Luxury travel legend Tanya Rose has launched a new podcast, Travel Secrets, following the success of a popular book of the same name she created a decade ago.
The entrepreneur and communications expert has been a powerful voice in the travel industry since the launch of her PR and sales company, Mason Rose, in 1994, leading campaigns for some of the world’s most elite hotels after six years of heading up sales and marketing for the Savoy Group.
She went on to publish her book, Travel Secrets: My Favourite Luxury Hotels and Hidden Gems, in 2011, in which she shared her insider knowledge on the best hotels and travel tricks for the first time. She has also advised high-profile figures, showbiz celebrities, business moguls and even royalty on how to make the most out of their trips in the UK and abroad.
Having accumulated this wealth of travel knowledge over the past 30 years, Rose is now set to bring her expertise – and those of her fellow explorers – to the podcast studio. Travel Secrets will see her joined by an impressive lineup of VIP guests, all of whom have agreed to share their own travel stories, tips and lessons.
Listeners can anticipate big names like Mark Strong, Elizabeth Day and Trinny Woodall to open up in a simple interview format of six questions, including their favourite destination and their best travel advice. Each star is also asked about the place that underwhelmed them the most, as well as the most unexpected travel moment they’d ever had.
Inspiring ideas
While the questions Rose poses are always the same, the answers are anything but. A variety of personalities and experiences has mixed up the template, and the result is a brilliantly kaleidoscopic finish.
“Some guests will be very descriptive, others will be very practical, like Trinny Woodall or Anya Hindmarch…but literally every single one is different,” Rose tells TTG Luxury.
Conscious of alienating listeners with too-lavish anecdotes, Rose is keen for Travel Secrets to inspire its audience and challenge their understanding of luxury travel.
“I don’t want it to be so expensive that nobody can do it. They [the guests] are talking about a little cafe they go to for breakfast in New York that’s just cappuccinos and eggs. Anybody can try something like that,” she explains, before sharing one of her own traditions when visiting Venice. “I go to Harry’s bar and ask for the table that Ernest Hemmingway used to have, because it’s the table in the corner with the best view.”
It’s this insight that leads onto the overarching question: What is luxury travel? Rose quotes the late English writer G.K Chesterton, to preface how she defines the genre: “The traveller sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.” To Rose, luxury travel can only be found once the constraints of tourism – plans based on preconceptions – are abandoned.
“I honestly believe that luxury is all about experiencing something as a local and not as a tourist,” she explains. “I want my podcast to be for fellow travellers, not tourists. People who have their eyes open and who really want to experience a destination and get under the skin of it.”
Expert insight
Her guests, all of whom are seasoned travellers, share this ethos. In Episode 7, top chef Ruth Rogers insists that the most important thing for a traveller to do is visit a food market and enjoy local cuisine. In Episode 1, British actor Mark Strong shares an emotional story about befriending a local man in Sri Lanka who was later affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
It’s clear that, no matter how big the guest’s budget, the most valuable travelling experiences are those of human connection.
That’s not to say Rose doesn’t appreciate luxurious hotels. Rather, the PR supremo wants travellers to find the best of every experience. “It could be a five-star hotel or the best B&B, but wherever it is, luxury for me is the best in class,” she says. (The only exception she makes to this rule is flights, which are always business class if the journey is more than six hours.) “I’m too old," she admits. “I also broke both my legs this year so my legs are a bit dodgy, I need that legroom.”
She says she also hopes the podcast will be a resource to luxury travel advisors looking to create a more personalised itinerary for their customers.
“What I’d love advisors to do is share it with their top clients,” she says, before adding that the half-hour long episodes are an entertaining way to freshen up one’s travel credentials.
“It’s interesting people, sharing interesting anecdotes. Guidebooks have so much information, you don’t know where to start. This is a thing with people they know, and almost trust, if you like – somebody you want to know where they’ve been, and what they’re doing.”
As for the lifespan of Travel Secrets, Rose is expecting the podcast will keep her busy for the foreseeable future. Having already completed 10 episodes for the first series, she is already working on the second round of interviews – with Welsh actor Luke Evans and The Crown’s Charles Dance confirmed to appear on the next season.
“I initially wrote to 40 people and they all said yes! I only needed ten...so that’s Series 1, 2, 3, and four sorted!” she laughs.
Travel Secrets – The Podcast is available to download on Apple, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.
For more information about the podcast follow Travelsecretsthepodcast on Instagram
