Elite Traveler – ET Insider – January 10, 2012

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ET Insider – January 10, 2012

Elite Traveler Insider –

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January 10, 2012

Elite Traveler Insider

By Douglas D. Gollan, President and Editor-in-Chief, Elite Traveler Magazine

With the start of 2012 please accept our best wishes for a terrific 2012.

More than ever private jet travelers, or elite travelers as we like to call them, are the most lucrative market for luxury brands and service providers. With readers spending $10,000 per hour to fly privately, the over 600,000 readers Elite Traveler reaches each issue provide you a great way to make sure your message is in front of consumers who have the money to be good customers. With our Asia Edition, Elite Traveler Superyachts, our over 60 Elite Traveler Destination Guides at Elitetraveler.com, our global database of private jet owners and our award-winning custom marketing team, we would welcome the opportunity to be of help to you in making sure you get a bigger share of our reader spending.

With a Net Worth of more than $25 trillion, I hope you will agree elite travelers should be a key target for your marketing!

In this issue:

1. Yesawich: Mass Affluent Travelers Feeling Cost/Time Squeeze

2. Destinations Need to Return to Print Advertising

3. Harris Poll Shows Americans Cutting Back on Vacation Time

4. Elite Traveler A Favorite for Private Jet Setters

5. Bloomberg: In China, English Butlers Are In Demand

6. In Oz, Top 1 Percent Doubles Its Take

7. Aspen Records 300 + Private Jet Flights in a Single Day

1. Yesawich: Mass Affluent Travelers Feeling Cost/Time Squeeze…

Mass Affluent American consumers are feeling the squeeze, both in their wallets and the time they have for travel, particularly long distance travel, travel research guru Peter Yesawich told the United States Tour Operators Annual Conference in Marco Island, Florida.

Speaking on his research about affluent travelers with a Household Income mainly from $125,000 to $300,000, Yesawich noted “reasons for not traveling” had increased five to 10 percentage points in the past six months. Top reasons not travel were gasoline prices (68 percent), higher airfares (62 percent), bad U.S. economy (61 percent), too much credit card debt (52 percent), and higher lodging and entertainment costs (both 51 percent).

He noted at the top end of the Mass Affluent, the population of Minimal Millionaires – households with single figure million dollar net worth driven mainly by home prices and stock market investments – has shrunk by three million households in the past two years.

Yesawich said key issues were affordability of travel, money to travel and time available for travel. He said the main way to attract these consumers is deals and noted a “significant” portion (20 percent) had bought travel from a promotional email, up 25 percent in a year.

For a look at how elite travelers roll, check out the testimonial letter from Corinthia London on a $200,000 booking from a reader of Elite Traveler here.

So while elite travelers may roam the planet (41 trips per year, over 100 flights and over 11 intercontinental trips per year), Yesawich said “41 percent” of mass affluent travelers he surveyed “don’t have enough time to travel.”

According to Yesawich, weekend trips are the Mass Affluents’ favorite getaway; furthermore, he told destination marketers that “the radius is contracting” and that far away and hard to get to destinations shouldn’t “waste” their marketing dollars targeting the Mass Affluent. He noted 30 percent of Mass Affluent leisure travelers made at least one of their four annual trips within 50 miles of their home.

============================================================ ONLY ELITE TRAVELER – Elite Traveler is the ONLY publication targeting and reaching private jet travelers to have its circulation successfully audited. View our BPA statement here. ============================================================

2. Destinations Need to Return to Print Advertising…

MMGY Vice Chairman and noted travel research expert Peter Yesawich told a packed audience at the USTOA Annual Conference that the mass move by destinations away from print to web marketing was a mistake.

According to Yesawich, after recommendations of a friend, travel related magazines were the top source (52 percent) for travel inspirations and destination ideas. Second he said was Guide Books (check out our over 60 Elite Traveler Destination Guides here and coming third with 39 percent was search engines. However, Yesawich downplayed the influence of social networking sites in influencing destination or hotel choice noting that while sites like Facebook may be ubiquitous with online consumers, they are not used to get ideas or inspiration for travel.

