LEADING accommodation-only provider on Spain’s Costa del Sol, Marbella Options (marbellaoptions.com) and its parent company Luxury Options (luxuryoptions.com) will officially announce the launch of GulfOptions.com, a high end travel site aimed at the affluent northern European, Spanish and Latin American market, at ATM this month.
Luxury Options is a high-end guest service driven travel company dealing mainly with guests from Europe and America. Their first destination was Marbella, Spain where their head offices are based. Two years down the line and Marbella Options controls a large percentage of the Marbella hotel, villa and apartment market. The next step was across the Atlantic and the company launched a small operation in Miami naming it MiamiOptions.com.
Now Luxury Options is expanding to incorporate Dubai and other GCC destinations in Gulfoptions.com. At the same time, the company will be launching Latinoptions.com for luxury travel to the wonders of Chile and Argentina.
Says Nicholas Rhodes, president of Luxury Options, “We are now entering a frenetic phase of both consolidation and expansion. We have one team consolidating our position as the leader in the Marbella market and another team working on our expansion. Our business model is simple – we will use our client base and presence in all our markets to cross sell to other destinations. At the same time, all our customer support and reservation systems are harmonized. Unlike many other online travel companies, we will also have support offices in each of our destination, thus giving the local service needed to our high end guests.”
One outgoing market that has been relatively untouched for the Dubai/ Gulf region has been the Spanish speaking segment. Until now both Spanish and Latin American guests have had to pay much higher for their trips than, for example, the British or the Germans. This was due, in part, to the lack of interest from these markets. However, in the past months, Dubai has been receiving a lot of press coverage in both Spain and Chile as well as in other Spanish speaking countries. Gulf Options will capitalize on this coverage and will use its network of media contacts and agencies to educate, promote and sell this magnificent destination, says Rhodes.