Philippe Hertzberg has never bought an advertisement aimed at a traveler.
Hertzberg is the CEO of Secret Journeys, a company that designs private access experiences inside landmarks like Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe. Most tour businesses expand their bookable services to capture more revenue per client. Hertzberg does the opposite: Secret Journeys turns away hotel, ground transport, and flight bookings, even when clients ask for them, to stay a single, uncategorizable thing. Most tour businesses also try to reach travelers directly. Hertzberg doesn’t advertise to travelers at all. He sells exclusively through travel advisors, and a single pitch to Virtuoso’s CEO in 2022 put him in front of that network’s 20,000 advisors.
Three other decisions run the same direction. Hertzberg turns down press coverage that would put Secret Journeys in front of the traveling public, free exposure most businesses would take, because he wants the advisor, not his own company, to stay the one the client trusts. He casts storytellers the way Disney casts characters, and the trait he’s actually hiring for is curiosity about the guest, not guiding credentials or destination expertise. Landmark access gets negotiated the same patient way: opening the Arc de Triomphe at night took two years of solving the administrator’s actual objections one at a time, including agreeing to cover security staff’s cab fare home. The episode also covers how a storyteller turned a five-year-old’s obsession with bells into a private treasure hunt through the towers of Notre Dame, and which cities, Amsterdam, Seoul, and Prague among them, Hertzberg is looking to expand into next.
Resources:
- Secret Journeys: secretjourneys.travel
- Philippe Hertzberg on LinkedIn
Key Takeaways
- Secret Journeys bans the words tourist, customer, and client, and requires guest instead. 00:00 to 00:31 Hertzberg calls the offerings “journeys” and treats each one as a performance delivered by a “storyteller,” never a guide. The rule applies to every storyteller working under the brand, not just internally. He states plainly that a business starts with the words it uses, before it starts with anything else.
- Secret Journeys stays a single, uncategorized business on purpose, and turns down adjacent revenue to protect that positioning. 03:22 to 04:38 Hertzberg will not call the company a DMC or a tour operator, and it does not book hotels, ground transportation, or flights, even when clients ask. He calls this being “agnostic,” and says it is what lets Secret Journeys work with hotels, Virtuoso, and individual landmarks without being boxed into any one of their categories.
- The travel advisor, not the guest, is the primary relationship Secret Journeys manages. 04:38 to 05:20 Hertzberg describes advisors as collaborators on the same level as the landmarks and storytellers Secret Journeys works with, and says the explicit goal is for the advisor to be “the hero” with their own client. That framing shapes everything downstream, including the decision to stay out of consumer press.
- Hertzberg’s working definition of luxury is personalization, not price. 10:23 to 10:38 He states it directly: “ultra luxury is ultra personalization.” The more Secret Journeys knows about where a guest has traveled, what they’re passionate about, and what they consider an exceptional experience, the more precisely a storyteller can build the visit around them specifically.
- Secret Journeys sources its stories directly from the people who built or maintain the landmark, not from guidebooks. 12:02 to 14:00 The example Hertzberg gives: Notre Dame’s spire carries a small carved tribute from its current architect, Philippe Villeneuve, to the 19th century architect who saved the cathedral, Eugene Violet-le-Duc, positioned so the two figures face each other. Hertzberg says his team is constantly digging for this kind of detail whenever they meet a curator, architect, or conservator.
- A single personalized detail can turn a standard visit into the reason a family booked the trip. 13:00 to 15:57 For a five-year-old obsessed with bells, Secret Journeys privatized the towers of Notre Dame and built a treasure hunt using ten decorated bells hidden throughout the space. The prize was a small bell purchased at auction, cast by the same foundry that made Notre Dame’s own bells, engraved with the boy’s first name.
- Storytellers carry a discretionary budget to personalize an experience in the moment, not just in advance planning. 17:51 to 18:46 Hertzberg’s example: a storyteller who noticed a guest admiring a limited edition fifty dollar scarf at the Louvre boutique bought it and gave it to them before the visit ended. He frames the underlying skill as being interested in people rather than trying to be interesting to them, since interest is what produces the noticing.
- Every guest gets a day-before contact call, and its purpose is empathy, not just logistics. 18:46 to 20:22 The call confirms the meeting, but Hertzberg says its real function is starting to build a relationship before the storyteller and guest ever meet in person, down to practical details like warning a guest to wear comfortable shoes. He compares the underlying skill set, welcoming, improvising, reading the room, anticipating needs, directly to what he’d expect from staff at a palace hotel.
- Secret Journeys runs a formal casting process for its storytellers, openly modeled on Disney. 21:07 to 21:33 Hertzberg calls the comparison a compliment and says the company works closely enough with Disney in Paris to be considered one of its strong partners. Credentialed guides, including people with doctorates in art history, still go through this casting step before they represent the brand.
- Ongoing storyteller development runs as peer workshops, not top-down training. 21:40 to 23:29 Hertzberg is explicit that he calls them workshops rather than training because there is no lecturer and staff learn from each other. Recent themes include the neuroscience of the five senses in storytelling and acting skills like voice and use of space, with the December session led by a magician and an upcoming one built around Will Guidara’s book *Unreasonable Hospitality*.
- A single well-prepared pitch, not an ongoing sales process, is what got Secret Journeys into Virtuoso. 23:57 to 24:50 Hertzberg met Virtuoso’s CEO in 2022 through a personal introduction, delivered what he calls his best pitch in thirty minutes, and was welcomed into the network on the spot. That membership opened access to more than 20,000 travel advisors.
- Membership in Virtuoso’s top advisor tier is earned annually, not permanently. 24:50 to 25:20 Secret Journeys is part of Ultraluxe, Virtuoso’s top 500 advisors, and Hertzberg says staying in that group requires renewal and referrals every year. It is not a status that, once won, is guaranteed to continue.
- Secret Journeys puts most of its marketing budget behind one advisor network and one dedicated representative, not broad-based advertising. 25:20 to 26:30 An international ambassador attends trade shows like Virtuoso’s Las Vegas event and ILTM in Cannes to build relationships on Secret Journeys’ behalf. The company also runs private fam trips for a single travel advisor or their family, specifically to demonstrate the level of personalization a larger group tour cannot show as well, and Hertzberg turns down media coverage that would expose the company directly to travelers.
- Opening permanent access to a closed landmark took two years of solving objections one at a time, not one big negotiation. 27:11 to 29:34 An earlier Notre Dame partnership, built around introducing donors to the cathedral’s $150 million restoration need, ran until the 2019 fire. For the Arc de Triomphe, Hertzberg answered the administrator’s specific logistical objections (public transportation for staff, security costs) individually, and Secret Journeys tested the concept with five private events over a year before the evening access became a standing offer.
- Secret Journeys is actively looking for a local operator partner in new cities, including through the Tourpreneur network. 29:34 to 30:14 Hertzberg names Amsterdam, Seoul, and Prague as cities in active discussion and says the company is already working with one Tourpreneur member on this model. He’s also releasing a free book this fall, *The Exceptional Storyteller*, which he’ll announce on LinkedIn.