VERSAILLES.- Getting to the Olympics equestrian arena at Versailles — a multihour metro, train and bus extravaganza culminating in a mile-long trek down a dusty thoroughfare — is so arduous and enervating that it almost qualifies as an athletic achievement in itself.

But there’s another way. It’s called the Golden Garden Hospitality Experience, and it begins with door-to-door taxi service and a queue-free entrance. It includes Champagne, a welcome gift, canapes and a gourmet meal in a special clubhouse; a flotilla of staff, including a sommelier and a mixologist, eager to cater to your whims; premium seats in the stadium; and a ride home when it’s all over. The price? From $1,620 to $3,500, depending on the day.

Go to any big sports event and you will find people having more rarefied experiences than you. The Summer Games in particular have long been known for the extravagant perks they dole out to dignitaries, corporate sponsors and other constituents of the Olympic-industrial complex.

Such benefits used to be out of reach for most Olympics ticket holders. While third-party vendors have always offered luxury ticket packages, the deals came with some uncertainty because the sellers weren’t sanctioned by the Olympics. But under a new program, the Paris Games are offering regular spectators the chance to buy add-ons that offer tangible extras — better seats, extra food, special places to hang out — as well as that most elusive of privileges: the luxury of attending a mass event while remaining apart from the masses.

At the low end, 100 euros or so might get you a package for a few hours in a venue’s hospitality lounge and a ticket to a low-demand sport like archery. The higher end can run well into the tens of thousands of euros: bespoke multiday all-inclusive packages that might include stays in five-star hotels, meals cooked by Michelin-starred chefs, seamless car service between venues and the best seats at the most in-demand events.

“Anyone can buy these packages to make their experience memorable,” said Will Whiston, executive vice president of the Olympics and Paralympics for On Location, a luxury hospitality company that specializes in live events and is the Games’ official hospitality provider. “Our goal is to create different levels to meet different types of demand.”

As it happened, Whiston made this remark the other morning while seated in a place called Gustave 24 on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, the most exclusive of On Location’s three Paris hospitality lounges not connected to athletic sites.

Chefs stood at attention next to small dishes advertised with elaborate descriptions like “mini rouleau de printemps aux légumes du jardin, herbes fraîches et sauce epicée.” A pianist played gentle tunes. Decorations included a real Olympic torch and a set of authentic 2024 medals. From one direction, the view stretched over Paris — it was impossible to ignore the heady sense of being above the fray — while from the other, you could observe the regular tourists through a glass wall, clutching water bottles as they negotiated the Eiffel Tower sans concierge. (It was like being at the zoo, except it was unclear who was watching whom.)

One guest, 52-year-old Eri Kamimura of Tokyo, said she had paid 6 million yen (about $40,000) to bring her 78-year-old mother to Paris on an extended all-inclusive package with five-star everything. The lounge was only one stop on her busy itinerary. Kamimura pronounced it beautiful and relaxing, but said she perhaps should have opted for the lunch or dinner session instead of the morning one.

“It’s a nice view,” she said, “but we already had breakfast.”

On Location, which has hired 80 chefs with 23 Michelin stars to serve more than 3,815 different dishes to its guests, has two other Parisian sanctuaries: Clubhouse 24, the lowest-tier one, at the Palais de Tokyo across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, and Salon 24, the middle-tier one, in the gorgeous Maison de l’Amérique Latine in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood. (They share the same base-line services but feature different amenities — wine tastings, talks by athletes and more — in the way an airport has a variety of lounges of different exclusivity levels for higher-paying passengers, even as the lower-paying majority have to make do with whatever they can scrounge up in the terminal’s public spaces.)

There are lounges at the sports venues, too, both on the grounds (less exclusive) and connected to the arenas (more exclusive). Some are more ostentatiously superior than others.

At the beach volleyball arena the other day, the spectator’s eye was naturally drawn to the Eiffel Tower, looming voluptuously overhead. The sight below it was arresting in a different way: a custom-built two-story wooden chalet along the top of the stadium in which a crowd of well-dressed people appeared to be having a cocktail party.

This was the lounge for gold-tier attendees to the beach volleyball events, and it featured a sit-down meal with waiter service, a Champagne bar, a live feed of the event for those weary of the outdoors and a commemorative beach volleyball towel.

As ordinary spectators gazed from their alcohol-free seats — drinking isn’t allowed for most attendees in the venues because of complicated French laws — they generally seemed to take a “good on them” attitude toward the revelers across the way.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” said Chase McArdle, 32, an engineer from San Antonio.

A dissent came from Igor Godec, a 55-year-old Slovenian business owner, who was sitting in the punishing sun with his wife and two children in Row 37, at the very top of the arena. They had driven for 15 hours to Paris and checked into a 100-euro-a-night Airbnb an hour outside town. Their beach volleyball tickets cost 80 euros apiece.

“For them to stay up there in that lobby — how is that really about the sport?” Godec said. “In my time, sports wasn’t really about money, but was about athletes who had something inside. This isn’t helping the sport at all.”

While many high-end customers are clearly the sort of people who always travel this way, there are others who splurged because this was the Olympics.

“We’re not used to being in fancy places, and so this is really special for me, to be able to sit in this beautiful place drinking Champagne,” said Kelly Daughtry, a 54-year-old lawyer from North Carolina who was relaxing in Salon 24 between events. She had spent between $10,000 and $15,000 for a comprehensive multiday hospitality package heavy on the equestrian competition.

“I love horses and was a French major, and this is my first Olympics,” she said.

The stark contrast between a luxe and a nonluxe experience was made clear to her the night of the opening ceremony. Her package didn’t include a ticket, so she acquired one through a public lottery and duly reported to a security checkpoint, along with hundreds of other people sent to that spot, last Friday night. The frustrated crowd grew and heaved and buckled as the wait stretched past three hours. Many people were turned away.

“For the first time in my life, I understand how people can be crushed to death in a crowd,” Daughtry said. “It was really scary.”

She couldn’t have known it, but while that was going on, the guests who had bought tickets to Clubhouse 24, along with prime Seine-side seats to the ceremony, were arriving at a different checkpoint. They swanned past the guards — there was no wait — and were immediately handed all-access wristbands and a drink.

“This is really good from a low-stress-level point of view,” said Patrick Nero, 59, who was visiting from Washington, D.C., with his husband, and who paid $15,000 for two tickets. “We felt that if we were going to come all this way, we were going to do it in style.”

The rain that came later fell equally on everyone, wristband or no wristband. But at Club 24, guests took advantage of the chance to retreat indoors, where they could dry off, eat some more and watch the rest of the show in the comfort of a giant clubhouse filled with staff members trying to make life easier for them.

“All I can say is, it was quite an experience,” said one guest, a Los Angeles businessperson.

“Luxury is always better than no luxury,” his wife said. She said she didn’t want her name used because she didn’t want to sound spoiled.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.