Big Idea 2015: Rewriting the DNA of Luxury Travel

In this series of posts, Influencers and members predict the ideas and trends that will shape 2015. Read all the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #BigIdeas2015 in the body of your post).

All good business plans begin with a problem that requires a solution or addresses a need to be filled. I’ve had two good ideas since I left my law practice 30 years ago.

The first was the creation of Lawyers Travel in 1984. For us, the issue at hand was that lawyers had no differentiated, high-touch service while traveling, and we fulfilled that need. That morphed into other analogous, vertical markets, and that became the foundation of what is now Ovation Travel Group. 2014 marked the 30th anniversary for the company and Lawyers Travel remains our flagship division.

My second good idea is just beginning to come to fruition, and it is a combination of both filling a need and utilizing the latest trends within the travel industry. In my Big Idea 2014 article, I predicted the return of what I call “the pampered business traveler.” The catch is that the pampering now occurs largely through technological advances. From arrival at an airport to unlocking a hotel room door, travelers can now take advantage of amenities and offerings that seemed almost unimaginable 10 years ago: e-boarding passes, in-flight Wi-Fi, automated passport scanning systems, mobile hotel check-in apps, and iPad docking stations, to name just a few.

In looking at Ovation’s client base, we have bankers, lawyers, entertainment executives, and consultants that love us because we provide them with above-average customer service. Technology is a big part of it. This is not a trend that is peaking anytime soon. For example, last month SITA released a survey noting that 2 percent of passengers preferred using a smartphone for booking travel in 2012; in 2015 that number is expected to jump to 70 percent. There is clearly a continuing need for personalized, cutting-edge, first-class treatment that can be accessed by the digitally-savvy traveler.

In 2015, I predict that an expansion of high-touch travel services will finally include vacation travel. Imagine an online luxury travel agency of the future that has the DNA of an offline full service customer-centric travel agency. If you are killing yourself working on deals 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, and you finally get an opportunity to go on a vacation, you want that vacation to be perfect.

While many companies focus on perfecting the luxury hotel experience or luxury air travel, I believe modern travelers want an entirely connected experience — airfare, hotel, amenities, and customer service — from start to finish. Not only will the vacation be more comfortable and luxurious, but there is back-up as well. If you get to your tropical destination and there’s a volcano erupting, you need a knowledgeable expert who can rearrange things effortlessly so you don’t have a miserable experience on the short time you have left on your trip.

As the trends demonstrate, travelers also want a perfect experience while booking a trip. Many travelers prefer to explore the idea of going on vacation online, but don’t want to do it with 20 browsers open. This also includes customer service. Of course you can pick up the phone and call your agency, but I envision 2015 as the year to really embrace other technological avenues of customer service interaction: from sending emails, to live-chat sessions, to fully functional mobile sites.

We’ve already revolutionized the corporate travel market by creating a brand that is identified as high touch for companies that value the people that travel so much — we want to do the same for the luxury, leisure space. So stay tuned. Perhaps we can check in together in December 2015, to see more evidence of the way the new luxury traveler prefers to travel.