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Sarah Lancashire, Gold Medal Travel Group marketing director, told TTG she had been evaluating the ultra-luxury operator since joining the group from Scenic Luxury Cruises and Tours in May.
“We are looking at our brands," she said. "Pure Luxury is one where we have gone back to the bones a little bit to look at how it speaks within the ultra-luxury market.
"It’s historically been a sub-brand of Gold Medal, but if you look at the volumes, our numbers are three to four times more than some competitors.”
Lancashire said Pure Luxury currently accounted for 12,000 to 13,000 passengers within Gold Medal’s 300,000.
A dedicated Pure Luxury marketing team has been put in place “with almost a separate business focus”. “We are working towards creating an individual space for Pure Luxury to live in,” she said.
To further promote the trade-only brand, a dedicated social media channel will be added and a new website launched in January.
Pure Luxury will launch its "biggest-ever" campaign – The Luxe List – later this week; the campaign will focus on 16 destinations, each getting its own microsite.
The campaign will be supported by a 60-page paper brochure available to top-selling agents, as well as trade incentives.
‘Evolution, not revolution’
New destinations and properties are being sought. “We are looking at partners we are not yet working with or working as well with,” Lancashire said.
“With destinations, we’re pretty much there, but we’re looking to expand in the Caribbean, particularly Turks & Caicos and Grenada. In many of the destinations we are already work with, we’ll maybe refresh with a finer focus.”
Lancashire said there would be no radical changes to how Pure Luxury was run. “It’s evolution, not revolution, because I’ve inherited a fantastic team. It’s about how can we do it even better?”
She said she had been surprised by the scale of Gold Medal since joining. “It’s purely B2B, it’s behind a bit of a curtain; you don’t necessarily see the size and strength of the whole group – it’s been a very pleasant surprise.”
