High-end holidays
The ability to provide bespoke and authentic travel experiences has set Adams & Butler in Dublin apart for the past 14 years
S ome travel agents would baulk at the thoughts of arranging a holiday for the likes of the Kardashians; not so Adams & Butler. Far from shying away from that kind of pressure, the company thrives on it, and uses jobs like these to showcase its very particular skills.
Based in Dublin, the company offers high-end bespoke holidays in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England, usually involving castle hotels, private mansions or country estates and always incorporating an itinerary that suits clients’ preferences.
This might entail access to leading local experts on a particular topic (from tapestries to whiskey, and everything in between), or private visits with, say, members of the aristocracy, some of whom even act as driver guides for clients.
No matter what a client asks for Adams & Butler does its damnedest to get it. “As I say to the team, if we can’t do it, it’s because we’re not thinking hard enough,” says CEO Siobhan Byrne Learat.
Byrne Learat started trading as Adams & Butler with a business partner in 2003. In 2006, deceased artist Michael Jackson used the company to arrange his sojourn in Ireland, putting the company well and truly on the map.
Despite this, those early years of the business were tough, she says. One of the biggest mistakes she made at that time was not keeping control of the company’s finances herself. She took back the financial reins in 2008, and bought out her partner four years later.
Since then it has gone from strength to strength, and now has a staff of 10. It gets plenty of repeat business as well as new customers through referrals and word of mouth.
Most of Adams & Butler’s clients come from far afield, with over 70% of them from America and the second biggest cohort from Mexico. After that, it also gets quite a few Brazilian, Australian and Russian clients, among others.
Plenty of long-term friendships have been spawned on Adams & Butler trips. At one point, Byrne Learat arranged a private castle for a man in his 80s and three of his children. Concerned that he would end up bored, she arranged for a local retired schoolmaster to meet him every second day. She later found out that the schoolmaster had subsequently travelled to the man’s home in Dallas to spend New Year there. Byrne Learat hopes to increase the company’s outbound business over the next few years, thereby offering Irish people at home extra-special, luxury trips with the kind of service and back-up they could only have dreamt of before. “If we can keep the most demanding American clients happy, we can keep Irish people happy,” she says.
“As I say to the team, if we can’t do it, it’s because we’re not thinking hard enough”