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What Global Travel Collection's UK Travel Advisors Say Luxury Hotels Are Getting Right and Wrong
- Emily Goldfischer
- 7 minutes ago
- 5 min read
What happens when the hotel your client has fallen in love with on TikTok is completely wrong for them?
At Global Travel Collection UK’s annual Summer Soirée in London, Josh Martin of Many Moons Travel told me that’s becoming a big part of his job, particularly with younger clients. They arrive with screenshots, saved posts, TikTok videos and ChatGPT-generated itineraries, already convinced they know where they want to stay.
Increasingly, his job is the reality check.
He told me about one couple who checked into an Aman resort and left after a single night. It was too quiet for them. The atmosphere simply didn’t match what they wanted from the trip.
It’s a small example of a much bigger shift in luxury travel. Travelers have never had more information at their fingertips, but information isn’t the same as knowing whether a hotel is right for a particular person.
That tension between technology and human judgement ran through GTC UK’s afternoon of talks, emceed by Vanessa McGovern, SVP, Partner Product, Marketing and Events at Global Travel Collection.
One of the most interesting sessions was an advisor panel moderated by Simon Brooks, Senior Vice President at Global Travel Collection, featuring Martin, Joshua Beagelman of MB Private Clients and Michelle Nixon of Altx. Between them, they represented luxury leisure, private clients and entertainment travel.
Despite working in very different parts of the business, they were remarkably consistent about what hotels get right, what frustrates them and, ultimately, what influences where they send their clients.
Social media inspires. Advisors go beyond the feed.
Martin said his clients increasingly want “luxury, but with a difference.” They don’t necessarily want the hotels they have already seen everywhere on Instagram or TikTok. They want the next place, the hidden gem, the hotel their friends haven’t already posted.
That means the advisor’s job is no longer simply to help book what the client has found. It is also to introduce them to places they haven’t.
At the same time, advisors are expected to reality-check the hotels clients arrive asking for. If a property is dated, renovations are underway or there is construction nearby, Martin wants to know before the client gets there.
When clients arrive and discover something neither they nor their advisor expected, “we look bad, and the relationship suffers,” he said.
So the value runs in both directions: knowing when the Instagram-famous hotel isn’t right, and knowing what to recommend instead.
The internet solved the inspiration problem. It hasn’t solved the judgement problem, or the discovery problem once everyone is looking at the same feed.
Speed and flexibility matter
Clients also expect answers faster.
Martin said clients message him and expect a response within hours. Beagelman, who handles C-suite and high-net-worth clients across business and leisure travel, said requests have become increasingly immediate.
“The worst situations for us are when it’s really last minute and we’re having to go through a much more processed system with the hotel,” he said.
Sometimes the most valuable thing a hotel can provide is simply a person who can solve the problem.
Beagelman also pointed to flexibility: an early check-in after an overnight flight, late checkout or an amenity for an important repeat guest. Small gestures for a hotel can make a big difference to the client.
The little things hotels get wrong matter
Nixon, whose business operates across music touring, film production and live theatre, made the case for getting the less glamorous details right.
For clients who spend much of the year on the road, a billing issue at check-in or poor follow-through isn’t a small inconvenience. Even invoicing matters when a team is trying to reconcile a major tour.
And advisors remember. If one hotel repeatedly makes life difficult while another has a trusted contact who responds quickly and finds solutions, that experience influences where future business goes.
As Nixon put it: “Ultimately, we’re creating the experience together.”
That relationship works both ways. When hotels communicate honestly, respond quickly and find solutions, advisors notice that too. Those are the partners they trust when the next client request lands.
AI should give advisors their time back
That same question of where human expertise adds value came up in a fireside chat between Angie Licea, President of Global Travel Collection, and J.D. O’Hara, CEO of Internova Travel Group.
O’Hara described a hotel booking change within one Internova business that involved around 80 manual steps. The company identified roughly 55 that he believes could be handled using AI.
“If you ask the average advisor what they could use in their life, it’s just time,” he said.
The goal is to remove administrative work so advisors can spend more time looking after clients and selling travel.
Listening to the advisors, you could see why. Their value isn’t processing a booking. It’s knowing the client, understanding the hotel, managing expectations and sometimes saying, I know it looks fabulous online, but I don’t think it’s right for you.
As booking gets easier, expertise matters more
That idea also came through in remarks from Jody Edwards-Locke, interim Managing Director of GTC UK.
GTC UK has signed more than 15 new principal advisors this year, representing more than £30 million in expected annual sales, but Edwards-Locke said the company is becoming more selective about who it brings onto the platform.
“We’re not interested in growth for growth’s sake,” she said.
She also made an important distinction: “There’s a world of difference between someone who can book travel and someone who’s truly honing their craft.”
Technology has made booking easier. Social media has made discovery easier. AI is making research easier. Expertise is what helps make sense of all of it.
The bucket list is now the live-now list
Jennifer Hartnett of Colletts Travel used that phrase to describe the shift in traveler mindset, and GTC’s booking data backs up just how compressed planning windows have become.
The average hotel booking lead time is now just 28 days. Air is 30 days, car rental 19 and rail 14.
Anecdotally, several speakers said the window can feel even shorter. Bookings shift almost overnight, making forecasting so difficult that one hotelier had told O’Hara they had essentially stopped trying to reforecast far ahead and were working month to month instead.
Cruise is the huge exception at 153 days, which helps explain why it kept coming up as a major growth area.
Hartnett also pointed to strong demand for multigenerational, wellness and solo travel.
For all the talk of AI, technology and changing booking patterns, the afternoon kept circling back to something much more human.
There is no shortage of information telling travelers where to go. What is increasingly valuable is someone who knows what the pictures don’t show, knows whether a hotel will actually suit you and knows where to send you when everyone else is looking at the same places.
The talks were followed by drinks and awards at The Peninsula London’s rooftop bar, where a little earlier rain had left a rainbow over the London skyline. Fitting way to end the Global Travel Collection summer soirée!
