Luxury adventure specialist Pelorus, based in London and the U.S., reports that, after an extensive refit, Galapagos Explorer has joined the company’s fleet. With six air-conditioned ensuite cabins, the vessel’s intimate size works well for Galapagos cruising in terms of getting in and out of small areas for viewing giant tortoises and blue-footed boobies on land, as well as snorkeling to see the varied Galapagos marine life.
Also new for Pelorus is its exclusive charter booking for the new Captain Arctic, the world's first “close-to-zero-carbon emission luxury yacht,” which debuts this fall. Note: Other companies can book single cabins, but Pelorus can charter the entire yacht.
The bespoke travel company, which has a team of 45 globally (London, Austin, New York, Florida, Colorado, California, Cape Town and Monaco) is banking heavily on the U.S. market and travel advisors. Last year, it realized a 150 percent spike in U.S. leads brought in by trade partners; 65 percent of clients come through advisors, says Pelorus co-founder and president Jimmy Carroll. The company last year began working with the luxury travel representation firm Hidden Doorways to enhance its reach into the travel advisor market.
Carroll, who is now based in Austin to be closer to the U.S. market, says that he’s seeing a definite increase in the number of family trips, as well as a rise in yacht travel.
“For us, it's a lot of people new to yachting because they realize that they can see more remote locations and in a different way. If you can cruise the coastline of Costa Rica in a yacht, it opens your horizons and changes your perspective,” Carroll tells World of Luxury.
As for multi-generational family trips, Carroll says that yachting can meld all the different age groups together well.
“Yachting offers a level of luxury and service for older generations. They feel like they're being looked after and well accommodated,” he says. “And for younger generations that want to be active, we have so many assets and toys on yachts that can exhaust all the teenagers. And you can then blend all those different age groups together; you can have a group scuba diving while others are just snorkeling on the surface, but they are all enjoying the same experience.”
Military roots
Pelorus was founded eight years ago by Carroll and Geordie Mackay-Lewis. Together they served on a reconnaissance mission in the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountain range in Afghanistan. Today, everything they do goes through a planning document similar to what they used for military operations.
“We changed that into a travel, yachting, aviation and expedition planning tool,” said Carroll. “That's really the foundation that Pelorus was built on. It was military planning.”
Their military training also provides them with a keen focus on safety and security, particularly for yachts and excursions into remote locations. “And then it's really about the creativity that we pour on top of it,” says Carroll. Once a trip is planned, another document called “Coordinating Instructions” is created, which provides hour-by-hour and day-by-day detail of how the experience will go.
Carroll says this type of planning is vital because yachting trips are complex, particularly when the main yacht is accompanied by tenders, then perhaps helicopters, dive teams and land-based specialists.
A turnkey enterprise
Pelorus comprises three elements: Pelorus Yachting, a licensed yacht brokerage; Pelorus Aviation, which specializes in private jet journeys; and Pelorus Travel, which “designs tailor-made vacations with military-grade precision and seamless end-to-end planning.” Because of increased requests for on-demand charters and private air transfers, Pelorus Aviation last year became a licensed aviation broker.
“Having a travel business with air charters and yachts under one brand provides a full turnkey solution for clients, where previously you'd have to go to someone different for each element,” says Carroll.
He says Pelorus has now taken on eight yachts that it manages. “We don't own any of the yachts as much as I'd love to,” he says. “We manage them for owners and do the marketing for them. We encourage sales from our teams, but from the wider market as well. The unique selling proposition for us is that because we're also a travel company, we're having a lot of breakthroughs with travel agents and operators because the yachting world can seem quite scary. Coming at it from that perspective, we can immediately start to break down the barriers to entry. That’s where the biggest gains have been for us."
Carroll said U.S. travel advisors have clients who want to start traveling in different ways but have no idea how to go about it. “So, we're a value-added proposition to them to help increase sales. It's not on every single trip but when it does click, it's a tremendous opportunity to show them something very different,” he says.
