Ellerston Capital, led by Ashok Jacob, is set to buy the Leibovichs’ stake of about 12% in Luxury Escapes. The secondary sale values Adam Schwab’s travel booking platform at $525 million, as the Financial Review reported on 24 September 2026.

Ellerston is targeting a shareholding of at least 12% and gets one board seat. Because this is a secondary sale, the money goes to the selling shareholders and not to Luxury Escapes. Ellerston expects to more than double its money and to earn a 5 per cent dividend yield before it exits in two to three years.

What Luxury Escapes does

Adam Schwab founded Luxury Escapes in 2013 and is its CEO. The company is headquartered in Melbourne, has offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore, and has more than 9 million members. It sells limited-time hotel offers, cruise and tour products to consumers and, increasingly, to travel agents.

The company took its first external equity in late 2021 and early 2022, when Pier 12 Capital raised a $125 million fund to buy a stake in Lux Group. Ellerston’s purchase comes about four years after that first outside investment.

Its traction numbers are specific. One in two Australians travelling to the Maldives books through Luxury Escapes. Its store in Chatswood, Sydney, was tracking toward about $100 million in annual sales. The company also runs a Melbourne to Maldives charter at its own risk. “We’re on risk, so if we don’t sell out, it’s on us,” Schwab said.

The Luxury Escapes Agent Hub

Luxury Escapes launched its Agent Hub in March 2024. The hub now runs in Australia and the UK, and thousands of agents use it for commissionable rates on limited-time offers, cruise and tour products.

Adam Schwab, founder and CEO of Luxury Escapes, told Travel Weekly Australia in February 2026 that the hub “could be a billion-dollar business for us in the next couple of years”. He added: “We now sell to agents and it’s one of our fastest-growing parts of the business.”

On growth, he puts margin first: “It’s easy to grow top line if you spend a lot on marketing. What we focus on is growing contribution margin.”

Other recent deals

• Fever raised US$250 million in primary equity on 17 September. EQT led the round, with Point72 Private Investments and Baillie Gifford. Fever’s own announcement calls it the largest round ever for a live-entertainment tech company. Fever operates in more than 55 countries, has tripled its revenue over three years and reports positive EBITDA.
• Laters.com, based in Singapore, closed a US$1.5 million seed round led by XBO Ventures and rebranded on 8 September.

What operators should read into it

Ellerston’s terms value Luxury Escapes on cash returns and a set exit: a 5 per cent dividend yield, more than double the money, and out in two to three years. That return case rests on distributions and not on growth alone, and it matches Schwab’s stated focus on contribution margin. Fever’s round points the same way. The company led its announcement with positive EBITDA as well as its growth figures.

For hotels, cruise lines and DMCs selling into Australia, Luxury Escapes now reaches buyers three ways: its members online, its physical stores such as Chatswood, and agents through the Agent Hub. It also carries inventory risk on its own Maldives charter. The Maldives figure matters most to suppliers, because one platform handles half of Australian travellers to that destination. With a new investor on the board that expects a dividend, the platform’s margin per booking will face closer scrutiny.

Key takeaway

Investors in APAC travel are paying for margin and cash returns, and Luxury Escapes at $525 million is a clear price point for a platform that sells to consumers, in stores and through agents. This quarter, a hotel, cruise line or DMC selling into Australia should check how much of its business moves through Luxury Escapes’ members, stores and Agent Hub, and what that channel costs compared with direct bookings. We expect the conversation about the capital behind these channels to continue at ITB Asia and HICAP in Singapore, 20 to 23 October.

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Over the past decade, mobile has revolutionized the travel industry and is reshaping how every travel organization interacts with its travellers. However, there are bigger changes looming on the horizon, with the emergence of voice search, artificial intelligence and conversational messaging. Combined together, these technologies are reshaping the future of travel, and most importantly, travel agents.

Travel-meta search engine ixigo recently unveiled TARA (Travel Assistant and Recommendation Agent), a 100% AI-driven travel assistant for flights. She takes care of all your flight-related needs across discovery, research, planning, booking and trip management. TARA is exactly like the travel agent of the past, except that she responds instantly and is available 24×7. She has all flight-related information and deals at her fingertips, she is unbiased and knows your preferences, and she doesn’t sleep at night. Her aim is to make sure you simply focus on enjoying your trip. TARA also won the runner’s up award at the Phocuswright Conference this year.

Omniscient digital assistants, from Google Trips to Lola, are set to change the dynamics of travel. New apps are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to go beyond just helping travellers plan trips, to learning their preferences and even suggesting personalized itineraries. This is great news for consumers, who are going to benefit immensely in terms of convenience, but will it mean bad news for travel agents who are likely to lose traffic to these new assistants?

Ixigo co-founder and CTO Rajnish Kumar at the Phocuswright Conference 2017

Digital travel assistants provide users a single point of contact through which they can book trips, thus vastly narrowing down options, and hassles of connecting with different companies for their travel getaway. For instance, Expedia has partnered with Amazon to offer its services through the Alexa digital assistant, who allows users to book flights or call a cab through Amazon Echo. These tools allow travellers to make requests using more intuitive language and questions; a much more seamless experience than calling or getting on the website.

Moreover, digital assistants cover the entire travel experience. So instead of hotels or airlines sending individual notifications, these apps bring everything together and break the silo, thus bringing them closer to the one-point contact travel experience that passengers expect. Digitization has given them this choice in a big way.

Ixigo’s digital travel assistant TARA

For travel agents, these interfaces represent both a great opportunity and a threat. These conversational apps provide a new tool to resolve simple customer problems, so they can focus on more complicated requests. While they are perfect for today’s mobile environment, they will also require more back-end work to educate customers and provide the right responses.

Whether agents like it or not, consumer behavior will continue to change. The only question that remains is how should they adapt. The executives who manage to get it right will stand to profit the most. Using these AI softwares and platforms, and optimizing for their virtual assistants could be one solution. However, if they can provide a great user experience, they stand a strong chance of competing regardless of how it’s delivered.

Whatever the interaction model that travel agents choose, typing in a mobile web-browser is definitely not going to make the cut in a mobile-first future.

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ShopX, the digital offline platform powering retailers in India, has introduced travel booking options. The feature is available in South and West Indian markets and has been introduced with the objective to add an additional revenue stream for retailers in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities while giving the customers easier access to offline travel agents.

Most of the users in these cities and towns are not well acquainted with the idea of buying online and prefer visiting an offline travel agent. However, even the network of travel agents is quite limited in some parts due to limited business. ShopX is looking to find a middle ground with the solution by enabling the local retail shops to earn commissions on travel bookings and making the options more accessible for customers.

ShopX has got multiple travel partners in this venture including redBus, TravelYaari, Provab, Galileo and Amadeus. There is a growing demand for travel in India and ShopX is likely to serve as the bridge for users to go online.

Commenting on this new development Mr. Amit Sharma, CEO and Co-Founder of ShopX said, “The travel agent is the point of contact for customers in Tier 2 and 3 towns for making travel booking. At times, there are only 1 or 2 travel agents in a city and individuals should travel over 10kms to book a ticket. With ShopX, we are providing the customers accessibility to technology to meet their needs. Now, customers can book tickets at their convenience, save enormous amount of time and get the most affordable deals.”

ShopX is backed by strategic investor Nandan Nilekani, and mentors including Jagdish Kini (ex- CEO, Airtel (South Region), Managing Director, Gillette India), and Pramod Varma (earlier: Chief Architect, UIDAI Aadhar Project, CTO Sterling Commerce). The company aims to provide the 600 million middle income population in India access to digital commerce through its Retailer Partners.

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