Century-old American travel brand Tauck now numbers Australia as its second biggest market, an astonishing rise for a company which appointed its first representative here just five years ago. It is now set to make Australians a special offer.
Steve Spivak, Vice President, Global Sales and Reservations for the luxury river cruise and land tours company, was speaking exclusively to Cruise Passenger at the Cruise360 conference last week.
He revealed the line was about to make Australia a very special pricing offer – for a line which doesn’t do specials, that’s a major departure.
Tauck appointed its first local full-time representative in Australia 2019. Then came Covid.
“In 2019, we saw this opportunity to really expand and accelerate our effort in Australia”, says Spivak. “We thought that the most authentic way to do that would be to have our own team here on the ground. We all know what happened after that.
“We now have a three-member reservations team based here in Sydney. We’re building the business back and we have big plans for accelerating growth both in Australia and New Zealand.”
Says Spivak: “Australia is the number two outbound market for Tauck and it’s because Australians want the best. Australians travel longer than anyone, farther than anyone. They spend more per trip than anyone else in the world and it matters more to them that they get what they dreamed of, what they were promised. That fits so well with Tauck.
“The whole brand really is about the detail, the experience, the care.”
He maintains river cruising is the most popular product for Australians and has taken off. Its brand proposition – “Never settle for ordinary” – applies to its river cruises.
Spivak said Tauck is very optimistic it has the right team and product for Australia.
“We know that the sky is the limit here. In terms of travel, we’ve got unlimited potential. And I think the really big change significantly is in river cruising.
“When people experience it, they come back and they say: ‘I don’t know if I want to travel any other way’. They fall in love with it.”
Spivak says of Tauck’s most popular products in Australia: “I’ll give them to you in order: our first is river cruising, second European land tours. Then what we call our exotics portfolio, which is Africa – we actually take more people to Africa on safaris and cultural expeditions than any safari operator. We take thousands of people a year.
“We have 12 different itineraries just in Sub Saharan Africa, not to mention Morocco and Egypt. South America, Japan are also incredibly popular with the Australian traveller=.”
So what’s next for the brand which celebrates a century of travel next year?
Spivak said in the next few weeks Tauck would be launching 2026 product at 2025 prices for the first time in our history – and only for the Australian market.
“So Australians will be able to book Tauck products and have that guaranteed price until we go live with the actual pricing next year.
It’s a truly rare offer from a brand that doesn’t ordinarily do deals.
“We operate in a certain segment where price is not the driver for our customer,” says Spivak. “It’s care, it’s experience, it’s access.
“One thing we know our customers don’t want is to be sitting around the table at dinner on the ship and have that bloke go: ‘Oh hey, did you get the discount I got or are you getting a rebate check when you get home?’”
Spivak said he personally finds it peculiar when a luxury brand puts out a “buy one, get one free’ offer.
“What that says to me is that your product is worth exactly 50% of what you originally told people it was.
“Be honest, and give people the peace of mind to know that once they purchase, they don’t have to worry about currency fluctuations, they don’t have to worry about dynamic pricing. You know, we’re not the airlines, we are something that’s not a commodity and so people can get to the business of anticipating what they have dreamed of in their destination experience instead of checking back periodically to see if there’s another deal or another discount.”
Of the anniversary, Spivak says: “It is so exciting, but in typical Tauck fashion, our 100th anniversary will be about two things: one, gratitude; and two, how do we get better for the next 100 years?”
But there will be a party.
“In February, the entire company, all 800 employees roughly will be going to Florence, Italy for our 100th anniversary celebration for a birthday party. But even that party will be about the family saying thank you to the employees, about us saying thank you to our partners who have been there for the entire journey.
“And about us working together as an organization from the family to the CEO all the way down to the people answering the phones in the call centre, working together on crafting the ideas that will make us better and better still.”
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