WORLD – A White Paper has been produced on the global trends in luxury travel, derived from the International Luxury Travel Market (ILTM) Leaders’ Forum in 2010 in Cannes.
The newly-published paper found next year is likely to be the first for significant post-recession growth in the luxury travel market.
The ILTM Leaders’ Forum was a representation of luxury hoteliers and hotel representation companies, high end tour operators and travel advisors, who gathered to discuss issues impacting their sector including sales performance, rate integrity, delivering customised travel experiences and customer satisfaction.
While overall the recession showed that luxury travel was not unsusceptible to the global economic climate, both China and India have experienced significant growth in this period.
Highlighting this trend, Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH) CEO, Paul Kerr, said bookings out of India last year grew by 129 per cent, albeit on a small base.
“The Indian luxury market comprises regular guests rather than aspirational travellers saving for a one-off luxury holiday,” he commented. “And just like any other luxury traveller, the Indian millionaire wants freedom of choice.”
The Indian luxury market is predicted to grow at a rate of 21 per cent with luxury travel growing at approximately 15 per cent in the next five years, representing a fast-emerging, high-spending sector across Asia as a whole.
Panellists from the range of sectors represented at the Leaders Forum agreed that individually their definitive goals were to increase profit margins. The lesson learnt from the recession was that discounting is a disservice to luxury and that reducing rates to increase occupancy levels is a short-term fix that creates a larger problem in the long run.
The ILTM Leaders Forum will meet again on 13 June 2011 at ILTM Asia in Shanghai to continue to address global trends in global luxury travellers’ buyer behaviour, as well as explore the importance of the buyer and supplier relationship.
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