Travel Advisors join the Insider Club
With high-end travel budgets annually totalling the same as a holiday cottage, luxury car or kitchen refurb, it's high time travel agents joined the club of valued advisors HNW families have access to.
Many people have of course been working with their own travel advisors for the last half-century or longer, but the difference is that as the moneyed classes add to their numbers, this sort of service is becoming more mainstream as more people realise it's available. Travel advisors are finally enjoying the status of other trusted experts in an entourage - lawyers, bankers, builders, plumbers, mechanics etc. A good one of any of those professions makes life much easier. As some families use overseas breaks as important bonding time between family members whose schedules keep them apart, their value is some way in excess of the financial investment. Their expertise is being used to enhance family relationships and in some cases to keep families together. In other cases it is used to strengthen certain values in children, to open eyes and minds, and to bond through shared laughter.
Looking at it from this perspective, should you be trusting it to booking.com, or AirBnB, or an article in a travel magazine written by a junior writer who hasn't even been to the hotel they're reviewing?
There are of course the die-hards who take a break from making millions by making absolutely sure every aspect of their luxury holiday is bought as cheaply as possible, never mind how many destroyed relationships they leave in their wake, nor how much time it takes. Luckily, there are not many of these around. Most of the world realises that true service costs real money as it takes real time.
But there are still some strange inconsistencies in the market. Someone can not think twice about dropping quarter of a million on a superyacht charter but find it impossible to move past a need to pay a non-refundable deposit to secure a luxury lodge room. Give it a couple of years and a few holidays which failed as they couldn't secure exactly what they wanted and they learn the lesson, thankfully.
Then there are those who must organise everything themselves. Every single AirBnB. Every single lodge and transfer. Their belief is they have a superpower which allows them to outperform 25-year specialists with hundreds of trips in that destination under their belts. All they need is a laptop and a couple of evenings. Yep. Good luck.
Compared to when we started out, 25 years ago, there is a much better understanding in the market of what a DMC (Destination Management Company) does, and we are finding people very happy to pay a management fee. Service = time = money after all. Some people understand we are speaking from a position of expertise when we mention certain properties aren't doing as well as they were, or are charging more than they are worth. Many DMCs, and we are one, have a particular expertise in creating one-off experiences. The cookie-cutter crowd do a good job of cutting cookies, but they wouldn't know where to start hiring a private steam train, attacking a beach with a party of Maori warriors, abseiling the All Blacks down Sky Tower, creating a Lord of the Rings party with cast, crew, musicians, props, make-up and original caterers - all things we have done. And they don't have to be major productions - we famously organised a dinner invitation for a Bulgarian couple who were interested in modern integration of Maori in New Zealand. They had an enjoyable time with a Bulgarian-Maori businessman.
The very best set-up is where a HNW family has an outbound travel advisor who handles all their worldwide travel. These advisors then understand travel beyond brochures and know the true experts in the various destinations who can breathe life into exactly what their clients want. They also know exactly who their clients are and what they enjoy most in life. With that knowledge, they can move fast to secure what their clients want. And as this worldwide system of networks settles down, and trust is built up, down and sideways, we settle into a relaxed professional-to-professional relationship of making magic happen. There are some superb agents out there who work hard and are true professionals, and there are unfortunately others who tiptoe around their clients, make extravagant demands of the destinations and who just don't know how to manage both sides. We of course love the former and try and help the latter, if we can afford the time.