Hello Lovelies,
Saturday 6th September saw the grand opening of the brand new Kuoni concept store at the Metrocentre.
Growing up I will always remember seeing those oh-so-posh brochures of African safari’s and rooms on jettys in azure blue seas. Kuoni has always been synonymous with quality and luxury. Fast forward to now being 31, I know that Kuoni is competitively priced and offers fantastic quality for holiday makers.
Worldwide travel experts Kuoni open Travel Design Room at intu MetroCentre
New ‘Evolution’ store designed to put conversation and inspiration at the heart of holiday booking
A new style of travel store designed to inspire customers to create individual journeys around the world has opened its doors today in the new Platinum Mall at the intu MetroCentre in Gateshead.
The new store from award-winning travel experts Kuoni is the company’s 31st in the UK and brings fresh thinking to the way people plan their holidays.
Created as a Travel Design Room, there are relaxed seating areas, a coffee bar, and a library with books, maps and magazines to inspire people to travel to all corners of the globe.
A high impact “World Window”, the first of its kind in the UK, recreates a map of the world across 15 TV screens. The screens offer destination insight, live weather feeds, social media highlights, and destination video.
A team of six friendly, well-travelled experts have been handpicked to work in the store. Between them they have first-hand knowledge of a huge range of destinations and holiday types including the Indian Ocean, Caribbean, the Far East, USA, Australasia, Africa, and cruise as well as weddings abroad and honeymoons.
The Travel Design Room will look very different from any other travel store. It won’t have traditional desks, instead the Travel Experts will have laptops and a second Samsung touch screen will be used to show customers videos, photos and additional information.
Designed to stimulate the senses, a new signature scent, created exclusively for Kuoni by luxury spa company ESPA, will fragrance the store.
Derek Jones, Kuoni managing director, said: “We live and love travel at Kuoni and we wanted to bring that passion to life in a store environment. Conversation and inspiration were the two things we had in mind when creating the new travel design room. Amazing holidays can only be created if you have the right conversation at the start of the journey. It takes time, so we wanted to create a relaxing space for people to talk to our team – in an environment that also triggers excitement about travel the moment anyone walks through the door.”
Susanna Duffy, manager of the new MetroCentre store, said: “This is unlike any other travel shop I’ve ever seen or worked in. It’s so exciting for all of us to be involved in something so dynamic. We want customers to feel like they are sitting in their own home, with a friendly travel expert creating their personalised holiday.”
Kuoni’s full range of holidays will be available to book in-store with 88 destinations to choose from along with a huge range of stay and cruise options, ski, villa and cultural short breaks.
Individual members of the team will be available for appointments, ideal for anyone planning a special occasion or a more complex tailor-made itinerary.
I have my eye on a week in St Vincent….. just need to tell Mr Tramp about this!