Virtuoso’s sales are up – but optimism is down

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Despite the perception that “travel is down,” Virtuoso is reporting that all travel categories are up when compared to 2024 numbers. Said Misty Belles, Vice President, Global Public Relations for Virtuoso: “Luxury travel just behaves differently.”

Diving into the Numbers

To that point, global network sales are up 12.1% (from January to June 2025) over last year’s numbers. (For reference, the first half of 2024 was up 14% compared to 2023.) When looking at each category, hotels are leading the way (up 25.5%). Performing at roughly even levels were cruise (+9.3%), service (8.7%) and on-sites (8.4%); trailing the cohort is tours at 2.9%.

When considering the latter half of the year, those numbers are even better: Hotels are up 33.1%, on-sites are up 16.9%, cruise 15.9%, tours 13.6% and services 6.1% (which Belles noted are typically booked closer in to travel, so she expects this number to be higher by year’s end). Breaking it down by season, fall bookings are up 30% over 2024 and festive bookings are up 35% when compared to last year.

The hotel numbers jump out even more when you learn that the Virtuoso network’s global leisure preferred ADR in the first half of the year was 8.1% higher than 2024 (which was up only 1.6% compared to 2023. Should the pacing continue, Virtuoso projected the ADR to reach $1,575 for festive season. So, the impressive sales numbers aren’t coming only from increased prices—clients are simply taking more trips.

Expanding that window from one to two years out, bookings are up 24%. And when you look at bookings of $50,000 or more in that span, they are up 35%.

Are Things Really This Good?

One hint that the market isn’t all positive is that there has been a slight increase in trips that are seven days or shorter in 2025 (along with a decrease in trips that are 14 days or more). The former saw a bump from 51.9% in 2024 to 54.2% this year, while the latter dropped from 10.4% last year to 9% in 2025.

Another interesting discovery was the level of optimism felt by Virtuoso’s network. While nearly all of the above paints a very positive picture, David Kolner, EVP of Virtuoso, shared some insight that showed some signs of caution among member and partners.

When asked how they were feeling about their business right now, just 69% of advisors in July said they were optimistic; this was down from 80% in January and the lowest since early 2022. While Kolner pointed that those who were pessimistic has remained fairly steady at just a couple percentage points since the pandemic (with a slight uptick to 3% in July), most advisors shifted from optimistic to “neutral/unsure.”

Things were even murkier on the supplier side. This cohort saw a large drop from 78% who were optimistic at the start of the year to 56% who said so in the latest survey. There was also a noticeable increase to 6% of suppliers who were pessimistic about their business, as of July.

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