Rolling back the years

Forty years ago, Andrew Dunn went to the Alps to visit his sister, who was doing a season in Verbier as a chalet girl. It was the trip that changed everything.

“I’d never skied in my life,” he says, but he fell head-over-heels in love with it. When he returned back to university in the UK, he tried to figure out how to make skiing his life. “I thought to myself, ‘How can I ski for free?’” The answer, Dunn decided, was perfectly simple: he just had to set up his own ski company. “So that was my motivation,” he says with a chuckle. Forty years on, Scott Dunn is one of the most successful and respected luxury travel brands in the world.

It wasn’t easy sailing. “I was 22, I had no experience, no one took me seriously at all,” says Dunn. But he persevered, persuading two chalet owners in the Swiss resort of Champéry into letting him run them. “We had two glorious winters out there and I did every single job, from ski guiding and driving, to bookkeeping – badly.” Back home, Dunn’s mother organised the paperwork from her house in Hampshire. His grandmother, incidentally, talked him out of his original business name: “Ski Skint”. Naming it after his great-grandfather, grandfather and father, who were all called Scott Dunn, would be much more elegant.

Bottom: Jules Maury and Vicky Douglas

It worked. Two chalets grew into more, and one resort became many across the Alps. Word spread of their personalised service, seamless transfers and excellent food, and then good press followed. “We had some lucky breaks, but provided you do good things, people talk about you.” The company grew 20% every year, and then in the mid-90s, Dunn started to think about going further afield. “We were known for having good people on the ground, polished vehicles, great chefs – how could we bring that to other places?” First came African safaris, then South America, then the rest of the world. In 1998, they introduced villas, adding the bells and whistles – private chefs, expert childcare – that no other operator had thought of.

It was in the mid-noughties that Vicky Douglas came on board. Douglas had worked in Richard Branson’s private office and had a decent idea of what a certain type of Scott Dunn client was looking for: a personal relationship with a travel expert that really understood them. “We came up with this idea of having someone who could oversee a relationship management model,” she explains. “They would be able to inspire and advise guests on where to go next. They’d really get to know them, and not just help with destinations, but know exactly which room was right for them and which guide they would really find engaging.” Relationship managers would meet members face-to-face, understanding preferences across their entire travel life, rather than focussing on one-off bookings, it would be invitation-only. Scott Dunn Private was born.

This was 2007, and five years later Jules Maury came on board, bringing with her experience of working and living abroad. Today, she is head of SDP and together with Douglas has grown it from a few handpicked British members to 600 global travellers, all personally invited to become part of this vibrant community.

What began as a tiny family company, run from a ramshackle mews in London, has grown into a company of 250, with 24 devoted solely to SDP members. So what’s the plan for the next 40 years? To keep doing what they do best, says Douglas. “We call it our ‘ACE’ – access, connections and experiences.” These are the things you can’t get online or through ChatGPT, the kind of exclusive experiences that really only SDP has access to.

“It’s about getting the best storytellers in destinations,” explains Douglas, “And arranging access to what a member loves, be it a private art collection, experiencing the Ryder Cup with a pro golfer, or having a private tour of the Sistine Chapel.” And it’s about adapting with the members as the family unit changes. “We’re now working with the next generations, who we’ve known since they were children, helping them plan adventures for them and their children," Douglas says. SDP is, in other words, all about the people. “It’s about our personal relationships – and that human touch.”