This month, 80 leading travel buyers and suppliers convened in Sicily to network in style at Connections Luxury’s first event of 2016.

The sun-drenched, sweeping grounds of Rocco Forte’s Verdura Resort were the backdrop as delegates enjoyed one-on-one meetings whilst taking part in activities – including pizza making, a tour of the UNESCO World Heritage site Valle dei Templi in Agrigento, and whizzing around the resort in golf carts.

Aside from the meetings, delegates took part in round table discussions to share their opinions on how the travel industry needs to move forward to offer a more end-to-end luxury experience.

The findings will be incorporated into Connections’ upcoming report sponsored by Amadeus, Shaping The Future of Luxury Travel. The paper will explore the trends influencing the new era of luxury travel and discuss the next steps for the industry.

The roundtable discussions highlighted a need for better collaboration. Emerging trends for offering a more collaborative industry – and delivering a better luxury journey experience – include:

  • Hyper-intuitive information gathering – perfecting the art of discerning a traveller’s preferred level and methods of interaction, without having to ask.
  • Real-time profiling – understanding how travellers’ requirements and travel motivations at any given moment, monitoring them for change and adapting to them accordingly.
  • Complete door-to-door cover – inter-connected cross-brand and cross-sector servicing throughout journey, plus flawless, consistent service.
  • Multiple travel touchpoints – seamless connectivity and constant ability to communicate and offer up-to-date advice through technology.
  • 24-hour, omnipresent cover – ability to service travellers constantly, with a designated 24/7 assistant in every region.
  • Improved reaction and response to traveller feedback – a combination of CRM and on-the-ground monitoring, initiating and responding to customer comments throughout their stay, gathering their opinions through their preferred channel, and compensating for any shortcomings with unprecedented speed and intuition.
  • An official luxury travel regulator – oversees cross-sector collaboration, facilitating improvement.

WIN:

What Kind of Luxury Traveller are you?

As part of the upcoming Shaping the Future of Luxury Travel report, we have taken Amadeus’s Future Traveller Tribes 2030 –  future types of travellers defined by their behaviours rather than their demographic – and further segmented them into Luxury Traveller Tribes.

For the chance to win set of wireless noise-cancelling Sony MDR-ZX770BN headphones, courtesy of Amadeus, please take our short QUIZ to find out which Luxury Traveller Tribe you belong to by May 4th.

We have three sets of headphones to give away. Good luck!