People often talk about New Zealand as an "active" destination. They also talk about the phenomenal natural beauty. And also about the friendliness of the people. And finally, most of them say their time here was the best they had of anywhere in the world.
As a tourism operator specialising in New Zealand, I'm delighted. As a world traveller who has seen many beautiful places, I keep revisiting why this country has such a consistent and positive impact on people. I want to make sure we're not kidding ourselves.
Other countries are as active. Other countries are as beautiful. Other people are as friendly. An insightful remark by a client a couple of years ago keeps surfacing - "Jean-Michel, no one country in the world has the right to be this consistently beautiful".
I think we're getting close to it there. The consistent beauty and the consistent friendliness creates such a warm feeling for people that they push themselves and do things they would not normally do (the active bit). And as we all know, pushing our own personal envelopes, achieving what we would normally not think we could, results in a feeling of euphoria, in a feeling that we have grown as people.
This is why - harping on a constant theme - activities need to be an integral part of an itinerary. The top-grade travel designer has to put as much thought into activities as into accommodation. They need to have three times as many high qualty activities in their repertoire as they have high quality lodges. And in this day of the intelligent traveller, those activities need to be excellent from an active perspective, an intelligence perspective and in a beautiful place. The travel designer also needs to understand their clients sufficiently in order to be able to make a call on which activities are right, and needs to have the courage to occasionally push things a little.
This is some of what differentiates a luxury travel designer from a travel agent. Of course in luxury travel we have the budgets which allow us to spend this time on each client.
27 Jan 10
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