Selling Trips to the Lap of Luxury

In two cavernous ballrooms at the Bellagio hotel this week, travel agents wait to be wooed.

Men wearing kilts urge agents to send their clients to Scotland. A masseuse from Celebrity Cruise Lines roams the hall, kneading tight neck muscles. An affiliate of Virgin Atlantic Airways offers attendees the chance to book the ultimate trip: a suborbital spaceflight for $200,000 a pop.

In an hour, Stan Rosen of ProTravel in Beverly Hills hears spiels about the Wilderness Safari in Botswana, exotic retreats in Marrakesh and a handful of luxury resorts in Dubai, including one that ferries guests in Rolls-Royces.

“It flows in so fast it’s almost impossible to absorb it all,” says Rosen, 75, an agent since 1968. He specializes in celebrity and other high-end bookings.

The annual travel convention, organized by Virtuoso, a Fort Worth-based group, is speed-dating for the rich vacationer’s agent. More than a thousand of the world’s upscale travel destinations and tour operators are meeting in the weeklong event with a handpicked group of equally discerning travel agents. The destinations’ representatives have just four minutes to sell themselves -- luring the agents with glossy photos of white-sand beaches, award-winning cuisine and pricey accommodations that include castles in France.

Bells chime every four minutes, then a recorded voice -- the AT&T; operator’s -- gently urges the agents to move to their next appointment. By today, 260,000 meetings will have taken place.

Apart from the sales pitches, the resorts wine and dine the agents at cocktail parties, breakfasts, lunches and dinners, handing out extravagant vacations as if they were cheap door prizes. At the end of the convention, the top agents are whisked away in a private jet to sample one of the five-star resorts.

There’s a lot at stake: Members of Virtuoso’s network of more than 6,000 travel agents will book $4.2 billion in travel this year to clients who are increasingly searching for new experiences.

“It’s absolutely booming,” says Matthew Upchurch, Virtuoso’s chief executive. “Our agents are busier than they’ve ever been.”

And if they think they’re busy now, business is expected to explode. Over the next 18 years, roughly 8,000 baby boomers will turn 60 each day. “They have the money and they have the desire to travel,” Upchurch says.

Many attendees describe Travel Mart as the most bizarre convention they’ve attended.

But even Rosen -- one of Virtuoso’s most recognizable faces because of his tenure -- keeps coming. “It’s all about the relationships,” he says shortly after reminding the general manager of a Maui hotel that his clients will be arriving soon for a 30-day stay.

Like Rosen’s clients, the people who benefit from this convention are wealthy doctors, chief executives and other well-heeled folks who have made travel one of their top spending priorities. In the Internet age, many people book their vacations by hunting for deals online. Virtuoso clients pick up the phone. The agents see to it that their clients’ rooms are customized -- from the flowers and fruit to the down pillows. They can often get upgraded rooms and other perks that are unavailable to the public.

There is fun in all of this, too, as the hoteliers try to outdo each other. Several, such as the Montage Resort & Spa in Laguna Beach, host intimate lunches for agents with the hotel’s top management and give away parting gifts (Voluspa candles in the hotel’s signature vervain citrus scent). The Four Seasons hosts a breakfast for ProTravel agents and raffles off so many free nights at its hotels around the world that nearly everyone walks out a winner.

Not to be outdone, Micato Safaris leaves behind monogrammed journals on the beds of some agents, inviting them to a morning breakfast with “Jungle” Jack Hanna, who brings a cobra, a cockroach, a camel, a porcupine and a few other creatures.

Ticket agency Keith Prowse flies in the leads from the Broadway hit “Wicked” to perform a few numbers for Travel Mart’s opening session.

Travel agents, who are usually the ones doing the selling, get used to being on the other side of the table.

“This is how we get our royal treatment,” says Leah M. Smith, director of sales for Coastline Travel Advisors in Orange County and, at 24, one of the youngest agents in attendance. “They want us to send our clients to them.”

There’s also business being brokered. When Tracy Schiller, managing director of Keith Prowse, appears for her four-minute pitch at Coastline Travel’s table, Smith gets right to the point. She needs eight tickets to the sold-out “Jersey Boys” show on Broadway.

“My client is willing to pay big, big, big, big bucks,” Smith tells Schiller, declaring that the client is the owner of a National Basketball Assn. team. “They’re pretty important people.... I need to get the tickets. It’s not an issue of not getting them.”

It might be difficult, Schiller warns. But she leaves with a promise: “I’d be happy to personally help you.”

A few minutes later, Coastline owner Jay Johnson asks New York-based Bluestar Jets about chartering a private jet to New Zealand.

Do they have enough money? Bluestar Managing Director Jose Zavala asks, noting that the price could be $175,000.

Johnson scrolls through his Blackberry to retrieve his client’s e-mail, then says matter-of-factly, “They budgeted $250,000.”

Business cards are exchanged. “Give me a call directly,” Zavala says.

Those interactions are key to luxury travel, says Upchurch of Virtuoso. “The old adage is true. It’s not what you know, but who you know.”

Hoteliers spend time and energy wooing the agents because they have the power to steer wealthy clients to outlandish destinations few people can afford.

For example, Virgin Galactic announced this week that only Virtuoso agents would be able to book its inaugural flights to outer space. The company is building five mother ships, which will each take a spaceship to 50,000 feet before releasing it. Each will hold six passengers and two pilots. Each passenger will be trained for two or three days for the 2 1/2 -hour flight, which includes about four minutes of weightlessness.

The first year, there probably will be flights once a week, although the company expects to grow that number to twice daily.

Already, Virgin Galactic has received $15 million in deposits for flights, which are expected to begin in late 2008.

“Virtuoso agents are the people to work with,” says Carolyn Wincer, Virgin Galactic’s head of astronaut sales. “They’re forward-thinking and they have access to the base clients with money.”

Coastline’s Smith says she already has clients in mind for the out-of-this-world experience. And Johnson is busy lobbying to get them lined up to become one of Virgin Galactic’s certified agencies.

“I want to be a space agent,” says Johnson. “How cool is that?”