THE Luxury Travel Collection’s (LTC) Product Showcase, which recently wrapped up its third year, has become a staple on the travel industry’s calendar. Since its debut, the event has served as a mile marker for the luxury travel house’s success, with general manager Nikki Glading this year detailing 21% growth in its member community, 46% growth in year-on-year sales, and most importantly, 100% membership retention.
This year, LTC will push the concept even further in the coming years, with Glading announcing its intent to transform its annual conference into the “the fashion week of luxury travel”.
“It’s not just another product showcase,” the LTC head said in her opening address at this year’s event. “We are not simply showcasing travel. We are doing what the greatest fashion houses have done for centuries: curating a collection, presenting a vision, telling the world what the season demands.”
Only at LTC’s Product Showcase, Glading said, will attendees see “the products, experiences, and destinations that will define the next 12 months for your customers”.
Early hints
The first moment Flight Centre Travel Group’s (FCTG) luxury division interplayed the similarities between travel and fashion was at the September launch of Travel Associates’ new campaign, ‘The Art of the Moment’. This push compared TA’s luxury travel advisors to designers and artists crafting ‘haute couture’ travel experiences for their clients.
TA general manager Rachel Kingswell told travelBulletin‘s sister publication Travel Daily at the launch that the key to the development of the film was ensuring the magic of what the network’s agents do was captured and communicated.
“It was really the parallel between what a designer does and what our advisors do every single day,” she explained. “Advisors are the true success of our business…they are at the epicentre of everything we do, so this is about [bringing] their story to life [and] what they do that you can’t market.”
FCTG head of luxury Danielle Galloway also leant into the similarities between designers and luxury travel advisors.
“It’s a little bit like designing the wedding dress or picking a fine piece of jewellery or customised art…it actually takes that element of design and curation to really make sure that it has been handcrafted with the right touches,” she told TD.
A curated collection of travel
Fashion shows see the industry’s biggest brands gather each season to unveil new collections, set trends, and court the buyers who will carry their products into the market. LTC hopes its annual product showcase will play a similar role for high-end travel, collating Australia’s most influential advisors to help it shape the direction of the luxury travel market.
One of the key pillars of this idea will see the reimagined Showcase serve as a forum for luxury travel brands to present their latest product to LTC’s industry-molding member advisors. This exclusive access the event provides will act as the fulcrum for LTC’s conceptual vision for its flagship event.
“This whole product event is like a ‘breakthrough collection’,” Galloway said. “All of the partners that are here today have their greatest, newest itineraries in the market. Members love that it’s not just what they’re seeing every single day.”
The exclusive access theme is carried through LTC’s ‘key’ motif. Members of the team wear a brooch in the shape of a key, which “unlocks the door” to the exclusive access LTC provides.
“It opens the doors for them into this whole new world,” Glading said, likening it to after-hours access to a luxury fashion brand’s flagship store.
Seasons of luxury
Another parallel the Product Showcase draws between fashion and travel is seasonality. Glading, addressing attendees on the first morning of the event, showcased what trends and themes the coming four seasons of travel will bring.
Spring will see the emergence of a new peak period in travel, she said, as luxury travellers “give peak season the cold shoulder”. With luxury travel brands continually moving toward low- and shoulder-seasons, clients are following toward less crowded destinations and times of year.
However summer, still the peak season for travel, will bring about the rise of “unlimited luxury”. Glading said the once-shunned concept of “all-inclusive” travel is now being embraced by luxury clients, who expect Michelin-star dining and exclusive experiences as part of their vacation.
During autumn, wellness will become an essential motivator for travellers. Typically seen as an add-on, spa experiences are now becoming central to clients’ bucket lists, Glading said, with two-thirds of luxury advisors reporting wellness as their second-most-requested experience. Winter will see the arrival of the concept of ‘hushpitality’: stimulus escapes, digital detoxes, device-free breaks, or ‘deadzoning’, and space to breathe away from the crowds.
Beyond the conceptual framework, the key axle of LTC’s “fashion week of travel” is its advisor members, which FCTG’s luxury division has spent the past 12 months backing as the designers of travel.
“You are the stylists of luxury travel, and this Showcase is your runway,” she said, encouraging the advisors to deliver the trip of a lifetime to their clients.