============================================================ ONLY ELITE TRAVELER – Elite Traveler is the ONLY publication in the world delivering 400,000+ readers with a Household Income of $1 million + ============================================================

3. Harris Poll Shows Americans Cutting Back on Vacation Time …

Americans are still cutting back on some discretionary spending as the still-struggling economy breeds fiduciary caution, according to the Harris Poll. This month, only three in 10 say they are likely to take a vacation lasting longer than a week in the next six months (29 percent), a drop of more than 20 percent in just six months, according to a report in Modern Agent.

According to the report on the Harris Poll: “As the economy fluctuates and Americans continue to feel pessimistic about employment prospects, it only follows that non-essential spending would continue to be scrutinized. While spending in some of these areas, including on major purchases and travel, could provide a boost for the struggling economy, Americans will likely continue to hold back until they feel more comfortable. Any extra spending that is done this time of year is usually on holiday gifts, and January tends to be when consumers cut back spending to pay off those bills. Thus, as it stands now, the cycle of bad feelings and decreased spending does not look like it’s positioned to change anytime soon.

The Harris Poll was conducted online within the United States between Nov. 7 and 14, 2011, among 2,499 affluent adults representing the Mass Affluent.

============================================================ ONLY ELITE TRAVELER – Elite Traveler is the ONLY publication targeting private jet travelers with an independent editorial and design team, original photography, award-winning editors, designers and photographers. ============================================================

4. Elite Traveler A Favorite for Private Jet Setters…

A recent survey by Prince & Associates of over 150 private jet owners and owners of fractional share jets found that Elite Traveler is their publication of choice!

According to the research, 96 percent of the randomly selected private jet setters identified themselves as readers of Elite Traveler.

“Elite Traveler’s reach to the private jet traveler market is near 100 percent. In a fragmented media environment, this means the publication has essentially universal coverage of this extremely high-spending luxury consumer market,” private wealth research expert and Prince & Associates CEO Russ Prince said.

Prince noted the publication gets loyal usage with readers, who said they read each issue an average of 3.7 times. Other key findings were that the private jet owners surveyed showed or passed their copies to an average of 4.4 other people. “Clearly Elite Traveler is a shared experience, meaning that it is part of the conversation for these UHNW consumers. Getting target consumers to talk about your brand is a key objective of advertising and these results show Elite Traveler is very effective at accomplishing that objective,” Prince added.

With many mass affluent glossy magazines now filled with budget advertising which muddies the water for luxury advertisers, Prince pointed out “97.2 percent of Elite Traveler readers said the magazine is a ‘good showcase’ for luxury goods and services while 94.3 percent of readers consider Elite Traveler ‘higher quality’ than other magazines they read.” According to Prince, both points underscore “Elite Traveler has established itself as the premier print brand platform for companies that are targeting UHNW consumers.”

Prince said the research also addressed the issue about whether controlled publications such as Elite Traveler can gain a strong relationship with readers. Prince noted, “Nearly 70 percent of readers (68.1 percent) said Elite Traveler is one of their 4 or 5 favorite magazines. Clearly this shows the very strong affinity these UHNW private jet travelers have for the publication.”

Following up on the trust readers have in the content of Elite Traveler, Prince commented, “Not only do the readers of Elite Traveler trust what they read, they can afford to buy the products that are featured which is the ultimate payoff for marketers.”

Key findings, Prince said, is that 84 percent of readers had stayed in a hotel, resort, spa or villa they had read about in Elite Traveler in the previous 12 months. At the same time, 44 percent of readers had bought additional private jet services from the publication, while 44 percent also said they had bought watches or jewelry from Elite Traveler. The magazine’s award-winning fashion coverage also made an impact with 38 percent of readers, who purchased fashion and accessories directly after they were featured in Elite Traveler.

“These are very strong numbers,” Prince stated, “and they show the powerful combination of the magazine getting to UHNW consumers aboard their private jets and the quality content and format of the publication.”

============================================================ ONLY ELITE TRAVELER – Elite Traveler is the ONLY publication that delivers UHNW consumers on private jets from more than 100 countries with a single ad. ============================================================

5. Bloomberg: In China, English Butlers Are In Demand…

English butlers, synonymous with Reginald Jeeves in the novels of P.G. Wodehouse, are answering more calls from super-rich Chinese and Russian clients as wealth shifts from East to West. The Guild of Professional English Butlers has trained 20 percent more butlers this year than last, placing them with clients as soon as they are ready, according to Robert Watson, head of the firm in southern England.

