Jauncey was appointed as Panerai's ambassador in 2021, joined by a shared commitment to exploration and environmental conservation (Photo: Panerai)
Call it the Maverick effect: every Top Gun obsessive labours under the modest delusion that, given sufficient nerve, charisma and a serviceable jawline, they could probably pilot a fighter jet. Jeremy Jauncey got to test that theory in Grottaglie, a Puglian town in southern Italy better known for its ceramics than combat aviators. The Panerai global ambassador was put through his paces last September as one of a handful of clients, journalists and personalities invited to the Aviazione Navale Experience — the third instalment of the watchmaker’s Military Experience programme — following Comsubin in La Spezia in 2019 and Battaglione San Marco in 2022. Over three days, he was strapped into a naval helicopter over the Ionian Sea, took part in raid simulations timed to the second, and generally discovered how little of it came down to looking the part and wearing a cocky grin. “I’ve played wingman many times, but never of this kind. It was one hell of a ride,” he admits.
A temporary suspension of civilian life, the programme places guests inside the maritime world from which the maison has derived its identity for more than 90 years. Its earliest commissions, after all, entailed outfitting the Marina Militare’s divers with equipment precise enough to survive underwater sabotage operations. The Aviazione Navale itinerary, as Jauncey tells it, ran on various terrains, from a helicopter rescue staged in the middle of open water to a tactical exercise simulating the “capture” of a battleship. Like the two missions before it, the initiative tests participants against the standards applied to actual naval personnel — endurance, reflexes and technical composure under a level of rigour that makes no allowance for mere enthusiasm.
The Experience Editions were conceived to do more than furnish a timepiece with a stirring backstory. Through them, the Italian horologer turns the watch into a passport or ticket, granting people access to the fraternity its operational tools once served. In this instance, admission was reserved for owners of the Submersible Chrono Marina Militare PAM01699, limited to just 35.
“Few invest as heavily as Panerai in connecting their products to once-in-a-lifetime opportunities,” says Jauncey. “A customer acquires a piece unavailable anywhere else, then unlocks an equally exclusive experience. That was a real eye-opener. While so much marketing spend is shifting online or towards large, glossy engagements, the brand remains focused on creating tangible, in-person value for its loyal collectors.”
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Naval gazing
On a regular day, Jauncey deals in the smoother end of travel, putting holidaymakers into flight mode — not the sort involving helmets and field briefings, but one summoned by turquoise water, immaculate suites and skylines packaged for wanderlust. The 41-year-old established Beautiful Destinations in 2012, starting with a single Instagram account and building it into what is now billed as the largest social media community devoted to seeing the planet. The award-winning agency, which has amassed a following of 50 million across its media channels, functions as a strategy and creative powerhouse, helping hotels and tourism boards turn imagery into bookings, with clients ranging from Marriott to national campaigns for the Philippines and Egypt. Along the way, he has also become a vocal proponent of more conscientious tourism, lending his profile to the World Wildlife Fund and carbon-offset non-profit Gold Standard.
Impressed by his vast digital reach and flair for visual storytelling, Panerai brought him into its fold in 2021, announcing the appointment on World Oceans Day. The alliance rested, ostensibly, on a shared commitment to exploration and environmental conservation.
“What connected us was the notion of going out, challenging yourself physically and mentally, meeting impressive individuals and trying to leave some positive impact behind,” remarks the lifestyle entrepreneur, whose relationship with the brand actually began three years before the title followed.
“To be honest, I’ve loved Panerai since young. A friend’s father owned one, and that early exposure lodged itself somewhere deep. When the maison reached out, it felt like recognition and a dream come true. My first was a Luminor GMT with an eight-day power reserve, and it never left my wrist. Diving, training, boardrooms, sleep — it went everywhere. I fell entirely in love with it. Plus, I’ve always gravitated towards nature and a fairly active life. With work taking me around the globe, Panerai’s sense of adventure — and the high-performance watches that came with it — felt like a natural fit.”
There is a harder edge to Jauncey’s philosophy and love of the outdoors: both sprang from a breaking point that forced him to reconstruct a future that had collapsed almost overnight. Raised in Britain by a Colombian mother and Scottish father, the inveterate sportsman devoted his youth to pursuing a professional career in rugby. At 18, he spent a season in New Zealand’s Christchurch and Wellington with the Scottish team, reinforcing his conviction that he was destined for the big leagues. A broken back, however, ended that trajectory with brutal finality.
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The injury closed one door but it also made him unusually attentive to what might lie beyond it. His first reinvention took him into e-commerce in 2005, when he formed the British arm of American rewards and loyalty company Next Jump and became its managing director. Still captivated by the question of human performance, he later co-founded Tictrac, a healthcare platform that aggregated data from multiple tech devices to enable users to optimise their well-being. Investments poured in from sources who understood viscerally the demands of elite excellence, among them tennis great Andy Murray and 10-time NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony, validating what Jauncey had intuited.
