‘Live Your Dreams’

Virtuoso has launched a new tool for its member advisors called Virtuoso Wanderlist, which is designed to create a long-term travel planning agenda for clients.

It is part of a continuing effort by the luxury network to have travel advisors position themselves like other professionals, particularly wealth management advisors, said CEO Matthew Upchurch. Just as a wealth management advisor puts together a long-range financial plan, the travel advisor would put together a long-range travel plan.

Built-In Flexibility

The plan could be assembled in an elaborate coffee table-style book or remain online. It would also be flexible so that if for some reason a client chose to substitute one destination for another that would be fine.

Travel agents would charge for Wanderlist services as they saw fit—charging for the book or working with the tool on a fee-based system.

The thinking behind Wanderlist is that the best travel advisors are always “planting seeds” for future travel, and it makes that process more workable, Upchurch said. Consumer research shows what travelers value most is an advisor following up on a trip to see how it went and talking about future travel, he added.

How Wanderlist Works

Clients are asked to fill out a form showing their most desired destinations and travel experiences from a choice of 160-plus destinations and over 1,500 experiences tailored to their interests. Travel advisors then receive a dashboard, enabling them to work with clients to develop the long-range travel plan.

Wanderlist modernizes the workflow, too, by notifying the advisor to start planning the next trip to avoid issues with availability. It will also apprise them of best travel dates by seasonality, value and personal schedules, and facilitate increased communication with clients, including quarterly check-ins to assess whether goals are still aligned.

Addressing Lifestyle Issues

Unlike a bucket list, which is about “where you want to go before you die,” Wanderlist “is about how you want to live,” Upchurch said. The tagline for the tool is “Live Your Travel Dreams.” During the testing of Wanderlist, advisors charged anywhere from $250 to $5,000 to develop a plan. It is up to advisors to decide what to include in any Wanderlist program—a certain number of consulting hours, for instance.

Advisors will pay Virtuoso for Wanderlist and receive training on how to use it.

Also, for the first time, Virtuoso will have virtual marketing teams in place to help travel advisors, Upchurch said. A complement to Wanderlist is Journey to Global Citizenship: A Family Adventure, enabling families to plan travel for their children so they are able to develop into global citizens.

4 Forecasting Long-Term Business

Advisors will be able to forecast their long-term business, capture incremental bookings for trips and gain deeper insights into clients’ travel preferences, Upchurch said.

Wanderlist will save clients time and money by enabling them to plan future trips instead of booking one trip at a time when availability is lowest and prices are highest, often resulting in premiums as high as 25 percent.