard hat on. “I bargained them down to $2000 for another night.” In fact he had an ulterior motive. He was checking out the competition.