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Sophie Leyton
Director, Exosphere
Sophie joined Exosphere in November 2006, to help John Saunders set up a new luxury travel company. Sophie had previously spent five years with the luxury tour operator Scott Dunn as a sales consultant in the ski team and then latterly head of the Mediterranean department. Her past also includes time as a language teacher, a sailing instructor seasons and ski seasons in Val d’Isere.
Sophie established Exosphere with John Saunders initially as a private member’s travel club, with access by invitation only. At the time, they felt this model was more in keeping with how high net worth individuals would want to book and experience service. It also meant that as a very small start-up with little cash to invest for staffing, it was manageable model as the number of new clients was controlled.
Two years later, and the business had doubled turnover and number of clients but new growth was slower; hence, the net was widened, the previously ‘password-only’ website was opened up and a bi-annual printed newsletter and a monthly email produced.
Exosphere now works with 300 top clients, has three team members and organises around 100 holidays a year, with a repeat client rate of 80% and a conversion rate of 70%; gaining around 15 new clients a year on average.
The Exosphere ethos is still very much on a very high, but friendly, level of service. Sophie says: “We market ourselves as a consultancy as we can organise holidays as an agent or an operator (we have ATOL, ABTA and IATA) and think the consultancy tag best gets across the breadth of how we can help our clients. But we are also very honest, unbiased and flexible. Our clients can contact us 24 hours a day.”
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