Red Savannah boss George Morgan-Grenville talks market volatility and rising prices

Q. How have sales been for 2025 so far?
Overall, we are 10% ahead of the same time last year. So broadly, sales have been good. I would say it has been much lumpier than the past two or three years. Q1 was much softer than we normally find, whereas Q2 was the best we’ve ever had in the company’s history. I can’t really give a reason as to why that might be the case, but talking to some of our colleagues and competitors, it seems to have been quite standard across the industry. 

Q. What is the current state of the UK market in your view?
I think the market is more volatile and harder to predict than it has been in the past. We’ve seen an extended quote-to-booking time compared to straight after the pandemic, because nobody has the same urgency to get away. I wouldn’t say it’s become a buyers’ market, but I think people have decided they don’t have to travel at any given time, so they don’t feel the need to rush into a booking.

We have also seen a growing issue with pricing – there’s a value question to be asked of the market. Europe and the Caribbean are probably two of the places where prices have gone up the most, and in terms of African safaris, what you used to be able to do for £20,000 is going to cost you £40,000 now. I think some suppliers need to be careful when raising prices like this. Very often, high-net-worth travellers can afford to buy luxury because they’ve done well in business – they’re not stupid, and they will react against price gouging. When prices are eye-watering, whether people will go on being prepared to pay is anyone’s guess.

Interestingly, we have had our first set of 2026 prices come in from a Caribbean supplier, and they had reduced their prices by 5% for the high season and 10% for the low season. We may be seeing the beginning of a sort of price reversal. Having said that, the number of high-net-worth individuals globally is growing. Stats have shown the number has almost doubled from 2012 to 2024 – going from just under 12 million to about 23 million last year. The market size has increased exponentially, and because of this growth in clients with larger budgets, we’ve seen more demand for hyper-personalisation. People really expect you to know what they want, interpret it and deliver quite sophisticated briefs.

Q. In what areas are you seeing demand grow among luxury travellers?
There’s definitely not a one-size-fits-all in luxury anymore. We’re seeing people moving away from resort-based holidays to ultra-luxury villas, where you get all the same services you would in a hotel, but in complete privacy. This all plays into the idea of hyper-personalisation, because with a villa holiday, you can really create a deeply experiential story around what people want to do. 

In a similar vein, we have a growing portfolio of about 60 private Turkish gulets and motor sailors, split between the Adriatic and the eastern Mediterranean. The motor sailors bridge the gap between the gulet and the superyacht, selling for £25,000 a week up to about £100,000. These are becoming more popular because you get all the advantages of a superyacht without the price. People are looking for this kind of exclusive experience because they want to get off the beaten track and put themselves into situations that are not like their everyday lives.

That is really what the luxury traveller is looking for today – immersive and life-changing experiences. You can’t really contrive these things, so you have to allow for a bit of serendipity in itineraries; if plans are too choreographed, there isn’t time for that serendipity to happen.

Q. And what destinations have clients been showing more interest in?
You’re always going to have demand for the island resort-type holiday, whether it’s the Maldives or Mauritius, or people going farther to Polynesia. There is a need for this type of trip because when the weather is really foul in the UK, people start to dream of lying on a white sandy beach in the sunshine. 

But appetite for the more experiential itinerary has been huge, one example being Japan, where the growth level has been extraordinary over the last two or three years. There is something about Japan that just absolutely wows people. I think it’s the fact that it’s so completely different to anywhere else in the world; we’re surrounded by ubiquity all the time, and I think people enjoy that their culture is so defined and different. South Korea is also on the up – we’ve just launched our own South Korea programme. Two years ago, nobody wanted to go there, and now there’s a very well-defined growing interest.

Madagascar is really starting to have its day, and you’ve got some interesting new hotels coming onto the scene there. On the east coast is a new property called Voaara where, between June and September, you can see the humpback whale migration. There’s a tented property called Namoroka Tsingy Camp that’s opened as the only accommodation option in the Tsingy de Namoroka National Park, which really has the wow factor. In Madagascar, 90% of the wildlife is not found anywhere else in the world, which is the kind of draw luxury travellers want. 

A lot of Brazil is undiscovered too. For example, there’s an extraordinary area called the Lençóis Maranhenses National Park which was named a Unesco World Heritage Site last year, where guests can stay in the 23-guest lodge Oiá Casa Lençóis. Small properties like this springing up all over the world is a really exciting development.

Q. How do you support travel agents and are you looking to grow this relationship?
We are very pro travel agents. We’re not big enough to have a dedicated agency sales team, and 85% of our business is consumer direct while 15% comes from travel agencies. However, over the years, we have found that there’s a slight bias with our agency business towards the villas and gulets. For villas, the trade represents about 19% of our inquiries and 28% of our sales.

We do run quite regular webinars for travel agents, and we have newsletters specifically for them. We’re currently creating a dedicated agent area on our website, so we are growing that part of the business. 

A bit like how we get our clients, a lot of our agent relationships come through referrals. The top agents tend to all know each other and they discuss suppliers that are good amongst themselves, so most agents end up coming through recommendations.

Q. How do you make Red Savannah stand out from other luxury tour operators in the UK?
It’s all about delivery at the end of the day and, whatever it costs us, we always deliver. I think that very often in the travel industry, there is a lack of spirit of generosity. One of the ways you can underpin your brand is in how generous you are when unavoidable things go wrong. We always endeavour to give clients more than they were expecting; if you’re charging top-end prices, you have to deliver. Thanks to this, we have a very strong repeat rate, and a high referral rate from client to client.  

The [quality of] staff we employ is also hugely important. In order to have a sales role in Red Savannah, you have to have worked in travel for 10 years minimum. Most of our staff have been in the industry between 15 and 25 years, so they really know their stuff. Destination knowledge has to be a given. We don’t have any product managers – all our salespeople also manage product, so when they recommend a particular hotel or destination, they can sell with conviction and confidence.

Q. Finally, how do you see the industry growing and changing in the next few years?
I think we’re starting to see AI change the way the industry works, both from a distribution and an operational perspective. This is a technology that is absolutely in its infancy, but [it’s] already driving a quite significant number of inquiries. I think what we’re going to see across the market is a decline in Google and PPC-related inquiries, and probably also in organic inquiries, and an increase in AI inquiries. What AI looks for in a website is different to what the traditional Google algorithm looks for, so I think everything we’ve learned over the last 20 years or so about optimising our websites for the luxury market is going to go out the window. 

As far as the luxury market is concerned, we’ll see it continuing to grow. On a compound annual growth rate basis, the global market is predicted to grow at around 8.2% a year until 2030. That would mean the market will probably be worth about $2.3 trillion by 2030, up from $1.5 trillion last year. And whether people like it or not, the rich are getting richer. Typically, the top 1% holds as much wealth as the bottom 90%, so you’ve got some staggeringly wealthy people who want to travel. We’ve got an increasing number of these families travelling with us at the moment, and sabbaticals are also a really growing part of the market.