Elegant Resorts is a luxury travel firm that aims to provide experiences and client service that are a cut above many of those businesses using "luxury" in their brands. The evolution of its offering is a sign of how the wealthy wish to spend their money and time.

There are certain ways of tracking the state of wealth management and one of them is to look at those firms that are involved in how high net worth and ultra-high net worth people spend their money and free time. Wealth management likes to be “bespoke” and the same can be said of organisations advising people over property, art and fine wine, travel and leisure generally.  

One firm that operates in this bespoke space is Elegant Resorts. It is headquartered in Cheshire in North West England and was founded in 1988. It offers what it calls a worldwide portfolio of “fabulous luxury hotels, villas and cruises, along with thrilling bespoke journeys and experiences”, as it told this news service recently.

For the wealthiest of clients, a cookie-cutter style holiday or travel experience falls way short of what they want. And just as important, getting a bespoke holiday means getting away from the stresses of life (sometimes, that means other people). No crowded beaches, congested art museums or hectic hotels. Money can buy independence; it can also buy space and tranquillity.

This is where an organisation such as Elegant Resorts enters the picture.

To illustrate with a recent case, Elegant Resorts devised a programme for motoring enthusiasts so that clients could stay in high-class properties and get to drive top-of-the-range Aston Martin cars as part of the Aston Martin Touring Series. Elegant Resorts co-hosted the programme with the renowned marque, which is rather different from the more traditional “fly/drive” deal of tourist fare. A clubby atmosphere is fostered and those taking part meet along the way. In Scotland, for example, they have lunch with the Duke of Argyll and have a hosted whisky evening with Peter Prentice, VIP global relationships director at Chivas Regal. 

The experiences keep coming: in Italy, clients are hosted on their first evening by Marek Reichman, the chief creative officer and design director at Aston Martin. In the UK they will also dine with Reichman, and be hosted one evening by Robert Laycock of the Fleming Family. 

With data showing that wealth among HNW and UHNW individuals continues to grow – albeit with some headwinds from global markets – demand for such high-end experiences is likely to remain strong, although providers cannot afford to be complacent.

“There are so many organisations that are in the 'luxury' sector now but what we do is really bespoke,” Sally Booth, head of brand at the firm, told this publication.

Elegant Resorts is spending more on marketing through various channels with a focus on affinity marketing, digital and social media to engage with a slightly younger high net worth demographic. That population group tends to be well-travelled, discerning, knowledgeable, demanding and savvy.

Through its network of clients and contacts, the firm can keep abreast of the kind of travel and experiences people seek, enabling Elegant Resorts to keep out front in its field, Booth said.

In developing a new venture, all properties that might be involved are checked out by Elegant Resort’s team; once that is done then prices can be negotiated. As this is a bespoke business, the price of any package for a client will vary. Booth said Elegant Resorts can use its market clout to negotiate for the most competitive deals around properties, for example. (This publication asked about the typical price of being a client but a price list and charges are decided on a case-by-case basis.)
 
To make such a business work requires best-in-class staff; Elegant Resorts has more than 130 employees, covering a variety of areas of expertise, as well as strong travel connections to the luxury travel sector.

Expanding
The firm recently opened a new luxury office in Dubai to serve its Middle Eastern clients. Among other offerings is its Elegant Resorts Loyalty Programme, run for almost 20 years, which offers the privileged membership strata and rewards, with exclusive benefits and an “elite social calendar”.  

In its early days, the firm developed a reputation, it says, for exclusive Caribbean resorts and villas in conjunction with BA Concorde flights; this was followed with rural areas and cities of Europe and the islands of the Indian Ocean. That is quite a portfolio.

As with private banks and other wealth management organisations, a question that always arises is how a firm finds new clients and a pipeline of future business. Elegant Resorts, rather like certain private banks, says it relies on word of mouth, referrals and networking events. It also engages with journalists and a small but growing cluster of “luxury bloggers”, as Booth describes them. The firm engages with the luxury end of the broadsheet press as part of its marketing outreach.

Just as it is important for clients to be clear about what they want and find advisors to help them fulfil their dreams, so a firm such as this, or indeed a bank or wealth advisor, needs to get into the mind of a client to understand what they really want.

It looks for feedback and engagement from the client to determine their budget, learn about what they want and their preferences to be able to build a file of information. This data allows the business to suggest and offer more details about properties and destinations. It is always on the hunt for the next "hotspots" and following the latest travel trending patterns.

Scottish scene

"From the outset our level of profiling enables us to glean more than enough information about budget and other requirements for the holiday. All our clients can be demanding, however, our expert sales team are able to communicate very carefully, through their experience over many years, and can guide them through the components that make up a luxury holiday, perhaps switching or suggesting alternatives to fit the brief," the firm said. 

As the firm explains, luxury travel is evolving in the same way as luxury lifestyle. For example, 20 years ago a client might have an en-suite bathroom and floral designed room whereas now the rooms are designed with more space and in a contemporary fashion, all complete with current technology, gadgets and an absolute must is wifi or not. Many people now want the exclusivity and rarity that could come from a desert island or a Bedouin tent set under the stars, or a one-to-one chance to experience the huge Hawaiian waves with a championship surfer, such as the ultimate surf safari. In other words, clients are becoming much more demanding.

Like good practice in any area of private client management, use of feedback from clients is essential to developing business, Elegant Resorts says. And the smart use of that feedback is a discipline that applies not just to organisations such as Elegant Resorts, but to the wealth management industry more broadly.