Virtuoso has more than doubled its sales volume from the start of January to 30 June 2024 compared to pre-COVID levels, reaching a peak high of 211%
“If it seems like you’ve been busy for a few years now, it’s true,” David Kolner, Executive Vice President of Virtuoso told attendees at the Opening Session of Virtuoso Travel Week in Las Vegas today.
“We’re proud to recognise that for the first half of 2024 the Virtuoso network has now doubled sales from 2019.”
“You ate and left no crumbs,” Kolner quipped to the audience.
When Virtuoso’s sales were “matched up” against those of Tourism Economic’s Global Leisure sales numbers, not only is Virtuoso hitting record sales, the consortium is growing faster than the industry as a whole (by 85 percentage points) “increasing our overall relevance and value to our preferred partners.”
Year on year, Virtuoso is already seeing a 14.3% increase in global sales over 2023. Kolner highlighted that long-term future booking sales (for one or two years in advance) is 38% higher than 12 months beforehand.
“We see clients planning further in advance, 8.3% higher and longer to 127 days.” In 2023, the average booking window was 117 days.
Kolner – a pop music lover and Taylor Swift fanboy – also touched on the ‘Swift Lift’ that the 34yo American pop-star and her Eras Tour has had on the travel industry. Based on Virtuoso’s preferred partner leisure customer sales who booked hotels stays around Nashville, Chicago and Philadelphia in 2024 during Swift’s concerts, hotel ADR surged 51%, while booking night volume during her concerts spiked 139%.
In the latest trends, Kolner reported that cold destinations in Europe have witnessed a “huge bump” during the northern hemisphere’s summer, versus traditionally warmer Mediterranean destinations. According to Virtuoso’s data for bookings made in H1 2024, for travel starting in June-August, destinations such as Denmark and Sweden were up 16% and 17% respectively, compared to the same period a year earlier. Those numbers jumped higher to 62% to Iceland and 89% to Norway, while Finland saw a whopping 150% increase.
That said, warm destinations in Europe outsell cooler locations by 10:1, Kolner added.
Finally, the Virtuoso executive provided an update on the consortia’s ‘Reviews and Recommendations Program’ which surpassed its 10th anniversary in 2023 and amassing one million invitations sent out to clients after they had returned from a trip.
Feedback from those reviews indicated that 93.9% of clients are recommending preferred partners to a friend. Meanwhile, the response for ‘Would you recommend your Virtuoso travel advisor to a friend?’ was affirmative with a score of 99.3%, he said.
Some advisors received a 100% ratings, and among those Virtuoso members were recognised on the big screen were a handful of Australian travel advisors, including Michael Nolan of Bayview Travel (94 reviews), Byron Horne of Bicton Travel (80 reviews), Donna Phillips of Donna Phillips Travel (61 reviews), Roland Howlett of Frontier Travel (40 reviews) and Gabrielle Thackray of Wentworth Travel (35 reviews).
