Luxury Explorer

Brief
While working closely with Orient-Express, designing, building and operating their 70+ websites, we identified an opportunity for a new business model. With hotels increasingly investing in their own websites, we saw the opportunity to offer a hand-picked collection of the finest independent hotels and create a global luxury portal brand with links to the hotels own websites, supported with original reviews and a global brand.

Solution
Nucleus created the name ‘Luxury Explorer’, the proposition ‘The World Atlas of Luxury Travel’, protected the names with trade marks worldwide, then created the brand identity and website design. The business model was supported by unique software that allow users to browse the website, read reviews and then visit the individual hotel websites and return to LE all within one session. When bookings are made on the hotels’ websites, LE’s software tracks this and confirms commission.

Monthly Top6Trips reviews, email marketing, PPC and SEO plus concepts like Grand-luxe Tours and ‘1 Room = 1 Tree only with LE’ brought the brand to life and to the attention of intelligent, affluent travellers in English speaking countries.

Results
Luxury Explorer launched with 100 independent hotels (now more than 200), each cherry-picked and visited to ensure quality. The LE brand has become highly respected and the Luxe-trotters’ Club now numbers nearly 2,000 personal members from around the world. During 2010 the average room night booking was £574/$891 with suites accounting for a high proportion of sales.