Top 50 - Luxury - Designer Travel

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From pairing up with beauticians to offer nail treatments as holiday prep for clients, to making sure the right toys are delivered for a customer’s children during their Sandy Lane stay in Barbados, Designer Travel constantly strives to be a caring and imaginative luxury travel agency.

Helping get a client home from the Maldives when he suddenly fell ill was all in a day’s work for this team too, as was a visit to see a pro footballer during a training session to make sure some time-sensitive visa paperwork could be dealt with.

In business for 15 years and having scooped 12 awards in 2022, Designer Travel has a national network of 105 home-based luxury travel experts. Every client is “treated like a VIP”, says co-founder Amanda Matthews, adding “nothing is left to chance” when it comes to customer service.

Designer Travel also recently embarked on a mission to deliver cruise holidays for customers too, with a huge
leap in training and expertise gained over the last year and
at least 50 of the team having made visits to cruise ships.

The pandemic unsurprisingly led some people to change their career – and Designer Travel has been happy to welcome some of them with the launch of a structured programme for those wanting to become a luxury travel advisor, switching from backgrounds such as banking or marketing.

Meanwhile, all the company’s travel advisors can now access personal assistants to take up admin and “paperwork” duties, a smart move that frees them up to focus even more creatively on customers’ travel plans.

When it comes to taking care of the team, one of many nice touches by the directors included sending everyone a luxurious Elizabeth Scarlett pouch – selected due to the company’s donations to wildlife conservation – as a thank you for their hard work.

Elsewhere, an internal working party on sustainability has debuted, while Little Steps, Big Impact has been launched as an illustrated digital book sent to clients to highlight tips to make a difference when travelling, with the story told through Kenyan elephant Moyo – whose name means heart in Swahili. 

designertravel.co.uk