Toni Ambler, Managing Director Oceania, TTC Tour Brands (Contiki, Trafalgar, Costsaver, Insight Vacations and Luxury Gold) spoke exclusively to Karryon on the latest luxury tour products and trends emerging in luxury touring.
What was the decision behind the recent launch of the women-only tours for Insight Vacations?
When you’re developing and designing new products you’ve got to look at the data – and we know somewhere between 67 and 70 per cent of our Insight Vacations travellers are female. We know that quite often they’re also the lead booker as well, they are the ones deciding, picking the destination and driving the location. We also look at customer service reviews and contact points with the customer, on a daily basis, and we know that there were a lot of people starting to ask questions around female-only tours.
It’s also come, I think, at the right time post pandemic, because there is still this degree of travel, particularly in the last 24 months, that has become a little bit more confusing, conflicting, and outside people’s comfort zones…. that’s why it seemed like the perfect time.
The trips are being sold in 2024 but will operate from March, 2025. We’ve already hosted one-off, bespoke trips before, whereas this is a set series of 11 trips that are always within our portfolio that will hopefully grow in popularity. That’s our commitment to making sure we design a product that is long lasting, and is designed specifically for the female traveller.
With your research for this new product, what were some of the expectations or desires of solo female travellers that were uncovered?
It’s a really interesting question because sometimes when you look at other female-only or niche products, they often lend themselves to being in more adventure destinations such as Morocco or Nepal where there is that need, or that innate sense of going on a guided, small group trip for security.
That is probably one of the aspects where we realised let’s look at this portfolio of 11 trips – and some of them are not at all ‘adventurous’ – some are to destinations such as Italy and Great Britain.
The reason we started with the Insight Vacations brand (and who knows if it will continue on to Luxury Gold or Trafalgar) but the Insight Vacations brand, seemed the perfect way to start because it has that kind of ‘business class’ style to it. Guests are staying at beautiful hotels with soft comforts, and the ladies who travel with us are well travelled and curious: she’s hosting dinner parties, running book clubs and is very interested in movies, books, history and culture.
We decided to create a product that is women-only that goes to India and Nepal – but does it in a luxurious way because you don’t always have to have adventure and be camping. Everyone wants to have that Eat, Pray, Love moment. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to compromise on the finer things.
So for our itineraries that go to Peru and places that are a bit more adventurous, guests still have a really nice place to come home to at the end of the day where they can have a glass of wine with girlfriends, sleep in a beautiful bed, and don’t have to compromise on those luxuries. We thought it would be really nice to bring ‘the business class aspect’ of touring to some of these adventure destinations.
What are some of the Make Travel Matter experiences that will be available on these Insight Vacations women-only tours that you think are truly unique for travellers and support women in the regions that you’re visiting?
I think maybe the one that I love the most, is we have this beautiful Italian weaver named Marta who has been a friend of TTC for so long, as we’ve been taking Insight Vacations travellers to her for some time now. Her uniqueness and her product offering is the Italian craft of weaving which is so special and so beautiful, but is a dying tradition because of the increase of machinery.
They’re trying to protect the tradition and keep the legacy alive and the community aspect of it all with these beautiful Italian woman sitting around weaving. So that’s one of the experiences where our travellers can go, they can sit down and learn the art of weaving. They meet with Marta and the ladies that work with her and her community and they have the chance to buy beautiful silk products.
It’s about making sure that that money goes back into the right parts of the tourism economy with those really small, local experiences. The Make Travel Matter experiences are really small with a maximum of 24 that just allows you to have those really small, boutique experiences.
One of the things that I love about touring is, yes, travellers can go to Italy and they’ll see Venice and they’ll ‘tick the box’ – because everyone wants to see the icons. But what I do love about the product we’ve designed is you’ll spend a couple of nights in Venice, you can get the photo and have the experience – but then you’re off into this tiny, remote Italian village in the middle of nowhere and you’re meeting Marta and having this really hyper-local and very unique Italian experience.
It’s great for the travellers, but then there’s also the aspect of making sure we are spreading the money into parts of Italy that need it more. That is a lot of the Make Travel Matter philosophy. Designing trips and being very mindful of seasonality and over tourism is one of our big focuses to make sure we’re not putting everybody in Venice in July.
For luxury advisors with clients interested in touring, how would you describe the key differences between Insight Vacations and Luxury Gold? Which type of traveller does each appeal to? What are some of the other key differences between the two brands?
The easiest way to explain the portfolio of products is: Luxury Gold is your first class; Insight vacations is your business class; and then Trafalgar is like premium economy.
Insight Vacations and Luxury Gold are very similar products and Luxury Gold was actually spawned off Insight, but just takes things up another notch to make it even more exclusive and premium. With Luxury Gold, guests are staying at all five and six-star hotels or even castles – we use a lot of our Red Carnation properties, which are the top rated hotels in London for those trips.
