Turning Personal Connections into Highly Customized Trips

Agency Name: Lux Voyage
Location: Newtown Square, Penn.
Employees: Five

Pre-packaged travel is not an option Virgi Schiffino, co-founder and managing partner of Lux Voyage, or her clients are interested in. Instead, just about every trip is built from scratch, and she and the other travel planners at Lux Voyage will do whatever it takes to make each itinerary as far from cookie cutter as possible.

Schiffino offered up the example of an art collector client who wanted to do an art-themed tour in Copenhagen. But she wasn’t looking for the kind of guided tour you can book online.

“I reached out to a friend of mine in Copenhagen and said, I have this client. She wants to go on an art tour, but I don’t want to just get a regular art historian. I want to get somebody for her that is deeply enmeshed in the art world that’s going to be able to show her up-and-coming artists, give her access to artist studios, and things like that.”

Lo and behold, her friend was able to put Schiffino in touch with the director of Sotheby’s for all of Denmark. The kind of person who doesn’t normally give tours to visitors. But, for Schiffino’s client the director spent a day and a half exploring galleries and introducing her to artists.

That’s the type of travel planning Lux Voyage specializes in.

“That philosophy of reaching out to people has had a lot to do with our success. When we’re planning a trip, we don’t just use the traditional connections and the traditional connections in the travel industry…” she told TMR.

It’s that getting in touch with someone who knows someone who knows someone that gives her advisors access to the kinds of things clients can’t get on their own.

Surprise career
Schiffino never planned to be a travel advisor, partly because she didn’t know anything about the profession. The first time she got a commission check, she actually called the hotel to ask why they sent it.

“There wasn’t really a moment where I said, this is what I want to do with my life… I was a lawyer,” she told TMR, referring to the 12 years she worked in law as “miserable.”

She added that during those 12 years, as she tried to figure out what she was really meant to be doing with her life, she started a side business taking people on food tours in New York City.

“I used to take people on these four-hour long journeys. It was totally unscripted, just what I liked most in New York,” she said.

Customers liked the tours so much they started asking Schiffino to plan their trips to Italy, France, London. Without knowing what she was doing she started building custom trips. Unaware of the resources out there for travel planners, she began by using the personal connections she had built up around the world to craft completely unique itineraries.

“Slowly, over time, I started getting addicted to this feeling of being able to craft something and being able to create memories for clients. That’s how I walked into Lux Voyage basically.”

All Latina, all luxury
Lux Voyage’s inception wasn’t the only thing that wasn’t planned. 

“We’re all female and we’re all Latinas,” Schiffino said, adding that’ while it’s by design now, it wasn’t in the beginning. (The sole male member of the Lux Voyage team does their finances.)

“At this point, it is by design. Even though we all come from different cultures and different backgrounds, our Latina culture gives us a tenacity and an outside of the box thinking… We don’t back down when we want to achieve something for our clients.”

The type of travel that Schiffino and her team has been planning since day one has naturally led to almost exclusively luxury clientele (driven 100% by repeat and referral business) , though she added it did take about two years for all of that to coalesce.

“By year two, we realized that our time was more efficiently spent and our value was best utilized with luxury clientele… It organically leads into us having high net worth clients because we really enjoy making these personalized itineraries and going beyond, and that comes with a certain budget.”

 Travel planning that is more “task oriented” isn’t where Lux Voyage shines, Schiffino added.

“Our clients are not just numbers for us. They’re people that we have relationships with. We know all their pet peeves. We know their kids. We know their special moments, and we’re looking out for them. We’re not transactional with them.”

 Advice for advisors looking to break into luxury
TMR asked Schiffino, who just completed a Stanford business scaling program specifically for Latinos, why Latinx advisors are underrepresented.

“Yes, there are other Latinos in the U.S. that have travel agencies, but at the luxury level, I feel it’s dominated by a certain sort of homogenous section,” she said.

Even for new, non-Latinx advisors luxury can be intimidating.

“I think it is hard to break into the luxury segment. Number one, you really have to understand that the standards for clients in the luxury space are very high, the expectations are very high, and the level of handholding and care is a lot higher than when you’re doing things that are pre-packaged,” she said.

A high level of trust is also required, she said, adding that trust often comes from already having experience working with discerning clients or having a network of high net worth friends, family, or business contacts.

“It is a well-known fact that the Latino community in the U.S. is not a wealthy community as a whole… I want to be an example for other Latinas and Latinos who want to get into the travel industry, especially the luxury level.”

So how should new advisors (Latinx or not) interested in selling luxury get started?

Schiffino advised identifying top agencies in the U.S. that an advisor might want to as an independent consultant for.

“When you come in at an entry level with a host agency, you get the benefit of learning, of training, you get the benefit of having clients sent or assigned to you,” she said. “And that’s a way of both learning and also getting exposed to the level of serve that clients in the luxury space expect.”