Image: El Questro Homestead – Sundowner heli experience
Affluent travellers have been there, done that. Luxury hotel stays and first-class flights are a given. What can seem extraordinarily luxurious to most, doesn’t even touch the sides in their world.
The good news is that these days, luxury is no longer about gold-plated taps and instead about unique and exclusive experiences with great guides and story-tellers. For the well-travelled elite, it’s about more than just ticking off bucket-list items. Yes that’s part of it, but they are seeking highly-personalised experiences that are meaningful and authentic, and provide a connection with either the place or the people they visit. They value their time and their privacy. They look to be challenged, surprised and to learn something new.
Our aim is to share with you our first-hand knowledge of dealing with this sector of the market and show you how to create your own authentic and exclusive experience that they will love.
Is luxury a 6-star hotel or is it eating freshly gathered seafood on a secluded beach?
Because of its subjective nature, we prefer to use the term ‘premium’ however because ‘luxury’ is such a common term in the industry we interchange the two, as well as ‘high-end’ and a few other terms.
Image: Australian Coastal Safaris – Hunter & Gather experience
Having travelled to all seven continents and worked in luxury travel sales and marketing for over a decade, Nicola specialises in premium tourism experiences for ultra-high-net-worth individuals.
Through her work at Alquemie, an Australian high-end inbound tour operator and Wild Bush Luxury, owner of two Luxury Lodges of Australia, Nicola has fostered strong global industry connections with luxury travel agents in networks such as PURE Life Experiences, Traveller Made and Virtuoso. It is her connections with these agents in addition to first-hand experiences of luxury travel product that has informed her knowledge of exactly what discerning guests are looking for. In 2020 she created and hosted PURE Pursuits Australia, a five-day journey for the finest minds in luxury travel.
With a Bachelor of Economics and a Graduate Diploma in Diplomacy and Trade, Nicola has supplemented her tertiary studies with a deep dive into Australia’s tourism industry and is a graduate of both ATEC’s ELITE mentoring program and Travel Industry Mentor Experience (TIME). She is also alumni of the Transformational Travel Design program aimed at reimagining and recalibrating traveller engagement and experience-design, with an eye toward the transformation of self and society.
Nicola is founder of Elixir Journeys, a high-end, nature-based Australian tour company, designed to give guests premium experiences.