09 October, 2008: Holidaymakers are looking for authentic experiences and are prepared to pay big money for them, delegates at the ABTA Travel Convention were told.
Martin Lomax, the business development director at Gold Medal Travel, said nearly 50 per cent of people agreed with the following statement about luxury holidays: “These holidays are all about the experience.”
Speaking in a breakout session entitled “Selling Luxury”, he added: “Luxury is now about authenticity and the enhanced experience and you must differentiate your product.”
Lomax said Gold Medal´s Pure Luxury Holidays division currently had two bookings in the pipeline, each for half a million pounds.
“Our average selling price is 7,500 pounds and the most expensive holiday we have sold so far has been for 110,000 pounds, but that is about to be beaten with those holidays in the pipeline,” he said.
The average duration for a Pure Luxury Holidays trip is seven to eight nights.
Lomax claimed the market was resilient and said the luxury sector was continuing to grow. He said statistics showed that 1.6 million people had a disposable income over 100,000 pounds per year and over five million had a salary of more than 50,000 pounds per annum.
He said 16 per cent of family holidays sold by Pure Luxury Holidays were for three adults, because people were increasingly taking their nanny with them on trips.
Delegates were also told that 42,000 rooms would be added in the first class and luxury market in Dubai in the next five years.