Pelorus works with trade clients who have a minimum budget of $100,000 which enables them to be able to “be creative and go out and really do what we do best.”
Carroll says that the Caribbean and the Mediterranean are the traditional stomping grounds for private yachts
“We’re not trying to change the industry at all, and you can do some incredible trips there,” he notes. “But we'd love to take the opportunity to show people that there's so much more out there. A lot of people on the private ownership side don't realize the capability of their yachts and so we've worked with a lot of owners to show them that they can go further afield with clever logistics and planning.”
He says that Indonesia is a great entry point for people who've never been into yachting. “They're mesmerized by the thousands of islands in Raja Ampat where you can do incredible diving,” he says, referring to the Indonesian archipelago in Southwest Papua.
“You're predominantly based on a phinisi, (a classic Indonesian sailing vessel), which is magical and conjures up all sorts of childhood kind of dreams of being on a more classic yacht. We’ve done incredible things there by creating treasure hunts for families— not just for children— for the entire family. Or they can be involved in coral regeneration programs and planting coral on a reef while diving from a yacht, which is quite special.”
Carroll himself has led clients on a 77-meter yacht to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. That trip entails taking a one-hour helicopter flight into the jungle to fly down into sinkholes. Clients then get inflatable paddleboards to cruise down the river. Another option is to fly into the deep jungle on to tribal lands to see fire rituals where women sing.
“As the sun sets, the men come out in these huge costumes, which can be sometimes seven- to eight-feet foot tall, and then they run through the heart of the fire and you're just like, ‘wow.’ That's where we overlay all the different elements [of Pelorus] on top of each other.”
To become an employee at Pelorus candidates should have an entrepreneurial spirit, and once again the military background of the company’s founders comes into play.
“We actually use an interview technique and process taken from the British Special Forces,” says Carroll. “Once people have been screened with a couple of calls with our HR team and are going through the final stages, we ask them to come in and do two things. First, they must speak for 10 minutes about themselves to a group. We don't want them to regurgitate their resume. I want to know who you are, what makes you tick, what are your passions?”
The second task entails getting 24 hours to design a trip for a fictional group that wants to travel to a specific destination. The candidate then returns and does a presentation as if they are presenting it to the client.
Getting the right people in place is important because clients investing $500,000 or $1,000,000 on a trip tend to look at where every dollar and cent is spent, says Carroll. He said Pelorus is seeing people spending more these days, but they want to see value and they want to invest in experiences.
They also want to give back, and so the company has created the Pelorus Foundation, a registered charity, as well as a Climate Investment Fund. One percent of the total cost of the company’s trips goes into the two entities.
Clients also like to get their hands dirty if it means they’re making a difference. Carroll says he took 24 guests to Antarctica last January over 10 days. They heli-skiied and had a variety of adventures but the highlight was taking three scientists along who conducted research over the course of the trip.
“We tagged 14 humpback whales with GPS monitors, and we put the first ever heart rate monitor on a humpback whale in Antarctica,” says Carroll. “We're seeing a big rise in people understanding how they can give back and leave a positive impact on the planet.”
When we spoke, Carroll was just getting ready to fly to the United Emirates to host a trip for a customer’s 50th birthday. Ten guests were invited for an itinerary that included skydiving over Dubai, building a beach camp and then hiking from sea level up to a mountain camp at an elevation of 6,600 feet. Also on the agenda? Riding ATVs, hot-air ballooning and a final stop at the final race at the Abu Dhabi F1 Grand Prix.
All told, Carroll flew 190,000 miles last year and while he knows that’s a lot, he wouldn’t do things differently.
“I don't think you can be in travel and not travel the world and speak firsthand about what you’ve seen. People say, ‘Well, ChatGPT said this, but I can say, ‘Well, I've been there and I can tell you what you're going to feel when you get there. If you sit in front of a client and you tell them the story of what it's like, the hairs on the back of their neck will turn up. They will not get that from ChatGPT. It's a very useful tool and it can be great for all of us to research, but humans connect through firsthand experience and that's the important part of our business model.”