ALGV’s Ray Snisky and Jacki Marks on Surviving a “Perfect Storm” of Q1 Crises

The first quarter in 2026 was difficult for ALG Vacations. Between the highly publicized violence in Mexico, continued hurricane recovery efforts in Jamaica, airline disruptions, geopolitical conflict, and declining consumer confidence, U.S. travelers have been, understandably, more hesitant to book those sun-and-sand vacations.

“It was really a perfect storm of a lot of different things,” Ray Snisky, ALG Vacations’ group president, told Travel Market Report. “It’s been a recovery.”

TMR sat down with Snisky and Jacki Marks, ALGV’s global head of trade brands, at the recent Elite Emerald event in Miches. During the exclusive interview, the two executives spoke candidly about the challenges the industry is facing and how the company is responding to support travel advisors.

According to Snisky, the biggest impact was Mexico following the cartel violence in Puerto Vallarta in February. He described the destination seeing “really significant softness” on top of cancellations, despite the geographical distance between that region and say, Cancun.

“It just felt like anytime we started to be able to look past one crisis, the next crisis was coming at us,” Marks said. “And I think that ultimately, when you combine all of these things that happened in Q1 … It became such a global number of things that it really started to pause people’s desire to travel in general … I’ve never seen a quarter where that many things happened at once.”

The “Bright Spot” During a Difficult Period

Despite a challenging start to the year, ALGV remains optimistic about the future — both for the company and the industry in general.

“The silver lining is that the customer has become more resilient overall,” said Snisky. “If some of these activities would have happened 15 years ago, it would have [had] a deeper impact.”

Looking at the last few months, Marks said that the “bright spot” in all the chaos was that travelers did continue to book, and other destinations benefitted.

“So we did see the migration of a lot of business [to the Dominican Republic] and the other Caribbean islands as well,” Marks explained. “And then, even domestically, we saw some big pickups in California and Florida. It’s not like everyone stopped traveling. But there was a pivot to destinations that hadn’t been performing as well.”

When asked about domestic tourism, Marks said that California and Florida are top destinations for ALG Vacations, but she’s seen rising interest in New York and Colorado, driven by hiking and other local experiences.

Another category that continued to perform well for ALGV was pre- and post-cruise packages.

“Cruises weren’t as affected in Q1 as land vacations were,” Marks said. “And we do a lot of pre- and post-cruise land vacations. So we have become a primary [supplier] for many travel advisors when they’re booking cruises to use our airfare, hotels, DMCs, and our excursions. [It’s] very rare that a customer just cruises.”

How ALGV Is Supporting Europe & Asia

ALG Vacations is known for its sun and sand destinations, like Mexico, Jamaica, and Hawaii. Increasingly, however, the travel company is promoting its offerings in other destinations, especially Europe and Asia. With upcoming hotel expansions thanks to parent company Hyatt’s acquisition of Mr & Mrs Smith, as well as its new all-inclusive properties in Europe, there will be even more options for travelers to book stays in countries like Spain, Greece, and Portugal through ALGV’s system.

Marks is confident in ALG Vacations’ ability to compete for European travel bookings. She told TMR that the company has three main advantages over other suppliers: a dynamic collection of product, strong technological support, and a premier destination team that can offer on-the-ground support.

“We have invested in 80 team members who have undergone 5,500 plus hours of training and really become experts and like kind of a concierge team,” Marks said. “I really think we can rival — and actually, not just rival, but exceed — some of the other competitors out there.”

Looking to the future, Snisky said the company is well-positioned as a leader in the all-inclusive space, which he believes will become increasingly significant for those regions.

“I think the growth of the all-inclusive product into Asia [and] into the Middle East is going to be a big driver for us as well … I think there’s a lot of draw and popularity to that product growing in those areas. So as those hotels start to open up, you’ll see us shift even more into those destinations.”

Looking Ahead: A.I. & Expansion Plans

Like much of the travel industry (and the world, really), ALG Vacations is investing heavily in artificial intelligence. According to Snisky, the company recently partnered with consulting firm McKinsey to help develop its long-term AI strategy, with a focus on both protecting the business and improving the advisor experience.

“The goal is, we want to continue to empower the travel advisors to use their unique abilities … and really remove a lot of the tedious and busy work around that,” Snisky said.

He said they are in the process of developing their “AI roadmap” and will continue to invest in finding ways to leverage the technology to improve the travel advisor experience. In fact, according to Snisky, the resources ALG Vacations has already put towards AI represents “the biggest singular technology topic investments we’ve ever made.”

ALG Vacations will also continue to expand its Luxe line. The luxury-focused collection has been incredibly successful for the company, which Marks credits to a selective and curated list of properties as well as highly trained concierge team.

“I’m super proud of the work of Jackie and the team [on Luxe]. Primarily, we were upper end of middle America as far as our target customer. So we’ve evolved,” Snisky said. “We’re very proud of being known for being strong in Mexico and the Caribbean, and that upper middle America [demographic]. The reality is, we had to make a greater appeal and change what we’re known for to make sure that we can deliver on the Luxe value proposition.”

Marks shared that ALGV is continuing to adapt its luxury strategy. One change travel advisors can look forward to in the near future is that the company will be enhancing its paper documents that the clients receive:

“We listen and we try to make sure we validate the feedback we hear and then we act upon it. And we’ve heard enough through our surveys and interactions [to know] that the luxury customer does have a higher expectation of physical documents … If you spend $50,000 on a vacation, of course we can send you a leather document holder with the documents in it, if that’s what the customer expects.”

Snisky added that the company will continue to grow its Luxe portfolio and that luxury growth is a major focus going forward. “We’ve done a great job there, and we’ll continue to invest. That’ll be the number one segment that we’ll be focusing on into the future as well.”