Helloworld Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director, Cinzia Burnes, speaks exclusively to Karryon Luxury to share news about a new luxury product brochure to be released in 2025; and the progress of its partnership with Ensemble.
Luxury travel demand is growing, says Cinzia Burnes, particularly in cruising and high-value destinations like Europe and the US. Speaking to Karryon, Burnes says the group is seeing a preference among its clients for smaller, personalised groups and the travel sector remains resilient.
“We are very happy with the support we have received from the network. There is ongoing demand for travel. We feel that even the pressures of cost of living somehow doesn’t seem to be affecting people going on holiday,” said Burnes.
“I think holidays have been treated as a part of the household budget. I think in the past, it used to be about if people could afford it. But in this day and age, particularly after the many lockdowns, people are really ensuring they have a holiday at least yearly and that’s budgeted along with everything else that they do. It continues to keep the travel sector in very good shape,” she says.
How the new partnership with Ensemble is tracking
Officially launched on 1 August, Helloworld paired up with the Canadian-based, member-owned Ensemble boutique travel agency consortium in an exclusive alliance to tap into its global luxury hotel program, allowing network access across its brands in Australia and New Zealand.
There was a need, says Burnes, given the growing demand for luxury within Helloworld’s networks.
“We didn’t have an affiliation with any of the other similar consortia that offered this hotel amenity program. We realised that Ensemble wasn’t in Australia anymore after Covid, and thought that it was a very good fit for us to have an exclusive agreement, rather than join any of the other consortia that were already present in Australia and New Zealand,” she says.
The appeal of Ensemble was based on shared values and being the DMC of choice for their high-end division, Kensington Tours in Helloworld’s inbound division.
“Also, Ensemble was very accommodating with our request of utilising their hotel program without necessarily locking us into everything else they do. That was the only part of the proposition that they had that we were interested in distributing to our networks,” she says.
The advantages of the program, she says, is that some consumers value the perceived free amenities more than the actual end price.
“They seemed to be, bizarrely to me, quite happy to pay more per night on the basis of getting free breakfast and upgrades. We did not have an option to provide this and Ensemble has a very comprehensive program that provides exactly that in different luxury upmarket hotels all around the world. It is one extra benefit we can now provide the network to be able to fulfil that kind of request,” she says.
The group has been conducting training on the program, with staffer Nick Sutherland, Head of Branded and Associate Networks, recently attending the Ensemble conference in Las Vegas in September to connect with the procurement managers at Ensemble and talk further about the specific needs and requirements of this market.
“It’s been a soft launch. It’s a little niche that we weren’t able to cover as a franchisor and a provider of services to the network, and something that has been requested by the agents. Rather than having them source this content from alternative suppliers, we’d rather be able to have a contract that provides that to our head office,” she says.
Trends in luxury travel
Burnes says that luxury cruise sales are growing year on year.
“And when you think that you’ve grown enough last year and you didn’t think it would happen again, even in the first few months of this financial year, we’ve seen significant growth in sales for luxury cruises. Our agents are experts in selling these,” she says.
River cruising in particular is strong. “I think people prefer (and it’s not dissimilar to touring) a smaller ship and more personalised service, rather than a big bus or coach tour. I think that’s an outcome of post Covid,” she says.
Sales are also robust for luxury products being sold for resort destinations that Helloworld handles as Viva Holidays, in destinations such as Fiji, Singapore and Bali.
“Despite the fact that the dollar hasn’t been that strong, particularly against the USD and the Euro, we have still seen plenty of people heading to both of these places which have been full of tourists in the last few months, purchasing very high value hotels, particularly in the big cities such as London, Paris, Rome, New York and Los Angeles.”
The US, she observes, is coming back strongly, due in large part to competition on the routes for airlines which has led to more flights and airfares going down in price – as well as a gradual strengthening of the Australian dollar against the US dollar.
New dedicated program for luxury travel
Announcing to Karryon, Burnes says that Helloworld has not previously created a dedicated program for luxury travel.
“We have luxury products in all of our brochures and in our system. However, there is a clear plan to have a dedicated luxury brochure in 2025. It is likely to be released before the end of this financial year,” she says.
For more information, visit helloworldlimited.com.au
