News of Luxury Escapes' agent portal earlier this month attracted significant attention from travel agents, with over 400 agencies and well over 2,000 agents submitting to the platform in the week that followed the news.
The portal comes amid widespread demand for agents for Luxury Escapes, driven by the fact that many buyers buy its product and then mark it up for their client or sell it without any commission.
Discuss the move with Weekly trip was Adam Schwab, CEO of Luxury Escapes, explaining why his company launched its highly sought-after agent portal.
“We didn’t reward agents for selling our product,” Schwab said. “Agents would regularly come to us and say ‘we want to sell luxury getaways, but you have no way of doing that’.”
Over the years, Luxury Escapes has had a few informal travel portals, but they haven't attracted much investment. The Luxury Escapes Agent Hub, planned for March, will be the wholesaler's first official portal and bucks a general travel industry trend of slashing agent commissions and marketing products directly to consumers . especially among airlines.
Adam Schwab
But Schwab rejects this trend and instead values the work of agents, particularly through the relationships they have established with their clients.
“We think there's real value in the relationship that agents have with customers and if the customer wanted to buy from us, they would already buy from us (because) our brand is relatively well-known,” Schwab said.
“The reason people come back to their agent year after year is because their agent gives them great advice, they can trust their agent and (the agent does it) for them for a long period. So rather than trying to change behavior and spending a fortune to acquire a client, I would much rather work with an agent and reward them for building that relationship.
The portal, which agents can access after a qualification process, will offer this same personalized service to agents, with the same 24/7 customer service that is offered to its consumers.
But if Luxury Escapes now seems to be favored by the sector, this was not always the case. Some travel professionals view Luxury Escapes as a competitor, but Schwab said he has always considered his company a friend to the industry.
He cites the example that Luxury Escapes is responsible for 50 per cent of Australian outbound tourists to the Maldives being booked through Luxury Escapes, which the wholesaler has been instrumental in expanding.
“It goes back to the pie argument; we never thought about taking market share, we always thought about growing the market,” Schwab said. “The Maldives is a classic example: in 2017 I think 17-18,000 Australians went to the Maldives, and now 36,000 Australians arrive every year. »
And Luxury Escapes isn't just sending its clients abroad, it's looking to send itself abroad and the trade route could be the way to do that. Luxury Escapes currently has operations in 29 countries, with the US and UK being the largest international offices outside of Australasia.
“We've seen how successful Flight Center and Intrepid have been globally – it's certainly something that's been on the roadmap for a long time (and) we've made reasonable progress, around 20% of our sales come from international sources. markets,” Schwab said.
“We believe that trade is also a way to achieve this. »
Learn more about the Agent Portal here.
