What type of traveler is a good fit for a 26-day tour that hopscotches the globe in a private jet, and features a $184,950 per person price tag? Ann Epting, senior vice president of private jet and special interest travel for Abercrombie & Kent (A&K), has insight on the matter.
“A good customer for this product is someone who is curious, someone who is really interested in other cultures and who wants unique experiences,” Epting said. We discussed the product during a nonstop flight last month between Reykjavik, Iceland, and Portland, Ore., onboard the tour operator’s private jet.
Our trips are designed for people who are not looking to just tick boxes off the list of where they’ve been; they’re for people who really want to have in-depth cultural experiences.
“Our trips are designed for people who are not looking to just tick boxes off the list of where they’ve been,” Epting said. “They’re for people who really want to have in-depth cultural experiences."
Abercrombie & Kent (A&K) invited a group of about 30 luxury travel advisors and media members to take part in what it described as a “mini-inflight experience” this February onboard the Boeing 757 aircraft the tour operator charters from Icelandair for its Private Jet Journeys. The plane was retrofit in 2021, according to Epting, and is reconfigured with 50 first-class, fully lie-flat seats for the A&K flights, which feature a one-to-seven cabin-crew-to-guest ratio, an onboard executive chef and a wide range of impressive amenities, including Wi-Fi and iPads loaded with television shows and movies.
Abercombie & Kent’s private jet is a chartered Boeing 757 featuring 50 first-class, lie-flat seats.
Credit: 2024 Abercombie & Kent/Andrew UrwinAnna Bright Schulte, owner of Anna Bright Luxury Travel, a Travel Edge affiliate based in Nashville, Tenn., told me after our flight that she was terrifically impressed.
“I truly felt like it was top notch,” Schulte said. “They were doing their best to spoil us all, and they did a really good job of that. We were definitely treated better than you would be in first class or business class on a commercial flight.”
The History of A&K’s Private Jet Journeys
Epting says that A&K first started offering its Private Jet Journeys to customers in 1983, operating the products onboard an L 1011 aircraft at one point. The company even made use of the Concorde on some tours to South America back in the day, she said.
“Then, we started partnering with Icelandair in 2004,” she added. “We operated a plane that was just business-class seats, then in 2014, we started using the lie-flat seats. We have the exclusive [aircraft] in the North American market for that configuration. In the summertime, Icelandair puts the seating back into a regular configuration, and the plane flies regularly scheduled flights.”
A&K has two more Private Jet Journeys on offer later this year in the fall. The company’s Wildlife & Nature trip runs Sept. 2-27 and features stops in Hawaii, Fiji, Tasmania, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Zambia and Brazil. Organizers of the trip are hoping guests will have a chance to see Hawaiian monk seals, Tasmanian devils, Komodo dragons and Sri Lankan leopards on the tour.
“The wildlife tours have always been so popular,” Epting said. “They sell out so quickly and then have long waitlists."
A&K will also run its Around the World with Geoffrey Kent trip Oct. 13 to Nov. 7 this year, flying the company’s founder and guests onboard their luxury private jet to Japan, India, Malta, Senegal, Saint Helena island, Uruguay, Easter Island and French Polynesia.
Wildlife-focused Private Jet Journeys routinely sell out, according to A&K.
Credit: 2024 Abercombie & KentEpting notes that each Private Jet Journey typically requires about two years of planning, and organizing the stop this fall in Saint Helena — where Napoleon was exiled after the battle of Waterloo — was no easy task.
“It's so remote, and then there are also potential weather implications,” she said. “We had to push hard to get that one in the itinerary.”
Providing access to off-the-beaten-path destinations is one A&K’s key objectives for these tours, according to Epting, who added that making it as easy as possible for guests to navigate each destination’s customs requirements is another important amenity.
“What we always do — regardless of whether it's the first flight, the last flight or any flight during the course of the trip — is negotiate with the local air and ground handlers to ensure we have very expeditious processing at the airport, so our guests do not wait in line,” Epting said. “In some cases, we're able to negotiate where the guests do not have to go through individually, and we're able to take their passports and the forms through for them, and the guests deplane and go straight to a vehicle and go to the property.”
Selling A&K’s Private Jet Journeys
Although Anna Bright Luxury Travel's Schulte has not yet sold one of A&K’s 20-plus-day Private Jet tours, she did book one of the tour operator’s shorter private jet products around Africa for clients of hers last fall.
“They really enjoyed it,” Schulte said. “And they said the private jet part was just over the top.”
Now that she’s had her own firsthand experience, Schulte says she’ll mention the around-the-globe A&K options to those same clients — but she also noted that the market for the longer-itinerary trips is pretty specific.
Private Jet Journeys are a good fit for travelers in search of authentic cultural experiences.
Credit: 2024 Abercombie & Kent“Definitely [these are for] people who are retired, or maybe somebody who has more time,” Schulte said. “But I think you also have to be active and have an adventurous spirit."
Longtime luxury travel advisor Donna Devore, a New York-based Protravel International affiliate who also joined the private Reykjavik-Portland nonstop in February, agrees that time is probably the biggest hurdle for her affluent clients.
“I think it’s one of the best products out there,” she told me after the flight. “But a lot of my clients still work, and it's a big time commitment. I have new grandparents, for example, and they could certainly afford the cost, but their daughter is going to need some help with the baby, and being gone that long would keep them from helping.”
Like Schulte, though, Devore already has several clients she’s planning to pitch A&K’s private jet products to after experiencing the plane firsthand. The same is true for Margaret Larkin, a Virtuoso-affiliated travel advisor working for Universal Travel in Houston, Texas.
“I thought it was great,” Larkin said of the February flight. “And the food was wonderful — far better than food you’d get even in first class on a commercial flight. And you had chefs serving you — [which] you’d never see on another plane, even in first class.”
The onboard food service is a highlight of the journeys.
Credit: 2024 Abercombie & Kent/Andrew UrwinLarkin has also sold a shorter A&K Private Jet Journey (a trip around Spain and Morocco two years ago), and she has already reached out to that affluent client to mention the longer, around-the-world tours as a possibility.
“I'm hoping that she might want to jump to the next level,” Larkin said. “I think it might appeal most to a little older clientele — 60 and over maybe, who financially can be gone that long. And we have a lot of clients at that level.”
Commission on A&K Private Jet Journeys
A&K’s Epting notes that the company’s Private Jet Journeys are typically commissionable to agents somewhere between 8-12%, which was certainly an appealing financial incentive for all of the advisors I spoke with. A&K has also already announced a 23-day tour circumnavigating Africa in February of 2025, and plans to soon release itineraries for four additional Private Jet Journeys scheduled for next year, according to Epting.
“And in 2025, we are doing a trip that’s roundtrip to Iceland — starting there and then ending there,” she explained. “People love it. It’s a great destination.”
Protravel’s Devore, meanwhile, notes another time-saving perk of A&K’s global jet tour products: They always fly west around the planet.
“I loved that we time-travelled back to before we left Iceland,” she said of the eight-hour nonstop flight. “We took off from Iceland at 2:15 p.m., and we landed in Portland at [around] 1:50 p.m. Time-traveling like that was just so cool.”
