Simplify, Elevate, Demystify: Agency Group Execs Reveal Their Industry Wish List

Executives across the travel agency landscape – at consortia, hosts, and franchise organization – are optimistic about the future.

“Cautiously optimistic is probably a good way to say it,” said Jackie Friedman, president of Nexion Travel, talking to TMR in late June.

“My crystal ball is as good as yours,” said Michael Johnson, president of Ensemble. “But what we’ve seen is U.S. demand continues to be robust…”

“There’s nothing to suggest anything different for ’26 than ’25,” he continued. “Perhaps a little more stability, fingers crossed. But we’re pretty confident in what we see thus far.”

“’26 is looking phenomenal,” added Kathryn Mazza-Burney, chief sales officer, TRAVELSAVERS and president, NEST. “We’re on track to beat what we’ve got this year, which we are pretty sure will be a record year for us.”

It’s the same story at Cruise Planners, said Michelle Fee, founder and CEO. “The outlook for 2026 is encouraging… we’re currently trending nearly 15% ahead of the same time last year.”

Signature Travel’s president and CEO Alex Sharpe agreed the future is looking bright.

“I feel good overall about where we are and where we’re going,” he said, referring to the continued investment in travel sectors by private equity. “If they want to invest in this business, then there’s great opportunity ahead.”

Yet, even with such a rosy outlook, every executive TMR spoke with would change something about the world travel advisors operate in if given the chance.

De-Complicating Planning & Booking

One change some of the executives told TMR they’d make, if they could change anything, is to make the travel advisor’s job less complicated.

“It’s a complicated web that they weave on a day-to-day as they’re doing business,” Christina Pedroni, executive vice president and general manager USA, Envoyage, said.

“If I could change one thing about the current travel landscape for advisors, it would be the complexity of each supplier—whether it’s commission structures, policies, or booking platforms,” said Fee.

“Now more than ever, with more product coming online, more options, and more ways to book, it’s becoming overwhelming for many of our advisors,” agreed Ensemble’s Johnson. “If I could wave a magic wand, it would be to help them streamline their business onto a single platform or a single way of booking, so they don’t have to worry about that stuff and can focus on what makes them special.”

Pedroni said she’d make the same change.

“Giving them a really great tool and ecosystem to run their business, from customers to marketing to booking to invoicing, that really would change the way that they operate and give them more time to do what they love, which is connecting and building relationships and becoming experts in travel, not in a thousand booking platforms.”

So, too, did Fee.

“As they say, ‘time is money,’ and advisors are navigating a lot, just trying to keep up with constant updates, which takes valuable time away from what they do best: building relationships and selling travel. A more streamlined, consistent approach from suppliers would allow advisors to be more efficient, confident, and client focused.”

Raising the Travel Advisor Profile

“That we never, ever hear someone say, ‘Travel advisors? I didn’t think they existed anymore,’” Jackie Friedman told TMR.

Friedman, like other executives we spoke with, said she wishes everyone inherently understood the value of working with a travel advisor.

If she could wave a magic wand, it would be so “that we don’t have to constantly promote the value of the travel advisor. That it is just known,” she said.

Debbie Fiorino, chief operating officer of Dream Vacations, wished for the same thing. If she could make a change, it would be to “ensure that the overall perception and understanding of the value of travel advisors – what they do, how they do it, and the expertise they offer – is widely known and recognized by consumers.”

“Our advisors do everything they can to elevate that message,” she added. “But as an industry, I believe we can do more collectively. The real competition is not other advisors. It’s the lack of awareness of why someone should use a travel advisor in the first place.”

Friedman took it one step further, beyond consumers using advisors. “That it is a career that folks covet. That young people want to get into because it’s a great career where they can manage a passion and be very successful financially. That’s my magic wand.”

“If we can shift that mindset,” Fiorino added, “it benefits everyone: the advisor, the client, the industry as a whole.”

Strengthening the Advisor/Supplier Relationship

To borrow – badly – from Tolstoy, all happy advisor/supplier relationships are alike. All the rest are full of tension, usually caused by supplier actions that hurt travel advisors in one way or another.

And that’s something some of the executives TMR spoke with would like to see changed.

“For commissions to be paid to the advisors faster,” Phil Capelli, chief sales officer at Avoya Travel said when asked what he’d change. “We work with ASTA on it… some companies do it better than others, but at the end of the day, if I could, I would make it easier for advisors to get paid faster.”

Mazza-Burney isn’t as concerned about when advisors get their commissions as she is about some suppliers still aggressively marketing direct.

“If I could wave that magic wand, that would go away… I would love to see that suppliers aren’t going direct and that they’re solely booking through the distribution channels and not having the brands compete with the consortia,” she told TMR.

Knowing that that’s not overly realistic, she added, “Or at least not be so aggressive.”

Squelching Fear & Embracing New Tech

Travel Leaders Networks’ president Lindsay Pearlman told TMR he still sees too much fear among travel advisors when it comes to technology, particularly artificial intelligence.

That’s something he’d like to see change.

“I think people are terrified of AI. I think they’re super freaked out over the fact that they’re going to lose their job or they’re going to lose out to AI,” he explained.

It’s the same fear, he said, that people had over Y2K and Google.

“The reality of that is that those platforms that everybody was terrified of have made our lives easier.”

He used the Teams video call that TMR used to speak with him as an example.

“Here we are looking at each other. We’re in different parts of the continent, and it’s allowed us to do it. Has it replaced us? No. Has it replaced air travel? No. AI is the same thing… so my magic wand is to get beyond that [fear] and move towards, how can you use that tool as you have with other tools, to make your life easier?”

Standardizing Advisor Qualifications

Signature’s Sharpe admitted his magic wand change might be a little controversial.

“I think we’re at a crossroads,” he said, referring to how easy it is for anyone to sell travel. While he appreciates that the low barrier of entry brings in younger and more diverse sellers of travel, it has also “hurt the professionalism of the industry,” he said.  

“The nice lady who cuts my hair or does people’s nails, they need a license, but I can sell you a half a million-dollar safari or World Cruise and have zero experience.”

Without inviting government in, he told TMR that he’d like to see certification and licensing take a bigger role in the travel agency landscape.

“I think certification, licensing, is something that would be very positive,” he said.

Sharpe said he’s pleased with the work that most consortia and hosts are already doing to create a minimum threshold of training, and he spotlighted ASTA’s VTA (verified travel advisor) program as well.  But, he added, advisors “should be held to a higher level of accountability and professionalism” than they currently are.

“I think it’s a huge opportunity for us to elevate our trade so that people think of us like true advisors,” he said.

He added, it’s also on the advisor community to get the word out to consumers that they should only work with certified travel advisors.

“The customer has to know that that’s who they need to look for. They don’t always know that yet, so that’s the next step. In a perfect world, customers would just know.”

The utopia, as Sharpe put it, is where the industry would embrace some type of standardized certification, clients would then look for advisors with certification, and all without the industry needing the government to regulate anything.

(This is part four of TMR’s annual look at how the travel agency industry fared in the first six months of the year, what trends are driving business, what keeps executives awake at night, and more. )