When Tictrac was acquired in 2022 by Canadian virtual-care firm Dialogue Health Technologies in a deal worth up toC$56 million — then about US$44 million — Jauncey found himself at the threshold of yet another turning point. Taking stock of the path behind him and considering where to direct his energies next, he gradually arrived at the answer: making Beautiful Destinations his principal focus.
Its premise was informed by a landscape already shifting beneath the industry’s feet. Rather than defaulting to guidebooks or isolated reviews on sites such as TripAdvisor and Reddit, travellers increasingly encountered ideas through a restless stream of recommendations and first-person accounts, often deciding where they wanted to go long before reaching an official tourism website. The challenge was no longer simply to be seen, but to appear in the right feeds.
Beautiful Destinations approaches that process in three stages. First, it audits how a place currently presents itself online and whether its messaging is reaching the intended audience. A Mediterranean hotel courting Northern European millennial couples, for example, would have its advertising strategy and channel mix examined to determine where its marketing money was actually moving the needle. The second phase transpires on the ground. Jauncey’s teams embed with local partners to absorb the cultural textures — the sensory character of a locale and what really resonates with the natives. Finally, digital creators are deployed to interpret the region or property through their own distinctive lens, returning with materials and films tailored to the campaign’s target market.
“We work with more than 500 creatives, from National Geographic photographers to influential bloggers and social media personalities,” Jauncey explains. “They operate within a tiered structure. Some are full-time, while others prefer the flexibility to move between projects. We might engage them for three or six months, or bring them in for only a few days.”
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For all its emphasis on mobility and immediacy, some of the company’s biggest opportunities lie within institutions built around caution and protocol. Governments and tourism authorities bring scale and credibility, but also layers of procedure that cannot be hurried.
“There is an educational process in detailing what we do, and the structural realities of teaming up with official bodies. You need a very robust business,” Jauncey notes. “Procurement cycles can be long, and you have to be able to fund extended periods while waiting for payment. When I first began working with governments, it probably took five years before they truly wanted to engage with us and invest time in forging those relationships. We play the long game. You have to be patient, but it pays off in the end.”
Guided purpose
While the impulse to venture elsewhere is often treated as an uncomplicated good, there is something faintly presumptuous about plunging blithely into another country’s culture and subjecting its people to one’s presence for the sake of leisure. Of course, there is a way of doing it well: with humility, curiosity and the hope of being moved by the ineffable. It remains one of the few pursuits we undertake without knowing the outcome, and much of its charm lies in surrendering to that unknown.
For Jauncey, wonder also carries a certain obligation. The privilege of introducing people to unfamiliar territories also means considering what their presence will leave behind, and whether organisations can adopt more responsible and sustainable ways of operating. “We want others to learn from what we’ve done, so the wider industry can make a change.”
These days, the delight of discovery is often shared with his wife, Pia Wurtzbach, the Filipina-German beauty queen crowned Miss Universe in 2015. The couple have threaded their way through Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau, although Jauncey admits he has seen only a fraction of what the region has to offer. “I feel I have only scratched the surface of Asia,” he says. “There is much more traversing to do, including a proper dive into Malaysia. I would love to explore beyond Kuala Lumpur.”
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Wurtzbach is, in her own right, a prominent figure across the global influencer and luxury spheres, too. As an ambassador of Italian jeweller Bvlgari, she approaches public life with the same intentionality Jauncey brings to Beautiful Destinations, although from a vantage point shaped by fashion and advocacy. Through her role with UNAIDS for Asia and the Pacific, she has used her standing to encourage HIV testing and education while challenging the stigma faced by those living with the virus.
The mutual understanding and candour between them matter as much as affection, claims Jauncey. “We’re extremely supportive of one another, and we’ve always spoken openly about what we want our relationship and marriage to be. There are periods when Pia is pushing very hard and has several projects underway. I may be doing the same thing on the opposite side of the world. We accept that this will sometimes be our reality, so we stay closely connected and trust that we will find our way back to each other. I’ve learnt so much from the way she pursues her ambitions without losing sight of the joy around it.”
For now, he is intent on expanding his business, but equally conscious that his partnership with Panerai asks more of him than visibility. Its ethos aligns with his own: a belief in testing one’s limits, whether through the precision of the instruments it crafts or the demanding environments into which they are taken. His goal, as he sees it, is to make that history meaningful to a younger audience without reducing it to spectacle — a balance long embodied by fellow ambassador and explorer Mike Horn, whom he simply calls “a legend”.
“Mike leads an expedition through Bhutan that has been on my bucket list for years. It takes you into the Himalayas, hiking through remote landscapes and visiting interesting sites such as the Tiger’s Nest and Wangditse Monastery. I would love the chance to join him. What I respect most, though, is his authenticity. Brand or no brand, in front of a camera or not, he would still be giving his best out there. It is simply who he is.”
That spirit is one Jauncey hopes to preserve in his own endeavour. When so much of our presence is filtered through an interface, perhaps the truest thing an image can do is prompt someone to look up from it, step outside and take in what cannot be captured at all.
This article first appeared on Aug 10, 2026 in The Edge Malaysia.
