Red Savannah first approached Ian Mackinnon to join the brand last summer, aware of his significant track record in the travel industry, including senior roles at A&K, Scott Dunn and Explora.

“It was a pretty unique opportunity to join a business which has an extremely strong brand and strong leadership,” Mackinnon told TTG Luxury. “The business is growing very quickly – we had record years in 2022 and 2023 – so it’s an exciting time for me to be joining.”

Sales last year grew to more than £16 million – a 41% increase on 2019, and Mackinnon said he hopes to continue this upward trajectory. Among the business’ three verticals of tailor-made holidays, gulet and yacht cruises, and villa rentals, it’s the latter that’s seen the most sales from the trade so far.

“Sales via the trade grew by 29% from 2022 to 2023, and now represent 12% of our overall turnover,” Mackinnon said. “And the majority of that is coming in via our luxury villa rental service, which includes properties in Italy, France, Spain, Greece and the Caribbean. Trade sales for villas grew 41% from 2022 to 2023 and represent 28% of the company’s villa sales overall. We continue to be very interested in courting the trade around our villa portfolio.” 

As such, Red Savannah’s managing director for villas, Nick Westwood, has been working on evolving the relationship with the trade as a fundamental part of the company’s growth strategy with the aim of doubling the level of business via agents over the next three years. Increased trade engagement, agent fam trips and an incentive scheme all form part of the strategy.

Villa focus

With agents in mind, Westwood has designed a programme to deliver value and assurance for travel bookers that includes a small curated collection of high-end properties with extra holiday management services and high-touch support. Agents can earn commission on both the villa rental and in-destination services.

According to Mackinnon, the key to the company’s recent growth has been brand awareness among clients and agents, crediting Red Savannah’s marketing team with raising the company’s profile.

“We’re putting a lot of focus into our marketing team. They’ve done a fantastic job at growing brand awareness, putting us right at the top of the tree in terms of high-end experiential tour operators. So we’re looking to grow our marketing team as a result of our recent success and we’re currently recruiting for two roles,” Mackinnon shared. 

Alongside growing its marketing team, and having doubled its total number of staff since 2019, the company has also introduced new tours such as the In The Footsteps Of… series, which take travellers to the haunts of Winston Churchill – launched in this, the 150th anniversary year of his birth – or iconic fashion designer Coco Chanel, for example.

“The tours we have launched recently have seen phenomenal uptake,” said Mackinnon. “On the tailor-made side, Japan has been a rip-roaring success. It was closed for quite a long time over Covid, but we’ve seen enormous growth for 2023, and for forward-bookings in 2024 and into 2025.”

“We’re also very excited about Antarctica – it’s an area where we see great opportunity and have received a lot of interest,” added Mackinnon, who was once an Explora guide in Patagonia himself. “We’ve just brought onboard Dineka Verlinden as regional director for Latin America and she has exceptional experience in the polar region.”

Another of the new tours is In The Footsteps Of... The Great Detectives, which will reference Hercule Poirot, Inspector Morse and Sherlock Holmes, with a few nods to Agatha Christie – no doubt inspiring agents to do some of their own detective work about how they can work more closely with the operator in the future.