Old-school travel agencies may be a thing of a past, but bespoke experiences curated by a small but global network of advisers are blossoming Although travel agencies have been vanishing from high streets worldwide, it seems that reports of their complete demise may have been exaggerated. For those concerned above all to obtain the best price, the internet now provides the opportunity to compare the costs of 17 alternative ways of going almost anywhere, and then 17 ways of booking, be it flights, hotels or entire packages. Agencies working with narrow margins on high volumes of straight-from-the-brochure sales have been hit hard in the era of click-to-order everything.
And for many of them Covid-driven comprehensive refunds and constraints on new bookings delivered the coup de grâce. But Covid also drove many travellers to reconsider whether they still wanted to move around in large groups through a series of high-traffic “must sees”, and has contributed to growth in personally tailored travel. The comfortably off are now joining the wealthy, who have long been willing to pay a premium for someone else to do the legwork.
They want a consultant who spends time getting to know their preferences, and who has the knowledge, the experience and the contacts to put together bespoke, sometimes unique, high-end travel experiences. Guido Graf is CEO of Switzerland’s DeluxeTargets agency, but his business card just says “Travel Designer”. The point, he says on a video call from Sankt Gallen, is to build a personal connection with the client.
Those who contact him asking for the best price on two weeks in the Dominican Republic in a three-star hotel are likely to be directed elsewhere. “That’s a different business from what we are doing,” he says. “We’re making specialised, personalised experiences which you’re not able to buy from any online travel agent or package operator.
” Some who contact him want a beach, and might specify the Seychelles, but end up going to the Maldives after conversations that determine exactly what qualities they are looking for. Others just want Graf to assemble a personally pleasing itinerary. “You get really inside clients’ lives when you’re doing these kinds of experiences for them,” he says.
Sometimes preparation can take years. Graf has set up skiing trips in Antarctica and visits to the South Pole. He is also a booking agent for Virgin Galactic’s suborbital space flights.
But 70 per cent of his business he finds “really normal”. “My favourite trips would be to charter a helicopter which goes to four or five countries or is doing crazy things like flying into a volcano, or flying up to a mountain lake and doing fishing where nobody goes fishing normally,” he says. “Or to the top of a cliff you can only reach by helicopter, then put a table there and have a romantic dinner.
” In this world, “normal” has a different meaning. This kind of personal, high-end travel consulting is relatively new to Europe, although Graf has clients in the United States, Canada, even Greenland, and has just opened a China office in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. Like other advisers, Graf travels widely and repeatedly in his specialist areas.
“It’s so important that you also have your own experience that you can share with clients,” he says, “so you can make the perfect fit with their expectations. “For us a hotel is names. It’s the name of the sales manager; it’s the name of the general manager; it’s the name of the concierge; it’s the names of the people who can make the difference for our clients.
” Cathy Holler, president and CEO of four-person Momenti Travel in Vancouver, Canada, agrees. Like Graf’s, her company is a member of the Virtuoso network. This is a collaboration of small, specialist agencies dealing with high-end travel that originally came together in the US Midwest in the 1970s to increase their purchasing power and negotiate better access for their clients.
New applications have to be supported by existing ones, there’s care to avoid any overlap of clientele. Supplier members such as individual hotels and those handling ground arrangements are thoroughly vetted. In Asia, the Virtuoso name is still little-known (even though the website lists, for Hong Kong, 33 network consultants at four companies), but in the US it is seen as a guarantee of a certain quality of service, from the provision of amenities and upgrades usually available only to frequent return customers, or even the provision of services not accessible by any other route.
“It’s a key benefit for me and for my clients,” says Holler. “I can pick up the phone to a GM anywhere in the world, and even if I don’t know them, by benefit of saying I’m Virtuoso it changes the dialogue.” The member companies may be small, but between them they produce US$23 billion to US$32 billion of bookings a year, and by the sort of client who isn’t quibbling about price, and who may well return.
“I just had clients at Lake Como, and they wanted to come by private boat and stop for lunch at a restaurant on the docks that’s exclusively for this hotel’s guests. I contacted the general manager and said, ‘Can you do me a favour?’” It was no problem, says Holler. “My clients were thrilled.
” Although she’s in Canada she also has American, Australian, European and Chinese clients. “The world doesn’t have borders any more,” she says. “A personal relationship can be established via video.
” But the hours of discussions and research come at a cost. Perhaps learning from their Covid-era losses, advisers mostly charge an initial consulting fee to devise an outline itinerary, after which they will have an idea of likely total cost, which may include a pre-trip briefing and acting as a remote chaperon for the length of the trip. “[The preparation is] partly to vet the people who are coming to us,” says Holler.
“After the first discussion they’ll quickly know if they’re the right client. I’ll say up front I may not offer the best price. You need to come to us because you want the best experience.
“This is not a package tour. It’s a curated experience for you. It’s exclusively your trip.
Someone else is not buying this trip.” Fees are a problem in China, as Lucy Jiang, general manager of Zhixing Lux, tells me from her Beijing office. “It’s not like other well-developed markets,” she says.
“It’s impossible for us to charge a service fee or design fee. Mostly Chinese don’t pay for the service. “They are willing to pay [for] the luxury private jet, but not willing to pay [for] the experience and labour service fee,” says Jiang, whose company survives instead on a combination of commissions from suppliers and mark-ups.
It’s unlikely that she’ll invest time only to have clients change their mind, though, Jiang says. “We are personal recommendation by referral. Successful people, entrepreneurs or these high management persons.
So they are really looking for professional advisers.” Chinese travel habits are changing. “Before it was mostly big groups of 40 people going to Europe, eight countries in 15 days.
And about US$2,000 per person, so it was impossible to cover the costs. Shopping always. And lots of time on the bus.
This is not the experience they want. “So we arrange unique tours,” she says. “We cover around 26 countries, including luxury food, inside access, museum visits after hours, Michelin-star restaurant taste.
” Here the Virtuoso network offers her direct contact with 2,300 of the most exclusive operators around the world (for Hong Kong, that includes The Peninsula, the Island Shangri-La and the Rosewood), willing to go the extra step for the kind of clients she can provide. A Zhixing Lux employee will often accompany a customer’s party. Younger independent travellers may simply ask her to book key elements they have seen on the social media travel platform Xiaohongshu, and do the rest themselves.
Exclusive travel is apparently booming for summer 2024. Virtuoso bookings are up 162 per cent for Thailand, 126 per cent for Japan and 70 per cent for Anguilla year on year, for example. Travel agents may be suffering, but travel consultants are alive and well.
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