Destination management companies (DMCs) operating in the luxury tier face a business hurdle. While many operators excel at logistical execution, a significant portion fail to translate their service quality into a compelling brand identity.
Quentin Desurmont, CEO and president of Traveller Made – the luxury travel consortium that is home to the Serandipians and Takumians invite-only networks – identifies this deficit as a primary threat to long-term profitability in the high-end travel sector.
The challenge stems from a misunderstanding of marketing mechanics. Many operators conflate their business name with their brand. This confusion results in lost market share and diminished pricing power.
“I think everybody is struggling with branding. People do not know branding. A brand is the asset number one in a company. It is the biggest asset and yet many fail to register their brand,” Desurmont noted.
To address this knowledge gap, Desurmont looked outside the travel sector. When developing educational content for his Serandipians and Takumians communities, he avoided inviting hospitality executives to share their strategies. He recognised that competition between luxury travel suppliers would limit any meaningful exchange of operational insights.
“I decided to bring people from the luxury goods industry to my conferences. If you start to ask general managers to come, they are all going to fight. It is going to be a mess, and people will never share their secrets anyway,” Desurmont explained.
By pivoting to the fashion sector, Desurmont provided his network with access to a more mature marketing discipline. He views the luxury goods market as a stronger model for travel designers to emulate, as brands in this space have spent decades refining the concepts of desirability and exclusivity.
“Outside of luxury, fashionability means nothing. Fashionability has a meaning. Desirability has a meaning. Luxification has a meaning. These guys in the luxury goods industry have worked with a lot of people to try and reinvent something,” Desurmont stated.
For a DMC to achieve this level of “luxification”, leadership must overhaul their marketing strategy. Desurmont breaks this process down into distinct pillars. The first requirement is establishing a precise client positioning. Operators cannot afford to be generalists. Attempting to capture the entire high-net-worth market dilutes the product offering and confuses potential buyers.
“What do you offer that is different? That’s the added value. If you do what other people do, there is no added value. You need to define what you are bringing to what kind of client,” Desurmont advised.
He advocates for extreme specialisation. A business might choose to cater exclusively to wealthy individuals who travel for opera performances or clients seeking highly technical extreme sports itineraries. This narrow focus allows the operator to build deep expertise and dominate a specific market segment.
“You cannot offer everything to everybody,” Desurmont asserted. “It doesn’t work. Once you know exactly who you are targeting and what you offer that is different, then you can create a brand.”
Once the positioning is locked in, the next step is crafting the brand narrative.
Desurmont has observed that many DMCs rely on plain corporate identities. These businesses lack storytelling. In the luxury tier, the absence of a narrative is a critical weakness.
A high-net-worth traveller does not require a travel designer simply to book a beach resort, Desurmont advised. They are purchasing a transformational experience. Therefore, the brand must reflect this promise of elevation and emotional resonance.
“We are in an industry where travelling is a story,” Desurmont says. “If you do not travel with a story behind (your journey), it is so poor. It is a waste.”
Building this narrative requires corporate leaders to embrace creativity. Desurmont noted that executives are often intimidated by the creative process. They shy away from imaginative concepts out of fear of appearing unprofessional. Yet imagination is the tool needed to differentiate a luxury travel product.
He encourages travel designers to look beyond standard industry marketing tropes. Rather than focusing solely on destination geography or travel experiences, branding should tap into deeper emotional drivers. Operators must draw on cultural myths or historical events to build a distinctive brand persona. Desurmont points to the wine tourism sector as an example of untapped branding potential. There are specialised DMCs operating in regions such as France or New Zealand that focus entirely on viticulture. However, the word “wine” itself lacks strong marketing appeal.
“There are so many myths behind wine. Wine is not a sexy name, nor a sexy word. But ‘Bacchus’ is too obvious. Keep digging. What can you find behind Bacchus? Seek what you can find behind wine and a nice story or within literature to make people dream,” Desurmont said.
By digging deeper into the subject matter, operators can uncover narratives that elevate the perceived value of their services. This level of creative investment is necessary for companies aiming to capture the ultra-wealthy demographic. Desurmont believes the key to unlocking this creativity is reconnecting with a sense of wonder.
“People should more often go back to childhood and think, ‘What did I like when I was a child?’ and ‘What makes me smile because it reminds me of fairy tales’,” Desurmont concluded.
