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The Blogger Turned UHNW Travel Agent
Tom Cahalan in St Barths recently
Tom CahalanToday's top private travel agents spend months on the road, road-testing trips or meeting property-owners and hoteliers at conferences, including the International Luxury Travel Market events. For clients who want to be the first to check-in, they have to keep ahead of new openings - and when to drop a property that has lost its magic. Some charge membership fees, none of them advertise. If they have websites, they contain almost no information on them. But if you can find one that will take you on, they will deploy infinite amounts of personal charm to get you into the world's most desirable hotel suites and villas.
Some work for just one family, others for a handful of clients. London-based Earth states on its website that membership is 'currently restricted to recommendations from existing clients or by invitation'. I know of one who was fought over in a divorce settlement. (The wife won.)
According to Deloitte last year, the luxury market - already worth $1.3 trillion - is set to grow by 7.6 % until 2030. While the concept of private travel agents started with Bill Fischer in the 1970s, their numbers are expanding fast.
And the career path? Often, it's completely unorthodox. For those on the U.S. West Coast, a stint in the entertainment industry is often a springboard. In some dynasties, it can be a keen grandchild who starts organizing travel for the family. In Europe, particularly Britain, private agents often start in high-end tour operators including Cazenove & Loyd and Black Tomato. However, no private travel agent has made the leap that Tom Cahalan has. After creating a highly successful ecommerce site for clothing retailers in 2013, he started blogging about his holidays. Paying his own way, his pithy critiques became cult reading in the hospitality industry. Interest in the blog posts led Cahalan to set up Dorsia Travel (named after the fictional restaurant in American Psycho where it's impossible to get a reservation) in 2017 with his wife Lucie.
Let's start with the blog. Why did you set it up? The Good, The Bad And The Luxurious was just a hobby at first and nobody knew anything about me so I enjoyed being brutally honest.Then I started to gain a following perhaps because there were so few platforms back then where the reviewer was remaining totally anonymous and paying their own way.
Soneva Jani in the Maldives
@ Tom CahalanYou always paid for your stays.
I'm glad I'm not beholden to anyone. I don't want to write mean things for no good reason, but people pay lots of money to stay in these hotels so sharing honest feedback with readers and Dorsia Travel's clients are always my priority. It isn't always the done thing in Britain, where Dorsia Travel is based, to be so upfront with negative feedback. I wrote about a number of my main hotel bugbears recently, and things guaranteed to annoy me include a charge for water or overly fussy staff who check up on you every three to four minutes.
Your reviews became cult reading for their trenchant opinions. How did hotels react?
I've only been banned from one hotel - a few years back I stayed at Sirai Beach in Kenya and loved it but I highlighted a few things I felt could be improved. When I wanted to stay in its sister property Sirai House I learned the owners didn't want me to stay as they didn't want to see anything critical about that property - one of their homes - on the internet. Given they had decided to commercialize these residences I thought their inability to accept criticism from paying customers was a bit pathetic, but ultimately I don't mind if people are unhappy with my reviews as they're always fair and honest. I thought Italy's Il Pellicano was hideous even though lots of people revere it. And I hated every single thing about Nairobi's Giraffe Manor but it is completely booked out so I can't imagine they're concerned about my review.
The Bulgari hotel in Paris
@ Tom CahalanNow you have a wife and young family, how has that affected your travel?
Since Lucie and I had our two daughters, aged one and three, holidays are a lot louder but it has really broadened our focus at Dorsia Travel. We always dealt with families, but now we're even more attuned to parents' needs because we know firsthand just how cautious you need to be when you've got little accident-magnets roaming around a property. We're also much more likely to travel to beach resorts and exclusive-use properties - handily, alongside family travel and safaris these are two of our other specialisms at Dorsia Travel. We're also really appreciative of hotels that show they genuinely care about children and their parents. I love places where under-5s eat free, for example, because it seems so wasteful to pay inflated prices for dishes they're going to spill on the floor rather than eat - we were so unimpressed at Bulgari Paris when we were charged €102 for a portion of fish for our eldest when she was only a year old.
Velaa private island in the Maldives
@ Tom CahalanAnd you now have a travel agency, Dorsia Travel? How did that start?
My wife Lucie previously took care of VIP clients at The Connaught hotel in London. As my blog attracted increasing numbers of readers, more and more people asked for advice and then increasingly asked me to book their holidays so we realized we could combine her industry expertise and my hotel knowledge to give hands-on assistance to the community of people that grew around the blog. It's been an enjoyable process because we traveled at the same level as them before we started working as travel agents, and we still do now. And we're hands-on for every part of the process - we oversee every aspect of every booking personally. What's sometimes challenging now is explaining to clients how ridiculously expensive a lot of hotels - particularly in Europe and the US - have become. We don't charge fees, but our clients spend a minimum of $5,000 a night - you'd think it goes far but then at the highest end of the market you have places like Italy's Villa Treville Positano charging €9,800 for a 61 sqm suite this summer.
The Zeffirelli Suite at the Villa Treville Positano
Treville PositanoHow has your travel changed now?
I'm off to One&Only Kea Island in Greece soon and I expect it'll be nice but I doubt it'll be exciting. I'm also planning a trip to the new Soneva Secret. I feel it's unlikely to be too different from the other two Sonevas in the Maldives but I want to have first-hand knowledge of all the major properties in the country so I can advise our clients. These days I prefer to stay at exclusive-use properties that are less known - I'm going to Ol Jogi wildlife conservancy and seeing the work they're doing to help protect wildlife is much more enjoyable to me than going to another generic luxury resort.
