Luxury agency Travlux secures £161k booking on New Year’s Day

Luxury agency Travlux has started the year by securing a £161,000 booking on New Year’s Day. 

 

The booking is for a two-person seven-night stay at Sandy Lane in Barbados later this month.

 

Travlux owner Ross Johnson told Aspire that the enquiry came through on Boxing Day, and the stay in the property’s newly renovated five-bedroom Villa at Sandy Lane was confirmed on January 1.

 

The agency’s “close relationships” with suppliers helped enable this quick turnaround, with an Elite Travel Concierge team member responding during their holiday to finalise the details. 

 

He said: “We needed a couple of British Airways first-class tickets, and if we hadn’t done that quickly it might have changed the trajectory of the whole booking and the overall gross. There are a lot of things like that riding on the relationships that we have.”

 

Johnson said the clients who made the booking were his “first-ever” sale when he founded Travlux in 2020, and now they spend “half a million a year on various trips”.

 

When maintaining relationships with high-net-worth (HNW) clients, he said: “We really try not to pester them about things. Part of it is just trusting that they will reach out when they want to reach out.”

 

Johnson explained that HNW bookings tend not to adhere to the patterns seen in peak seasons, saying: “You have to be patient with these high-value bookings, and trust your relationships. It would be different if we were trying to focus on volume and a lower profit margin, but we’re not doing that.”

 

“I try not to buy into the whole drama of peaks,” he added. “I think in the package holiday market there is so much pressure on the generic peaks market to try and smash as many bookings as you can, but we really try not to buy into it.”

 

Johnson said every HNW client is different, and the key is to “learn what they want”. Some clients, including those who made the Sandy Lane booking, prefer organising trips solely through WhatsApp messages for convenience, and others want a more in-depth call or email chain.

 

The £161,000 booking includes a £9,000 epigenetic test, which encompasses blood testing and gene therapy, resulting in a tailored longevity plan to enhance healthspan.

 

Johnson said HNW clients are particularly interested in integrating wellness and functional medicine into their bookings, saying: “At this level of wealth, it’s definitely something that people are becoming more aware of.”