Ker & Downey affluent travel brochure

Ker & Downey, Classic New Zealand Journeys brochure

U.S. affluent travel specialists Ker & Downey position themselves as experts in experiential luxury travel, their travel advisors have been hand-crafting journeys for over fifty years but as of 2004 had not added itineraries in Australasia to their set of journeys due to a lack of infrastructure in the region.

Enter in 2005 Pionair’s newly established “Unparalled Journeys” department, brainchild of CEO Tim Scott. Pionair Unparalleled Journeys offered exclusive, tailor-made travel for the discerning Luxury market from North America, Europe and South America. With Tim leading the project, Ana Haase brought in as head travel advisor and head of the department and myself in the newly established role of in-house brand manager/designer at Pionair, we formed a tight-knit unit. Given the crossover between expert travel advisors, marketing strategy and visual design our collaboration proved up to the task of meeting and exceeding Ker & Downey’s exacting brand standards at the high end of the travel market globally.

Though a new department within the firm Unparalleled Journeys had a solid track record and solid expertise to leverage off given Tim’s hands-on leadership and the Pionair team’s decade of experience in the provision of luxury group private air tours of New Zealand and Australia to the likes of TAUCK, and various ivy league university alumni travel-study programmes such as Stanford and Harvard.

Pionair, Ker & Downey joint venture

So in 2005 Pionair embarked on the joint venture with Ker & Downey. Pionair designed luxury travel journeys and brought the provision of round-the-clock in-country travel advisor support for the three new itineraries. Pionair’s set of new itineraries mixed flying and self-drive journeys through the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The inaugural Ker & Downey Classic New Zealand Journeys were named Fire and Ice, Magnetic South, and Aotearoa.

My role in the venture as in-house designer was the design and print production of a 32 page travel brochure “Classic New Zealand Journeys” in collaboration with colleagues Ana Haase and Tim Scott. The brochure was printed in Christchurch and shipped to Katy Texas, head office of Ker & Downey for distribution by them to their direct mail client base and U.S. affluent travel agencies.

The brief was to design the brochure consistent with Ker & Downey’s house style with a fresh twist of kiwi ingenuity.

Epilogue

In the aftermath of the October 2008 financial crisis Pionair New Zealand was wound up. Tim Scott’s Unparalleled Journeys like a phoenix rose out of the ashes.

Credits

Cartography: Raw maps Geographx
Copywriter: Ana Haase, Tim Scott, (Shaun Waugh)
Design studio: Pionair Propellor in house
Printer: Croft Printing