How do you cope with honest feedback from your guests
Regarding feedback, of course we're fine with it! Usually it's great, but of course there are times when a hotel doesn't deliver as expected - and for the amount of money people pay to stay at the world's top hotels it's unacceptable if things go seriously wrong. If that happens, we want to know about it as soon as possible so we can immediately intervene to make things right while they just focus on enjoying their holiday.
How Embracing Responsible Travel Could Transform Your Agency
29 Apr 2024by Charlotte Cullinan
TTG's Sustainable Travel Heroes and agent Ambassadors explain how promoting and selling sustainable travel can boost your sales and business.
Iberostar's Wave of Change programme supports coral nurseries
Want to get business booming? Tap into sustainable travel. Agents and suppliers in the know enthuse about the power of responsible tourism, stressing it's not only a better form of travel to sell, but has the ability to attract new clients, encourage repeat bookings and boost your bottom line.
Increased revenue wasn't the reason Travel Counsellor Marie Rowe applied for TTG's Sustainable Travel Ambassadors agent training scheme last year, but it's been a bonus result of learning more about responsible travel, as her annual sales for 2023 were up 65% year-on-year. While numerous factors contributed to the increase, she says: "A substantial part of the financial gain has come from focusing on sustainable travel messaging."
Rowe believes the content she shared about responsible travel attracted new clients who would have previously "gone DIY". She explains: "This is largely because it's much easier to build tailor-made travel with great experiences when you use a travel expert, but also, people are attracted to companies who are shouting about their eco-credentials, and there's often a sense of wanting to support people doing good things."
CONSCIOUS SPENDINGMichael Heath, chief executive at AE Expeditions (part of Aurora Expeditions), agrees, explaining: "We know that consumers are increasingly conscious about spending money with companies they know are operating ethically and sustainably, and this is also true for who they choose to travel with."
In January, AE Expeditions became a B Corp Certified business, and Heath explains: "This certification attests to the fact that our business operates as ethically, transparently and sustainably as possible, and that this extends to all areas of the company."
An AE Expeditions-led Citizen Science project to gauge the levels of plastics and micro-plastics in Antarctica
Joanna Reeve, head of business development and partnerships EMEA at Intrepid, also a B Corp, says implementing sustainable and responsible travel through all parts of the business has had "many benefits" for the company.
"It has cemented us as a leading responsible travel operator in the industry, which helps us to attract new customers and partnerships," she explains. "As more people seek out sustainable travel, they know they can trust Intrepid. This helps to grow our business and is financially beneficial too. It shows that profit and purpose are not conflicting pursuits, and is proof that when pursued together they can be among the most resilient business strategies an organisation can take."
ENGAGING STORIES
But what is it about responsible travel that captures travellers' interest? Rowe says content about her sustainable travel expert journey gets "way more traction than a post with a picture of a paradise island and a great Caribbean offer."
Recalling the sustainability-themed content she shared in 2023, she explains: "People were interested in seeing what I was doing, what I was learning, and where I was going – this content got a lot of engagement. It built trust and credibility, knowing that my business was addressing the things that holidaymakers are becoming increasingly concerned about."
Intrepid's portfolio includes immersive trips to local communities in countries like Vietnam
Like Rowe, many of the Ambassadors successfully used messaging around sustainability to underpin targeted social media strategies, including Annika Nickson, an independent travel consultant at Nickson Travel, part of Not Just Travel. She creates "sustainability Sunday" posts on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn each week, with the aim of inspiring and educating travellers with interesting content.
She notes: "Other agents often say their clients don't ask about responsible travel. But that's because travellers who are conscious of sustainable travel will actively go out and look for agents that are promoting themselves as experts in that field."
TTC Tour Brands feature responsible itineraries such as a visit to a centre for traditional textiles in Cusco, Peru
As well as generating new business and cementing an agent's authority, booking responsible travel can also drive more repeat business, according to Rowe. She says: "The holidays I would have booked anyway have been better for the planet, and those experiences tend to be more enjoyable, which then leads to repeat business."
There is a huge untapped opportunity for other agents to promote responsible travel to their clients. In January, TTG quizzed agent readers to discover their attitudes towards selling sustainable travel. The research revealed that while 67% of agents are occasionally or frequently including sustainable travel messages in their marketing content, 27% never include them.
There are a host of ways to share tips with clients, and customers want to receive this information, according to Kelly Jackson, managing director of TTC Tour Brands (made up of Contiki, Costsaver, Trafalgar, Insight Vacations and Luxury Gold). She says one of the most frequent questions her team is asked is how to be a more responsible traveller. To help, TTC released its 2024 Make Travel Matter Checklist, which travellers, partners and agents can use and share. "It gives them these accessible sustainable travel tips and makes them aware of where they are spending and investing their travel funds," Jackson explains. "Being seen as a sustainable brand is not just about perception; it is about real, measurable impacts."
Iberostar proudly showcases its sustainability journey through its Wave of Change movement, and many of the projects are witnessed by clients during their holiday, such as seeing the recycling teams at work.
But as well as engaging clients, business development director Aishling McLoughlin says the Wave of Change programme also has "real business benefits" for Iberostar, as it lowers risk and creates efficiencies. She cites the example of the seven coral nurseries Iberostar supports, which are working to find climate-resistant species. She explains: "If we can enhance the reefs near our hotels, they are more robust for hurricanes, the sea has richer diversity and our guests can learn about the work being done and swim in beautiful water. That has benefits for everyone – including nature."
For more information and ideas, visit the TTG Sustainable Travel Heroes Hub
Travel Agents
When it comes to planning a vacation, there are countless resources at your fingertips, but nothing comes close to the expertise and personalization offered by the industry's top travel agents. Drawing on firsthand experience, these experts can help you sift through the endless choices to tailor an itinerary to your tastes, interests, and budget. And thanks to connections built over years of networking, the best agents can grant unprecedented access to unique and unforgettable experiences you won't find online.
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