Schwab by Luxury Escapes is growing rapidly and is a new, one-of-a-kind supermarket in Melbourne

Adam Schwab runs half marathons barefoot and plays golf in the dark to give himself more time to spend Luxury Getaways where, as CEO, he oversaw the company's rise to become one of the fastest growing travel agencies in the world.

Luxury Escapes has seven million members worldwide with offices in Australia, India, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom. Members enjoy exclusive access to daily deals on hotels, weekends, luxury small group tours, experiences and flights.

Luxury Escapes' latest venture is a supermarket in the Melbourne suburb of Chatswood, where customers can sip champagne while discussing their travel plans. Web in Travel spoke with Schwab about his plans.

The new Melbourne store shows great confidence in retail travel stores. What has been the reaction so far?

The response to our first permanent retail experience has been incredible: demand has been off the charts and our trading is already well over budget.

We underestimated how much customers love being able to spend an hour with an expert consultant planning their trip while sipping a glass of Veuve. We also organized back-to-back events with engaged partners – showcasing their products to customers, creating a fantastic win-win situation.

In what ways will you complement physical sales with technology-driven sales?

We view the retail store as an extension of our web and app presence. Customers can create a detailed TripPlan in-store and then continue to evolve their trip before their departure and during their vacation.

So even though the interaction we have with our guests is in person, we are able to utilize all of Luxury Escapes' technological capabilities to enhance the overall experience.

How did Luxury Escapes fare during Covid and how quickly was the response?

COVID has been difficult for the entire industry, but we have been fortunate as a primarily online business to be able to continue selling through COVID and even increase the size of our team, especially our technology team which has grown from 30 people to almost 150 now.

We are trading at more than double pre-COVID levels across the business, with some source markets like the US growing by over 400% since 2019.

What lessons have you learned from the pandemic?

We have learned that it is absolutely essential to maintain a strong and trusting relationship with our customers and suppliers during these difficult times. We have emerged from COVID a much stronger and more diverse company, with a much larger team, a stronger brand and a broader customer base, but we also recognize that we have been very fortunate to be able to adapt to serving local markets and to have great operational leverage in the company.

A sales manager at a luxury property in Bali told me that Luxury Escapes was “both friend and foe” – that is, it filled the beds but got lots of money in return. price. How do you view this statement?

This would absolutely be the minority view: we find that virtually all of our hotel clients, most of whom we have worked with for five years or more, appreciate the significant additional profitability generated by a Luxury Escapes campaign.

In many cases, we literally generate millions of dollars in additional profitability for our partners. Our commission levels are similar to online travel agencies, but we also spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing for our hotel partners (unlike OTAs who charge extra for marketing support).

We are a marketing channel that attracts 96% more guests who hadn't planned to visit the hotel or resort before finding it on Luxury Escapes. Simply put, no other channel in the world can deliver incremental profitability like a Luxury Escapes campaign does, which is why our customers are incredibly loyal and recognize the mutual value created.

How big was your business in Bali post-pandemic – as a percentage of your total business?

Bali remains our number one market and it left its doors in early 2022 and hasn't looked back. The actual percentage varies from month to month, but Bali is incredibly popular and continues to go from strength to strength in the Australian and Asian source markets.

In terms of overseas destinations, have any trends emerged post-pandemic or is it still Bali and Thailand?

Bali and Thailand are super strong, alongside the Maldives. Fiji was incredible; demand is extraordinary, but supply remains limited. Vietnam is rebounding well, as is Hong Kong, while Singapore seems to be gaining popularity every year. We are also seeing a nice recovery in touring products outside of the Middle East and Europe.

You are passionate about the staff working in the office. Not from my house. For what ?

We are passionate about creating an extremely strong culture and recognize the importance of working closely together from a mental health and collaboration perspective. We have always been a company that values ​​flexibility, so if our team has a real need to do something outside of the office, that is accepted, but ultimately we believe we are able to best serve our customers and create a fantastic atmosphere. which is really creating a buzz, we want our teams to work side by side in the office as much as possible.

Why do you think the Luxury Escapes model has been so successful?

We care about our customers, we mean it more than any other travel retail brand in the world. We have an NPS of 75, which is virtually unheard of in the travel retail industry (typically only very high-end travel agencies like Abercrombie & Kent have such customer satisfaction levels).

We are also very keen to innovate and are not afraid to make mistakes. During COVID, we created a marketplace platform that completely changed our sourcing profile, increasing our product range from 100 to over 15,000.

We've also created a market-leading trip authoring product that dynamically adapts before and during a trip. The Most Valuable Travel Companies in the World – Reservation.com and Airbnb, while incredible operations, haven't really innovated in a decade, giving fast-growing challenger brands like Luxury Escapes a huge opportunity to meet customer demand and create a much better travel experience.

Expansion plans in Asia?

We have been operating in major Asian markets, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand, for almost five years, but this year we plan to significantly accelerate our investments in what we see as extremely interesting growth markets for us.

Our product range is perfectly suited to Asian travelers, and we look forward to investing heavily in the brand and digital channels to grow our market share.