Headquarter Happenings: InteleTravel Reports Strong Growth, Intros New Executive Team Member

This year’s InteleTravelQuest conference was one of the busiest ever for the host agency. From announcing a new consortium affiliation to introducing the host agency’s newest executive team member to unveiling a new sales incentive program, the news came fast and furious.

The four-day event, which was attended by some 2,500 independent contractors and supplier partners, offered attendees 80 training and educational seminars, along with mainstage presentations and panels, and a keynote from Dondra Ritzenthaler, the incoming president of Azamara.

“Of all our ITQs, this one has had the most new announcements,” said James Ferrara, president and co-founder of InteleTravel, speaking to Travel Market Report during a break in his busy schedule.

Exponential growth
Ferrara kicked off this year’s conference with gratitude for the “incredible performance” of the host agency’s membership of independent contractors.

“We had about 55% growth year-over-year and 400% growth over 2019,” he said. “The pandemic has been in our rear-view mirror for a long time.”

He added that the advanced sales for 2024 “already put us ahead of 2023 sales with some of our top suppliers… the momentum for 2024 is enormous.”

While InteleTravel did see membership grow by about 15% as well, Ferrara emphasized it’s not the addition of new independent contractors that accounts for the growth in revenue.

“Growth comes from making agents more productive,” he said, adding that educating ICs is key to what makes advisors more productive.

In addition to the annual conference, InteleTravel offered its ICs more than 1,000 hours of educational content in 2023, including in-person events, webinars, podcasts, Facebook Lives, and more.

From Ensemble to Travel Leaders Network
The host agency’s growth played a major role in the decision to switch its consortium affiliation, Ferrara told TMR.

“It’s a complex decision, affiliating with a consortium and not something that we do capriciously,” he said.

InteleTravel was with Ensemble for six years. Prior to that, it had been six years with Travel Leaders Network.

“Our decision to change is based on a complex evaluation of supplier portfolios and contracts, of marketing systems, of in-person events, training assets, all of those things… It is an evaluation of all of those things at a moment in time and the tricky part is that those things change over time. Six years ago using that evaluation, Ensemble was the best choice for us and now six years later Travel Leaders is the best choice for us.”

In particular and InteleQuest’s “specific needs,” it was Travel Leaders’ portfolio that appealed to Ferrara, along with Travel Leaders’ Agent Profiler lead generation systems.

When asked about the membership’s response to the news, Ferrara said most the InteleTravel advisors don’t know yet. The official announcement was at the conference, so only those at the conference heard about it first-hand. But he did say that advisors that were there that have been with InteleTravel long enough to remember being with Travel Leaders Network before Ensemble were “really happy to be back.”

New sales leader and incentives
InteleTravel’s move to Travel Leaders Network wasn’t the only big reveal at this year’s conference. The host agency also introduced attendees to its new director of sales and agent success, Bethany Grant.

“This is part of my strategy to do more for sales coaching and recognition and reward for sales. We haven’t been good enough at that,” Ferrara said.

“Selling is a skill and it needs to be developed and honed,” he added. “What we needed was leadership in that area and also more content.”

At the conference, InteleTravel also introduced a new sales reward program, IntelePerks, which awards points for different behaviors ranging from attending training classes to selling a preferred supplier to selling during a specified time period, etc. Points can be redeemed for travel opportunities or for consumer goods from a catalog of luxury brands.

“We’re giving value to all of these behaviors that we know will result in profitable business for the agent,” he said.

Also new is a series of advanced sales training in-person events, as well as the launch of the InteleTraveler Magazine, an internal digital publication that identifies the 50 top selling advisors on a quarterly basis. The goal of InteleTraveler is to inspire other advisors by noting who the top selling advisors are, along with what their business plans and backgrounds are.

“It creates competition,” Ferrara added. “Everyone wants to be in that book. We’re already being asked to make it bigger.”

Incorporating A.I. into advisor-facing tools
Like all host agencies and consortia, InteleTravel is exploring how to incorporate artificial intelligence into its tools.

“When it comes to consumer-facing A.I., A.I. in search or service, we’re waiting that out a little bit,” Ferrara said, adding that it’s not something InteleTravel is really interested in.

“It’s not our model to have customers come and do their own work.”

However, A.I. as a tool for advisors is something InteleTravel wants to make use of.

“We are looking to help agents save time and effort, improve their research and development of quotes, and save customers money,” he said.

Some of the new areas that InteleTravel is looking into for A.I. is commission tracking and recovery, itinerary research, and data entry.

One tool that Ferrara is excited about is a supplier registration tool that enables advisors to enter their data once and then use the tool to register for any supplier’s advisor portal without having to re-enter any data.

“Rather than having to register in 10 different places, they can register just once and the technology takes care of it.”

In terms of technology, InteleTravel also revealed its new mobile app (going live in the Q1 2024), will enable advisors to operate their business on the go from their tablet or cell phone.

InteleTravelQuest 2025
Though InteleTravelQuest is an annual event, the next conference will be onboard Norwegian Joy from Feb. 26 to March 3, 2025, in order to get it back to its first quarter schedule, which was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. InteleTravel has bought out Norwegian Joy for the event, which will be the 30th anniversary of the conference.