Luxury Ambassador of the Month

Kathy Boate, CEO of Cartology Travel, used to be an investment banker before she got into the world of travel. Her interest wasn't piqued until her husband, Justin Huxter, started the agency in 2016. While she was supportive of this new venture, she remained skeptical about the prospects until she eventually realized that Cartology would open up a whole other world.

"I grew up in Ottawa, Canada and enjoyed traveling to other countries since I spent many summers in North Carolina. After I finished school I began working in the financial sector in London in 2006. By 2014 I'd climbed my way up to Head of Retail Capital Markets at an investment bank doing Initial Public Offerings (IPOs). It was a stressful, heavily-regulated corporate environment where I was one of the youngest, female directors at the company, so I was in the thick of that right around the time I met Justin in 2013.

I was on an American flag football team and looking for new players since all our guys were injured. One of my friends told me she got this new roommate, Justin from South Africa. He was the Brand Manager for Easter at Lindt at the time, and since I'm pretty competitive I was like, 'Really? We need a football player, not a rugby player, or the Easter bunny.'

Though he'd never played, he ended up scoring three touchdowns that propelled us to win that first game, so I immediately knew we were going to be a winning combo. Well it was that, and the tons of chocolate he had in his room, and we got married in Franschoek in November 2015.

That's where Justin had grown up – in the winelands at his mother Susan's hotel, the Le Quartier Français. The restaurant there was consistently ranked among the top 50 restaurants in the world, and she ran the whole place for 20+ years before deciding to sell it in November 2015. For Justin, he was brought up in this world of luxury hospitality, and his mom had a lifetime's worth of contacts among luxury clientele. With her invaluable knowledge of the luxury travel industry she knew what was important on the buyers' side. After taking a year off to deliberate, she and Justin decided in October 2016 to start their own travel agency, Cartology Travel.

At the time I was a bit skeptical because I simply hadn't had that level of exposure to the travel industry. I honestly asked myself the question, 'Who even uses a travel agent anymore? That sounds crazy.' (Now that I know what I know, I'd say you're crazy not to use an agent!) But I could see how passionate Justin was about it so I told him, 'I got the mortgage, and I totally understand if this is something you have to do. It might be a risk but I can cover us while you get this thing set up, so go do what you gotta do.'

What I hadn't realized was that Cartology had distinct advantages over someone who just decides to start a travel agency. When Susan put the word out that she was setting up her own company, people paid attention and there was an almost immediate base of quality clients, buttressed by her reputation and that of the hotel.

About a year into it Justin came to me and was like, 'Kathy, this business is amazing, you'd be so good at it, you'd love the people, etc...' and I still had zero interest because I wanted to keep climbing the corporate ladder. I could not fathom not working for a company because I wanted a monthly paycheck and to know exactly how much I was making – which is almost the complete opposite of travel.

By that point I'd been working for 12 years straight in the financial industry and I needed a break. So I left my job in October 2018 and Justin started to really bring me into the fold of the business and the travel industry at-large.

It was a bit of a culture shock at first – working from home, no compliance considerations, not as many regulations, being our own IT department, and having so much to learn. But I quickly discovered how much freedom I had, and to me that was true luxury. I'd come from a world that was very black and white and heavily controlled, and was entering a much more creative world where the first answer is always, 'It depends.' I loved it, and I wanted to share it.

Eventually I was able to find how I could apply my expertise to take the business to the next level. Justin also appreciated having some structure and order to it. On my first day I asked him, 'Where's our CRM system?' When he replied, 'It's in my head,' my head just about exploded. He'd been by himself and simply hadn't had time to create the database.

I was also able to leverage my old contacts in the financial industry, who helped us grow the business organically as we tapped into a completely different clientele network. The level of demand for high-end luxury by corporate-minded clients allowed us to build out partnerships with big name key suppliers, like Aman, One&Only, and others.

The other thing I discovered was that we could organize and set up a new IC-tranche of the business, which was more or less my big project during Covid, and has been going extremely well as we bring new, red-hot agents into the company. It's allowed us to expand our reach into various destinations and experiences like heli-skiing, Antarctic expeditions, and private yachts.

Since we're very careful about recruiting the right people, we tend to be pretty hands-on about training our agents right now given the state of the industry's technology. At the moment we're building out a new tracking and commission platform which will make our agents’ lives a whole lot easier and cut down on their admin.

With all these things put together, we're about six times larger now than we were in 2019. But we don't want to be any bigger than about 20-25 agents because we don't want to lose those valuable relationships with our clients. It's a very rewarding thing to hear that some of our clients have cried at the end of their journeys, since the trips we've planned have been so personal and so powerful. That's real luxury to us.

I never could've imagined that working in travel would be this amazing, but I'm glad I made the decision to take the leap, and I'll never look back."

*****