Virtuoso’s Symposium is coming down under!

By Alexandra Coulton

Virtuoso is giving Australia the opportunity to show off its luxe offerings to the world by bringing their famous Symposium to Melbourne next year!

The luxury travel network will bring approximately 500 of the most influential decision-makers in luxury travel to our shores for a week-long conference from the 7-11 May 2019.

Around 50 per cent of the attendees are also travel agency owners or managers from across the globe so it’s an incredible opportunity for Australia to showcase everything we’ve got on offer to the top travel agencies in the world.

We caught up with Virtuoso’s Asia Pacific Managing Director, Michael Londregan to find out more about the symposium.

“It’s really exciting, especially for us because obviously, Virtuoso’s a very global company, so it’s wonderful to have all of our colleagues from around the world coming into our backyard,” Londregan told us.

“It’s just so wonderful to have these people thinking about their businesses and about the industry and doing it from our country.”

“It really gives us a chance to steal a bit of an unfair share of their mindset for a period of time.”

“It’s a wonderful chance to show people what our tourism infrastructure looks like.”

According to Londregan, it’s the local touch that will make the symposium a success.

“We’re working with our own members who run businesses based in Melbourne and are helping to design the event.”

“It’s great to have travel agents from Melbourne figuring out how to showcase Melbourne and Australia to the world because often you’ve got conference organisers from a different part of the world and they try and replicate their agenda in your environment.”

“This is the first time I’ve seen individual travel agency members from a destination helping design a global event.”

Virtuoso has agencies in 45 countries throughout North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. Earning a phenomenal US$23.7 billion in sales annually and specialising in luxury and experiential travel, Virtuoso comprises of over 1,000 travel agency members with more than 17,500 elite travel advisors.

The United States is an important market for Australia’s tourism industry, ranking second largest for spend and third largest for arrivals. US visitors spent over $3.75 billion in Australia last year. More than 790,000 US visitors came to Australia in the year ending January 2018, up 9.4 per cent year on year.

The event is sponsored by Tourism Australia and Tourism Victoria.

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Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

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