Lightfoot Travel launches online portal for luxury tours

Management believes it's a $100 million business idea.

Lightfoot Travel is a luxury tour operator specialising in tailor-made holidays, honeymoons, corporate incentives, boutique accommodation and private villas around the world.

Lightfoot Travel has offices in Singapore and Hong Kong offering bespoke travel solutions to individuals and corporates.

According to Simon Cameron, Lightfoot Travel's founder and managing director, the company was launched in Singapore early 2010 and Hong Kong in 2011 and has grown rapidly since conception, with 85% YOY growth in 2012.

Cameron highlighted that unlike many online travel portals, Lightfoot only uses properties the management team has personally experienced and would wish to stay in themselves, so they can recommend something, and clients can rest assured that it is absolutely first-rate. "Our team are very well travelled and specialise in unusual holidays such as African Safaris, Latin America and trekking in Bhutan."

Moving forward, it's optimistic to maintain high revenues as it boasts of having huge addressable market and limited competition in the high-end bespoke travel market.

The company aims to achieve revenues of US$ 25 million by 2017 and US$ 75 to $100 million by 2020.

"We identified a lack of tailor-made travel companies in Asia, whereas in the UK this is a $1.5 billion dollar industry served by around 50 luxury travel companies. It is very underdeveloped market in Asia which offers a huge opportunity."

Cameron identified that Hong Kong and Singapore are both dominant luxury outbound travel markets in the Asia-Pacific region, after Japan, Australia, China and India, mainly because both countries have a large population of high earning households and buoyant outbound tourism markets.

The UK is Lightfoot’s third largest source market. Cameron said that the UK luxury tailor-made travel market (defined as tailor-made trips worth >$3,000 per pax) was worth an estimated $1.5bn in 2011.

Cameron also noted that The Middle East, Australia and China are large, high growth luxury travel markets that Lightfoot Travel plans to target, starting with a Dubai office opening in 2013 and Shanghai in 2014.

Other potential offices, Cameron said are Sydney and Melbourne.

Cameron cited key demand drivers for luxury tailor-made travel. First is the growing number of High Net Worth Individuals across Lightfoot Travel’s key source markets of Asia Pacific (+1.6% in 2011) and Western Europe (+1.1% in 2011) Secondly, travel he said, is a consumer spending priority where holidays are increasingly regarded as a non-discretionary spending item. Lastly, Cameron believes that experience is valued above status. "Luxury consumption trends favour rare and rewarding travel experiences over ‘vanilla’ travel itineraries."

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Name of the company: Lightfoot Travel
Founder/Founders: Simon Cameron, Nico Heath and Lucy Jackson
Website: www.lightfoottravel.com
Major Investors: Founders and Angel Investor
Total funding at hand: US$500,000
Target fund: Just closed $250,000
Source of funding: Angel Investor
Start of operation: 2010