The $20 Billion Global Luxury Tourism Market continues to not only rebound but strengthen after the pandemic, as a healthy mix of multi-generational travel, milestone and bucket-list celebrations and increased personal wealth in countries such as Asia, are fuelling the industry.
Here in Canada, one travel boutique is seeing that increase as they celebrate their 30th Anniversary. Arts & Leisure (formerly Arts & Leisure Tours) held an event for their VIP Agents in Toronto on Thursday night where they unveiled new branding and brought partners to showcase product. Prior to the pandemic, the company was focused on European offerings but has now expanded to North America and the Caribbean.
"COVID was a curse, but also was a blessing a little in a small way," explains VP Product Pat Lista. "We were very, very big, over 30 years in Europe, that was our specialty. But when COVID hit, we had a lot of our agents asking, do you have something a little closer to home? People didn't want to travel far, and Europe was closed, so we started expanding our portfolio into the Caribbean, Mexico and the United States."
Lista says Arts & Leisure's villa offerings especially were a big draw as restrictions at the time were to have your family "bubble", with many avoiding large hotels. 2022 was incredibly busy for the company as they faced an influx of last-minute bookings.
"It created a monster because normally in our luxury space, bookings are done very far in advance. But in 2022, it became last minute because everybody just woke up. Thankfully, it's not all last minute now and it's stabilizing more."
With a staff of 30 and sales offices in Toronto, Chicago and Los Angeles, Arts & Leisure experts, which the company calls "travel designers" are what Lista says are the most important people; the ones who deal with the client and the travel agent and are as knowledgeable as possible about the destinations.
"They understand our mentality and how to really curate things properly. Because nothing's easy or a simple click to book, everything's got to be done from scratch."
When Lista says things are done the old-fashioned way, he means it. Though the company recently did a rebrand and refresh of their brand and website, that's the extent of online involvement - every booking is done personally between the agent and Arts & Leisure staff.
"I've used this analogy before, we're basically the handwritten note compared to online," he explains. "We have our technology where we need it. But really, to do things properly, you need to be able to speak to someone, you need to be able to ensure that you're picking the right thing for them.
"With hotels for example, we have to know what kind of room the client likes, and you can't do that with technology. You can do it when it's a very standard sort of like tour and experience that you can do, yes, you can put some personalization into it. But it really doesn't translate well into what we're trying to do."
Agents can earn great commissions are encouraged to register with Arts & Leisure via the agent portal to connect with the team and learn more about product.
"We make sure we pick the right partners and always instill some personalization into our tours, and that's what agents love for their clients. Agents know the way we treat them is how their clients are going to be treated. We are here to help 24/7, so really is a very unique way of doing business.
"We do the heavy lifting on behalf of our travel agent partners to curate work of art itineraries for their clients and make them shine but more importantly we create the trip of a lifetime, every time."
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