The longtime luxury travel leader has partnered with leading scientists to offer travelers personalized insights into why and how they travel
Bespoke travel company Brown + Hudson announces the release of a valuable new test to help people find out who they are as a travelers. Beta testers have suggested that the Values Interests and Personality Traveler Type Test’s (VIP TTT) may well be the most useful tool to emerge since the early days of luxury travel.
While there are numerous established and well-known personality tests, the VIP TTT is the first science-based assessment to focus exclusively on an individual’s travel personality: their travel type, values and interests.
Why now? The thinking behind this new initiative goes like this: There is a huge amount of pent-up demand for travel. Understandably, we all just want to go—to escape to—anywhere. We’ve had more than a year to dream about places we want to go, but have we really stopped to think? Have we taken the time to consider why we travel at all, how we could be traveling smarter, who we are as travelers?
Brown + Hudson’s VIP TTT answers those questions. It isn’t a quick and easy, thinly veiled sales pitch on where you should go next. Rather, the company worked with two eminent travel psychologists, Dr. Jaime Kurtz, a professor of psychology at James Madison University, in Harrisonburg, Virginia, USA, and Andrijana Pujić, a Serbian expert in the area of psychometrics and the design of personality trait assessments. It’s a thoughtful test that consists of 77 considered questions.
“For too long, luxury travel professionals have been obsessed with the where of travel. Knowledge of destinations, hotels and the ‘stuff’ of travel has been the value they added. This is no longer enough. It’s the kind of work that A.I can already do rather well,” says Philippe Brown, the founder of Brown + Hudson.
“The travel professionals who will survive and thrive in the future will shift their focus from where, when and how many people, to why, who and how,” continues Brown, who not only intends to use the test with his company’s clientele but also hopes that other travel companies and agents will license and use the test, which in turn will move the entire industry forward.
“They’ll make being close to their client their priority. They’ll be a hybrid of therapist and an investigative journalist. Therapist in terms of how they get to know their clients and journalist in terms of their curiosity, and approach to the destination. The VIP TTT is a valuable therapeutic starting point. It tackles the important question of who is traveling and helps them get better outcomes from their precious time away from home.”
After spending 10–15 minutes completing the test, each user will receive a bespoke profile report (basically a guidebook written all about them), a symbol that represents their particular travel type, and an extract from Brown’s upcoming book, REVISIT: The New Art & Science of Luxury Travel. In beta research, 95% of testers found the results insightful and valuable, and 89% found the test experience enjoyable.
Brown + Hudson senior private travel advisor Ben Lavender says,“My profile and bespoke report provided a deeper understanding of my purpose when traveling. It has helped me gain a more developed insight into how and why I personally should travel rather than focusing on where. I think users will derive huge benefit from this—specifically nine times more benefits from their travel. This is the art and science of travel.”
