The Luminaire is a new breed of travel company, creating truly immersive and authentic cultural experiences alongside leading thinkers, like Masterclass in real life.
Our aim is to give travellers new and more informed perspectives on the world, we hope, for changing the world for the better – for example a live photography experience with one of the world’s legendary photographers.
Behind the scenes, we are setting The Luminaire as a travel company of the future, incorporating technologies that allow us to create real personalisation at scale, leveraging AI to identify and capture customer preferences, and delivering customers who demand luxury experiences access to a better all-round customer experience.
How did you come up with the idea for the company?
I have former experience as a CEO in travel, having re-branded and re-launched a luxury adventure travel company. I learnt that there was a really powerful trend for people seeking stimulating and enriching experiences, but there was no category-defining brand to serve them.
My co-founder, Nicholas Priest, who came from leading marketing at One&Only, and AMAN Resorts, had a really good understanding of a new archetype and a younger generation of traveller that wanted deeply experiential and stimulating holidays, but were unserved.
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How have the company and launch plans evolved during the pandemic?
The substantial demand for ‘revenge travel’ has put a lot of wind in our sails and actually, we’ve launched at a time when consumers and agents are really excited to see a new and innovative concept launching.
What can we hope to see from The Luminaire in the future?
On the surface, our mission is to make intellectual travel cool and open that world up for new travellers of all ages. We want our guests to see the excitement of going somewhere and learning a skill, be it photography, astronomy, or art. There are so many curiosities out there!
We see ourselves not as a typical travel company, but following an ‘experience as a service’ model. To take an analogy with technology, we see ourselves following an Intel Inside strategy – branded hardware inside hardware, in other words, partnering with other companies – primarily hotels; but also luxury brands, photography brands – any company that wants to be experiential, and creating extensions to their brand world.
