The Luminaire hails impact of ‘neat partnership’ with Virgin Unite

Specialist tour operator The Luminaire has praised the impact of its “neat partnership” with Virgin Unite after launching a series of trips that will donate proceeds to the Virgin Group’s non-profit foundation.

 

The first of the Foundation trips, which will see a group of travellers climb Mount Kilimanjaro in December, sold out “incredibly quickly” according to Adam Sebba, the operator’s founder and chief executive.

 

There are a further three trips taking place next year – a trek across Bhutan, an expedition up Mount Everest and a second climb of Mount Kilimanjaro – which Sebba says he “expects to fill up a few months before departure”.

 

100% of the profits made from all Foundation trips will be donated to charities supported by Virgin Unite.

 

Sebba told Aspire that the partnership, which was unveiled in June, is working because “[The Luminaire and Virgin Unite] are both doing what we’re good at and the result is greater than the sum of its parts”.

 

He said launching the Foundation trips has been like “a labour of love” for him and The Luminaire’s second co-founder Nicholas Priest, as the pair wanted to have a foundation as an “integral part” of the business since it was founded in 2022.

 

“Initially, we concluded that all we could do was offer 1% of our sales, but that never felt right for us. We weren’t confident where the money was going and we didn’t feel like we had built a sustainable model,” he said.

 

“We believed that there was a way to build a social enterprise within our business, and partnering with Virgin Unite was a way of immediately maximising the impact of what we were doing.”

 

The non-profit foundation vets the charities and provides impact reporting, while The Luminaire operates the trips and selects the individual causes.

 

Sebba said the operator “wants to engage with the trade” on Foundation trips, as he believes they provide agents with the opportunity to “give something back”.

 

He said: “It’s super hard with philanthropy journeys because the proceeds are going to charity, so it’s difficult to give people the levels of commission they would expect if they were booking a luxury holiday.”

 

However, other incentives are in place, including the chance for agents to join a trip themselves if they sell five places to their clients.

 

“It’s an altruistic endeavour, and I hope that message will go down well,” he said.

 

The Foundation trips have a lower price point than other itineraries offered by The Luminaire, which Sebba hopes will encourage more agents to offer the opportunities to their clients.

 

“We designed these very specifically at a substantially lower price point to our main trips, because we wanted to create universal appeal. This is about philanthropy for everyone,” he said.

 

The operator has “big things in the pipeline”, including potential Foundation trips to Japan and the Atlas Mountains.

 

“We’ll continue finding exciting challenges and bucket-list things that will appeal to agents and their clients,” Sebba said.