We have these amazing Founder’s Collection experiences which are very few and limited departures where, for instance, you’ll have a dinner in an Italian village in some beautiful Italian villa, which is run by an iconic Italian family who meets you and hosts your dinner. The idea behind this is that you can only get those experiences if you’ve got a very deep ‘little black book’ and you know the right people to ask.
The Luxury Gold experiences are highly curated. Everything is small group (12-18 people, depending on the destination). Whereas with Insight Vacations, some of the trips are up to 14 people in a coach.
And then a lot of the Insight Vacations USP’s – like I said, it’s business class. You travel on coaches with only 40 seats and they have been designed so there’s no paneling in the windows and you’re looking at spectacular and uninterrupted views. The coaches have near-full recliner seats to almost a bed, and it’s a very comfortable way of getting around Europe. Guests stay in all four or five-star hotels, and dine on beautiful meals at acclaimed restaurants. Luxury Gold dining takes place in Michelin-star restaurants.
The key differences between the two really comes down to the types of food, accommodation, and group size. There’s at least one Make Travel Matter experience offered on every single itinerary.
Are there any new products, itineraries or initiatives coming up soon for Luxury Gold that advisors can look out for?
There’s nothing that I can talk about at this point in time until we really start getting into the 2025 selling season. But I can say that Japan and India have both been such popular destinations for Luxury Gold this year.
I think probably in years gone by Canada and the Rockies product has always been really popular, but we’ve really seen Asia take off this year which is obviously in line with a trend.
One of the biggest barriers that we have to overcome with Luxury Gold is that it still has a stigma of falling into a tour. But what we quite often say is that it’s just a guided, small group curated journey. In many instances, they don’t actually use coaches because they’re not actually travelling long distances and they might take internal flight, or a Jeep in Africa, or a junk boat or speed train in Japan. So it’s whatever is the best way to get around.
But I think the ease for agents to book these products is that there’s so much free time. All that is really locked in is the accommodation and then some of the access to the meals. We contract a Michelin-star restaurant in Capri, for instance, that has a wait list of six years to get into it – whereas we’ve got an allocation every year.
So I would say for those advisors who are trying to do everything themselves and build out this amazing itinerary, these tours are a great place to start because even if the client doesn’t want to do all the other add ons that we offer, that’s fine but they are staying in incredible properties.
We’re trying to break down the stigma of the touring concept that it’s just a curation of luxury experiences packaged together that takes all the heavy lifting out of it for them. They’ve already secured the castle in England, Michelin-star meals, transport – and then the clients are free to do whatever they want with plenty of free time because we know it’s aimed at a discerning traveller. The Luxury Gold customers are looking for their own space to do what they want.
Upon the release in July last year of TTC’s annual Global Impact Report, it was reported that due to the growing cost-of-living crisis, 53 per cent of respondents said value for money is the most important factor when planning a holiday. With even more pressures on household budgets since that time, what has TTC experienced, as a business, to overall tour booking numbers?
We’ll be sharing more details soon as we actually just commissioned a piece of research into what is happening and what are Australians looking for. It was surprisingly supportive of the fact that the cost of living crisis is not having as much of an impact, particularly at the higher end. The research was really interesting to suggest that about 45 per cent of Australians are still looking at taking an international holiday in 2024, which gives us about nine months left of this year.
But what was so interesting about it was that 77 per cent had booked only some or nothing at all of their international holidays and the message there for agents is that there’s a lot left in the year and I think it’s a late booking year. Everything was usually always booked in September for travel in June/July. Whereas I think everyone is just waiting and booking in May for travel in September.
There’s a lot of feedback from the research to suggest that September and October are going to be the most-travelled months this year. I just think that everyone got over the 48 degrees in Italy last year and the crowding!
It seems like September and October and even into Christmas are going to be the preferred months to go over to Europe. Which is great, because it means that for agents, there’s still a lot of booking potential.
2024 is not yet over and there’s still a lot of commission to be made, particularly when selling luxury.
Through insights from the Global Impact Report and TTC’s TreadRight Foundation, what is the current sentiment, would you say, among luxury Australian travellers towards choosing sustainable tour operators? How important is it in their decision-making processes?
I think that they don’t want to think about it too much – it just needs to be there. I think there’s an expectation that if you’re buying a luxury product, that there’s this beautiful vertical integration right the way through what you’re buying and that everything has been considered and thought out, so that you don’t have to.
For instance, if you’re buying a beautiful Hermes handbag, you know that it’s been made by an individual craftsman taking care of every single detail the right way, with the correctly sourced leather, the right conditions for workers and everything. I just think that there’s already this implied expectation that it’s taken care of and that it’s seamless.
One of the things that we reported in our last Impact Report was that 60 per cent of Australians said that if they are buying something sustainable, or that is good for the planet, there is an expectation that it’s going to cost them more. We were trying to break down that stigma by saying that we, as a business, don’t charge extra. But I think that statistic, to this pertinent question, is that luxury, sustainability and a good supply chain are intertwined.
For more information, visit ttc.com