Luxury Escapes Opens Third Store as Physical Retail Lifts Booking Value

Luxury Escapes' physical stores are lifting the value of each booking, with customers who sit down with a travel expert spending more on airfares, transfers and tours than those who buy a package online and stop there. Chairman Andrew McEvoy delivered that verdict at the opening of the company's first Queensland boutique at Westfield Chermside — its third Australian store after Chadstone in Melbourne and Bondi Junction in Sydney.

The channel math explains the strategy. Roughly 60 per cent of Luxury Escapes customers book packages directly online, just over 30 per cent book by phone, and only five to six per cent walk into a store. Yet that small in-store slice is where the attach rate (the share of a trip's components sold alongside the core package) runs highest.

"We sell a lot more airfares, transfers and ground content like tours and experiences," McEvoy told Travel Weekly. The stores, in other words, are less about volume and more about margin per booking.

What makes the boutiques different?

McEvoy positioned the format against traditional travel retail. The spaces host events for premium members and double as a platform for tourism boards, airlines, destinations and hotel groups to engage customers directly — a second revenue and partnership function a conventional agency counter doesn't offer.

"When people take a holiday, they're taking a risk, and they want to see the whites of someone's eyes and be able to trust someone that what they're booking is real," he said. Trust, in his framing, converts into higher spend.

Does retail compete with AI?

No, and McEvoy was explicit about it. Luxury Escapes already uses artificial intelligence across customer enquiries, website development and coding. He sees stores as complementary to the technology rather than a rival channel.

"We're big into AI, we want to be discoverable and easily searched, and that's what we work on," he said. "But beyond that, the personal experience still does matter."

The company's focus, he said, is making each channel work together seamlessly rather than pushing customers toward one.

How big is the loyalty engine?

Société, the company's loyalty program, has passed two million members. Tiers carry benefits including complimentary upgrades, airport transfers and lounge passes — retention levers that reward repeat booking through the platform.

Behind it sits a database of roughly 18 million people who have either purchased from or considered purchasing through Luxury Escapes. That's the conversion pool the company wants to deepen.

McEvoy's loyalty theory is unglamorous: deliver what the flash-sale pricing promises. "The feedback for our packages and our sort of flash-style stuff is often, 'It's too good to be true'. But then they have a trip and it's affordable, it's fantastic, they're well looked after and have a great time," he said.

Where does growth come from next?

Membership already extends into the US, UK, Germany, Singapore and Hong Kong, and McEvoy named international markets as a core scaling opportunity. Cruising is the category he flagged for a stronger presence.

"We think there's a lot of room to grow, not just here in Australia, but geographically," he said.

Further boutiques are on the table, but deliberately slow ones. McEvoy stayed tight-lipped on the next location, saying future openings depend on finding the right venues and proving each store can deliver a strong customer experience while staying profitable — the discipline of a retailer that treats stores as an experiment to bed down, not a land grab.