Luxury Travel
Travel’s Biggest Problem Isn’t Covid, Says Virtuoso CEO
The messy economics that predated the pandemic will have a lot to do with the industry’s survival.
Riverside view of the Santa Maria della Salute in Venice.
Photographer: JaCZhou 2015/Moment RFLast March, when the pandemic brought travel to a virtual standstill, Virtuoso Chief Executive Officer Matthew Upchurch was with his family at Francis Ford Coppola’s Turtle Inn, in Belize.
“I spent the whole time on my laptop,” says Upchurch, who oversees a global network of more than 20,000 travel advisers. While his family went diving around the largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere, he was addressing thousands of suddenly canceled trips and ascertaining the depths of the turmoil to come.