“I Am Cautiously Bullish”: A Conversation with Collette’s EVP & CRO Jeff Roy

Jeff Roy, Collette’s executive vice president and chief revenue officer, is approaching his 20th year at Collette with cautious optimism.

“I told somebody recently that I am cautiously bullish. I think we could have a fantastic travel year next year… if things just stay stable,” he told Travel Market Report during the most recent USTOA Conference and Marketplace.

Roy is not the only one. Despite the high confidence shared by tour operators in the 2024 USTOA Economic Impact Study, 2025 threw the industry some real curveballs. As a result, the year started soft for many—but then picked up over the summer and fall. According to the USTOA’s most recent survey results, just over two-thirds of active members saw sales growth year-over-year.

“At this time last year, everybody was quite bullish about 2025… and through about the end of January, business was really strong. And then starting that first week of February, things started to soften,” he recalled. “We saw a big slowdown… but in the last three or four months now, we’ve seen really strong week-over-week growth versus last year.”

Roy believes this upward trend will continue in 2026 for Collette and for the industry at large.

“I think 2026 is gonna be a great year for the industry… people are largely expecting growth for next year, and their businesses are doing well. Everything has stabilized and started to point upward for next year,” he said.

Roy attributes both the 2025 initial softness and the current growth to consumers having put off booking their travel plans due to political uncertainty.

“We could surmise that [the dip] was likely the result of aggressive immigration enforcement and how people felt about travel in that environment… I think there was some concern of, ‘Am I going to be well-received when I go?'” explained Roy.

“It feels like a lot of the people that probably would have booked in 2025 delayed, saw the market recover, are feeling a little more confident again, and now they’re making bookings for 2026.”

Collette’s 2026 Strategy: More Small Groups, No Plans for River Expansion

Roy told TMR that small groups have proven to be a winning strategy. Collette first introduced its Explorations line of small group tours approximately 15 years ago. Just since the pandemic, this portfolio has seen significant growth.

“In 2019, a little more than 10% of our product portfolio was small group. Now it’s a third,” he said. “We’re getting exponential growth out of the small group segment.”

Collette’s small group tours are unique in that they were specifically created with small groups in mind. Many other guided land tour operators share the same itineraries for classic and small group departures, and Roy believes Collette’s different approach sets them apart.

“Those tours are designed for small group experiences… the hotels, the attractions, the pacing—it’s very different from others you might see in the market,” he explained. “You won’t find an Explorations itinerary that looks just like a classic itinerary.”

When asked about long-term strategy plans, Roy told TMR that he has a lot of faith in small groups’ potential.

“We could spend a lot of our energy on small group, and we could probably do that for the next decade and keep growing it,” he told TMR.

One area that Collette is not looking to invest heavily in is river cruising. When asked if Collette was looking at river cruising as an avenue for growth, Roy told TMR that Collette doesn’t have any plans to push further into the space than they already have.

“We do have some river cruise products… We offer those mostly for our existing customers so they have the option to cruise with us,” he said.

Roy joked that when companies get into the business of owning their own river ships, “the river ships own you.” Collette already offers some river cruise packages, featuring sailings operated by other companies.

“We’re a land-based tour operator,” he explained.

Collette’s New Travel Advisor Product Experience Program: “It’s Been Wildly Successful”

This past year, Collette changed how it approached getting travel advisors to experience its product.

Travel advisors love FAMs. In TMR’s Outlook on Land Tours, 2025, three-fourths of advisors said FAM trips were the preferred form of supplier support.

Collette has turned this up a notch. Instead of offering FAM opportunities throughout the year, the tour operator introduced a new “ride-a-tour” program. Once a travel advisor has finished the training program, Collette University, they have the option to test any tour for $100 a night. As an added bonus, they can even bring a guest for an additional $100 a night.

“For years, we would run 25 or 35 FAMs a year… but a FAM is a condensed experience. We thought the best way to get our message across on premium was to get advisors on tour,” he said.

Roy told TMR that he believes experiencing a Collette product firsthand is the best sales training for travel advisors because it captures the nuances of what makes the tour operator stand out.

“When you put brochures in front of people, everything can start to look like a commodity. The difference is in how the customer feels on tour. You can’t really know that unless you do it yourself,” he explained.

According the Roy, the response from the trade has been phenomenal.

“It’s been wildly successful. We’ve had over a thousand travel advisors on tour this year,” he told TMR.

Even better, the travel advisors are benefiting from experiencing the tours as their clients do. “We’ve gotten the kind of feedback we hoped for—’Okay, now we get it. Now we understand it.'”