“Demand is outstripping supply,” Watson said by telephone. “We deal with people who often are cash rich and time poor. The credit crunch did affect things for a time, but before you get rid of the butler, get rid of the Ferrari.”

As Europe struggles with a debt crisis and the United States tries to revive its economy, burgeoning growth in emerging markets is boosting spending on luxuries like never before, and creating opportunities for more people to look after them. The ranks of millionaires in 10 major Asian economies will more than double to 2.8 million by 2015, according to a Julius Baer Group and CLSA Asia Pacific Markets report.

“We have been doing a lot of business in China particularly,” said Robert Wennekes, chairman of the International Butler Academy, which trains servants in the Netherlands. “Every month for the past 15 months, I have been traveling from Amsterdam to China to service our clients there.” Watson estimated that his company trains more than 1,000 butlers per year and around a fifth of those go into personal service for the wealthy, with the remainder at hotels.

Demand for placing butlers in the homes and yachts of the wealthy increased about 20 percent this year, according to Sebastian Hirsch, owner of Butler for You, a company registered in Berlin placing household staff across Europe.

Sara Vestin, director of the Bespoke Bureau in London, said her company trained 52 butlers this year, up from 20 last year, and they all got jobs. The highest-paid placement was for a $158,390 salary in the United Arab Emirates, she said. “Everyone looking for a job who is accepted on the training with us, will get a job,” Vestin said in an e-mail. “There are a lot of people looking to hire butlers and there is a shortage of them,” she said.

Butlers undergo a month-long training program that includes instruction on food and wine service and “second guessing” what their employer wants, Watson said.

The butler’s place in English society reached its peak during the increasing affluence of the Victorian era when having a butler was “considered essential for those aspiring to gentility,” according to “The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Servant” by Pamela Horn.

In 1911, some 800,000 British homes had servants; following World War I, the numbers dropped as new career paths opened and social attitudes changed, according to Horn. By 1969, the number of male servants fell to 12,000 in the United Kingdom, declining further over the subsequent four decades. There are now around 8,000 butlers in the United Kingdom, Hirsch at Butler for You estimated.

Greycoat Placements, also based in London, has about 20,000 people on its books today, three times more than in 2008, Salter said. Demand has been driven partly because of a growing number of Chinese clients needing butlers for their second homes in London, said Laura Harrall, a director at Greycoat.

“Asia is coming up pretty strong now,” Watson said. “We are getting lots of inquiries from these Chinese who are sitting on piles of money. They are discovering that if you spend $8 million on a villa with marble flooring, you need someone to come along who knows what they are doing.”

6. In Oz, Top 1 Percent Doubles Its Take…

Australia’s top 1 per cent of earners now take twice as big a slice of national income as they did three decades ago, new research on the widening gap between the nation’s rich and poor shows.

And the share raked in by the super rich – the top 0.1 percent of earners – has grown even more rapidly, increasing almost fourfold since 1981.

The research, by federal MP and economist Andrew Leigh, also found that while the salaries of business chiefs have soared, politicians and senior public servants are paid much less now, relative to the average wage, than they were early last century. Dr Leigh said Australia’s top 1 percent of earners had 4.6 percent of the nation’s income in 1981, but that share rose to 10.1.

7. Aspen Records 300 + Private Jet Flights in a Single Day…

A week ago Monday was the second busiest day in the history of Sardy Field for planes arriving to and departing from the airport, according to the Aspen Daily News.

There were at least 341 flights that took off or landed at the airport on Jan. 2, said Greg Dyer, support manager for airspace and procedures at the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center for the Federal Aviation Administration. Jan. 2, 2011 holds the record with 370 aircraft flying in and out of Sardy Field.

The majority of air traffic on Monday was private jets, with maybe 30 or so commercial flights departing and arriving at the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport.

In other words 10 private jets for every commercial flight and lots of copies of Elite Traveler!

All the best,

Douglas D. Gollan Group President and Editor-in-Chief Elite Traveler, the private jet lifestyle magazine Elite Traveler Superyachts, the superyacht lifestyle magazine Elite Traveler Asia, Asia’s private jet lifestyle magazine Elitetraveler.com, the private jet lifestyle online Elite Traveler Update, our weekly e-Newsletter to private jet owners worldwide