Headquarter Happenings – Ensemble Looks to the Future (Part I)

At last year’s Ensemble Horizons annual conference, Michael Johnson took out the architectural blue prints (metaphorically speaking) for the “new” Ensemble to show members the framework of what was coming.

At the time, he spoke about Ensemble’s vision for a new type of consortium, one that serves its members in a different way. To do so required asking different questions of its members and looking at some of the most industry’s pernicious challenges from a new perspective.

“Asking different questions and taking the time to listen can lead to all kinds of interesting possibilities,” he said at this year’s conference, held at Resort World in Las Vegas.

In this year’s opening keynote, he spoke about Ensemble’s “aspirations to do something extraordinary,” and compared the consortium to Apple in that sense that he believes Ensemble’s role is to give advisors what they need. More specifically, Ensemble’s role is to provide solutions advisors might never have thought were possible.

“We know advisors don’t earn enough. And, we know that we operate in an industry with antiquated tools that addressed yesterday’s problems,” he said.

As an example of how inefficient today’s tools are, Johnson cited an internal census Ensemble completed with its members earlier this year that found that 50% of Ensemble members use more than one platform to book air, while 74% use more than one platform to book hotel, with many members using five or more.

“I can’t think of another industry that makes doing business so hard,” he said.

A new industry paradigm

If last year was about introducing the new Ensemble, this year is about building it out and “pivoting to growth,” Johnson said in a one-on-one interview.

“When you’re building a house, there’s a lot of work in terms of how you design the house, all the architectural renderings, digging the foundation, building the roofing, the framing. All of that has been completed. Now we’re putting on the hinges of the doors, painting the walls and moving some of the furniture in,” Johnson told Travel Market Report.

The philosophy underneath this “new house,” is what’s driving many of the consortium’s decisions. Traditionally, he said, a consortium’s roles has been to focus most of its energy on driving more leads.

“We should begin by maximizing the sale that’s right in front of us,” he said.

While some of the tools that Ensemble is providing to its clients do focus on marketing (Range magazine, direct mailers, etc), the consortium’s main focus is on how to empower advisors to maximize each individual sale. That’s where its ADX booking tool, first introduced last year, fits in. With ADX, advisors can more easily sell multiple pieces of a client’s travel without utilizing multiple booking engines.

Looking forward, ADX Plus will be a solution to empower advisors to not only bundle every aspect of client’s travel into one booking, but to also mark it up above market value, and be the agent of record for the entire thing. ADX Plus is still very much in the development and pilot phase, but is tentatively scheduled for launch at the end of 2025.

ADX developments & Air Concierge

Since last year several thousand Ensemble members have begun booking air with ADX. Hotels are also fully integrated into ADX, as is Travelex insurance, and cruise is being piloted with 10 member agencies. The ocean cruise booking piece of ADX is expected to begin beta testing by the end of 2024. Additionally, NDC air content will come online later this year.

River cruising will begin beta testing in the first quarter of 2025, with activities (powered by DMCs) coming in second quarter of 2025.

“We are not going to release something until it’s completely ready,” Johnson said, adding that they’re uploading one cruise line at a time and working through the bugs before moving onto the next one.

Improvements to ADX that have rolled out and/or continue to be rolled out include easier comparisons, cleaner search results display for hotel, and invoicing solutions for hosts who’s ICs have to use their host’s invoicing system to get paid commission.

ADX is free for all Ensemble members to use and comes with complimentary in-house air support. For a fee, there is also 24/7 air support.

For advisors who don’t want to do their own air Ensemble also launched an all-new Air Concierge team, which will do the air bookings for advisors. There is a ticketing fee for the service, which is automatically charged to the client, but the service is otherwise free to advisors, plus the get paid commission for the bookings.

During his presentation on ADX, TripArc president Dave Volman, gave examples of how much extra money an advisor can make by adding air to their bookings.

The first advisor who traditionally only sold cruises – without air – made $35 thousand in commissions that he didn’t make the year before.

“He has more engaged clients. He has clients who trust him more, and he earns almost $3 thousand dollars a month,” Volman said.

A second advisor, who used to only book air as a favor, made $27 thousand in air commission over the past year.