Virtuoso has unveiled its plans for future growth, including launching a new luxury lifestyle segment outside of travel.
Speaking to Karryon during their first visit to Australia, Virtuoso SVP Sales and Partnerships Cory Hagopian, and SVP Marketing Helen McCabe-Young revealed Virtuoso is launching a new “Ultra-High-Net-Worth (UHNW)” business division, which will include cars, jewellery, watches and fashion.
Headed by newly appointed General Manager Shelby Donley, Hagopian says the division will be for an exclusive group and their clients, catered to a maximum of 100 members.
“It’ll evolve, but initially we’ll focus on events. It might be a speaker, like a financial hedge fund speaker, nothing to do with travel … but a way for advisors and partners to come together and gain value.”
Quality over quantity
Hagopian says Virtuoso is also focused on maintaining quality over quantity.
“When looking at partners we want to take a serious look at who’s in the network and ensure we maintain the quality standards that Virtuoso is known for.
“If they’re not meeting standards, we will take action because we want advisors to know when booking with us they feel comfortable and confident.”
He says they’re also looking at geographical gaps they need to fill.
“We’ve seen a gap in Eastern European countries outside primary cities, so we’re looking at secondary markets like Romania.
“Other locations where we’re seeing a lot of interest are Sri Lanka, Laos and Cambodia… these are areas of focus for us.”
McCabe-Young says growing its experiential offerings is another area it’s consistently reviewing.
“Most luxury travellers are looking for quality experiences, and our focus is pushing hotels to offer those experiences … those participating in our ‘enhance amenity’ programme are seeing 146 per cent growth and so by enhancing the experience for the client of the advisor they’re reaping the results.”
She says Virtuoso is continuing to build on its marketing within the website to help advisors intimately know what they can offer their clients.
“We launched a number of initiatives in the last 12 months where we have features and videos around high-end properties and that’s a really strong mechanism to help advisors promote our preferred partners.”
She says educating advisors about properties who ‘give back’ is increasingly of interest.
“Advisors want to let their clients know where a property has an offering that ‘does good’. We’re in the ‘how can I make you feel’ business and that’s a focus for us in the marketing we provide.”
The new wave of cruise
Hagopian says given the interest in cruises, Virtuoso plans to help advisors who are new to cruise and want to grow in that area.
“For now, we’re calling this the master programme. At that level, they are exceptional at what they do and we want to grow them to be the best, which is icon status.
“We see this as an opportunity to train them, but also see an opportunity for cruise lines to educate the advisor and grow their product knowledge.”
McCabe-Young says this is just one of the “communities” it’s creating.
“As well as training, we focus on a network and community structure and this is going from strength to strength, so we have communities around cruise, sustainability, families and adventure … so where advisors show interest, we will bring them together and curate a programme for them.”
Hagopian says by coming here, they wanted to show their commitment to the “very important” Australian market.
“Nothing can replace human connection and sitting face-to-face and we’re always looking at ways we can better support our members.”
For more information, visit Virtuoso.
