Midweek catch-up with Limelight Arts Travel’s Nick Gordon

Limelight Arts Travel is a cultural travel company based in Sydney offering expert-led tours for lovers of art, music, history and culture.

Over the next 12 months, their tours will take guests to European hot spots like Venice and Milan. Japanese cultural hubs like Kyoto and a number of locations closer to home here in Australia.

We caught up with Nick Gordon, the director of Limelight Arts Travel to find out a bit more about the man behind the art and culture based itineraries.

Travel Weekly: What’s your main goal for this year?

Nick Gordon: Up until recently, I would have said to get our business established – we’re a young company. But, we’ve reached that goal already, so my next goal is to bring forward the rollout of some of our new product types.

What’s your favourite thing about working in the travel industry?

The travel is pretty great, but I think ultimately for me it’s the opportunity travel provides to share knowledge and help people understand more about the world’s cultures.

How do you like to spend your free time?

Reading, painting, catching up with friends

Have you managed to travel (domestically or internationally) in 2023?

Yes, accompanying one of our groups to Wagner’s Ring in Bendigo, and to Austria as a guest of Austrian National Tourist Office ahead of Salzkammergut being the European Capital of Culture next year.

What’s your favourite travel company, besides the one you work for?

Good question – probably Context for how consistently focused they have been on travel as a way to improve intercultural understanding.

If you could invite three famous guests (dead or alive) to a dinner party, who would you choose?

The poet Frank O’Hara, the artist Tracey Emin and the Cat in the Hat – is that allowed, or is that already too many guests? It’d be a very entertaining and verbally stimulating night, and the cat would clean up afterwards.

What’s something positive you’ve witnessed or experienced since the global pandemic has been ‘controlled’

The number of people in the industry who are now proactively looking at more responsible and sustainable approaches to tourism.

What’s your advice for others in the travel industry on continuing to cope with the global pandemic and its ongoing effects?

Chin up! There are great opportunities for innovation.

What book and/or TV show can you not get enough of lately?

I don’t really watch TV unless it’s cricket, so hopefully the coming Ashes series will be compelling. I’ve been enjoying rather obscure literary fiction over the past year – Agota Kristoff’s The Notebook Trilogy is a stand-out though.

If you could pick one destination to fly to tomorrow for one week, where would it be?

NG: I haven’t really thought about where I myself would like to travel recently, but a blindfold and a mystery ticket doesn’t sound too bad.

Advertise with us

Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

Limelight Arts Travel midweek catch-up Nick Gordon