luxury market report australia
representing 43 per cent of leisure
travellers.
Michelle Papas, event director
at Luxperience, Australia’s annual
luxury trade event, said the sector’s
growth has not gone unnoticed.
While Australian luxury travellers
are not huge in numbers compared
to China or America, they are very
high-yielding, she said.
“Australians have a lot more
discretionary time for travel with
four weeks annual leave and also a
strong economy,” she added.
Claudia Rossi Hudson, who
owns Mary Rossi Travel, said
clients that fall within that market
are avid travellers. “They are
mainly older people who have the
resources and more importantly
the time to travel, so they can go on
three, four or five trips a year,” she
said. “Australians are also a little
bit more adventurous, than say
the Americans, when they travel
and are not quite as obsessed with
personal safety,” she observed.
Hudson notes that within this
older generation of travellers, she
sees two main trends.
“There’s a big increase in multi-
generational travel where grandma
and grandpa take all their children
and their spouses and their
grandchildren on a large, expensive
trip and they want luxury. By that
I don’t mean glitz and marble and
chrome everywhere but they want
comfort, space, good quality food
and guides,” Hudson said.
“There’s also definitely a trend
towards small group travel, where
at the luxury end of the market,
people would prefer to be with
a few other couples with whom
they are likely to have common
interests, and go to exotic places
like new locations opening up in
Asia or the Antarctica, the Arctic
Circle or Africa.”
Papas concurs that for
Australians, luxury means
experiential, more immersive trips
that move away from glitz.
“Sometimes it’s about going
10 TTG Asia luxury | May 2018
The
Australian
upmarket
traveller…
comprises mainly older people
but also millennials; the latter
uses services of travel advisers
is more adventurous than the
American luxe traveller
shuns glitz for immersive trips
to a place that is so remote it
has very limited services but
it’s the braggability that they’ve
been there or that they were
the only ones on the beach, for
instance,” she said. “It gives a lot
more meaning to the life of the
traveller.”
Although baby-boomers are
the driving force behind luxury
travel, Virtuoso’s Londregan said
he is also seeing an increasing
number of millennials using
travel advisers.
“It’s counter-intuitive
because this is the group known
for growing up with digital
technology and DIY,” he offered.
“But they are also the generation
that has a couple of generations in
their family that have travelled a
lot and for them, luxury is being
able to find an adviser that can do
all this stuff for you.
“So we’ve had very strong
growth from millennials booking
into our network and they’ve
probably been exposed to luxury
products at a younger age than
any other generation in history.”
There’s a
big increase
in multi-
generational
travel... also
definitely a
trend towards
small group
travel...
Claudia Rossi
Hudson, owner,
Mary Rossi Travel
(right)
Meantime the future of
Australia’s luxury travel sector
looks set to keep growing.
Credit Suisse research shows the
number of Ultra High Net Worth
individuals in Australia with a net
worth of A$65.5 million jumped
30 per cent to almost 3,000 in
the 12 months to mid-2017, and
is projected to rise 70 per cent
between now and 2026, thanks to
a healthy economy and attractive
lifestyle.
Still, Londregan believes there
is a market gap with not enough
suppliers being aware of the
appetite Australia has for luxury
experiences.
“We tend to sell the same thing
to the Australian market and we
haven’t actually tried to stay ahead
of the curve,” he said. “That’s
probably because we’re a long
way from many suppliers and we
have a pretty small market so it’s
quite expensive to come down
and communicate (the product to
Australian luxe travellers) but that
doesn’t mean there isn’t a huge
opportunity here,” he observed.