Luxury travel network Virtuoso officially rolled out its new global website Monday, which has been in beta testing since October. The goal is to better connect high-end travelers to qualified Virtuoso travel advisors.

According to David Kolner, Virtuoso’s senior vice president-consumer, allows consumers to plan their own trip by showing them Virtuoso's collection of preferred travel products, including 989 preferred Virtuoso hotels and resorts. But they can only get Virtuoso amenities by booking through a Virtuoso travel advisor.

Virtuoso also has posted its own unique profiles of its preferred suppliers, including special photo directories that are often much more extensive than anything else found on the web, according to Kolner.

Each profile also includes a map, for example, of where a particular hotel is located, in addition to the hotel information. The profile also recommends two Virtuoso advisors who can book the property based on their familiarity with the hotel and proximity to the consumer, though the consumer can decide to select another advisor.

Finally, using Virtuoso’s Travel Folio tool, consumers can compare and contrast up to three hotels, tours or cruises that are offered in the same parts of the world.

A simple point and click tool called Meet Your Advisor matches consumers with the right travel advisor after they answer a series of questions based on the type of travel they want, the destination, the specialty and the agent’s geographical location. The consumer then creates an account and is linked to the advisor by phone, email, etc..

What makes the revamped website different, according to Kolner, is that for the first time it will offer a full catalog of Virtuoso travel advisors, complete with photos of the advisors, geographical location, destination expertise, specialties, a brief bio and a map to show where they have traveled. Kolner says that roughly 1,300 Virtuoso advisors now have profiles on the revamped website.

The website also will allow verified customers of those Virtuoso advisors to review those advisors, as well as the hotels, cruises and tours they were booked on by those advisors. The advisors and suppliers, in turn, can make their own rebuttal comments.

According to Kolner, there are already 5,000 consumer reviews and recommendations on the website, roughly half of which are of Virtuoso advisors while the other half are of  suppliers. He says 97 percent of the reviews of advisors are positive. 

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