Headquarter Happenings: Richard Branson Cameos at Travel Leaders Network EDGE

“I did not realize how powerful a group of people I’m talking to,” said Sir Richard Branson to a packed room of some 2,000 travel advisors and suppliers in a surprise appearance at this year’s Travel Leaders Network EDGE conference.

Branson was responding to TLN’s president John Lovell mentioning that collectively, the Travel Leaders Network sells billions of dollars in cruise sales.

“We have a great airline, we have a great cruise line, I love you all,” Branson replied, garnering a laugh form the audience. Branson spoke briefly about his bumpy start in the travel industry, why entrepreneurship isn’t all the different from being an adventurer, and what he’s still passionate about.

Branson wasn’t the only surprise guest of the show. Sandals Resorts and Beaches Resorts’ executive chairman Adam Stewart graced the stage to offer his gratitude to the travel agency community and ALG Vacations brought along TV personality Carson Kressley to help talk about what’s new.

Attendees at this year’s conference, being held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, are braving triple-digit degree weather to take advantage of three full days of supplier and training workshops, general sessions with Travel Leaders Network updates, a trade show with more than 165 exhibitors, and more.

“We’re here for you,” said Lovell, making his first appearance on the EDGE stage since taking over as president of Travel Leaders Network in January. “It’s not about you building up our brand. It’s the other way around. We’re here to build your brand… We’re all about providing access to tools, marketing programs and so forth so you can make more money.”

Agent Profiler Returns Leads Worth $800 Million

One such tool, Lovell pointed out, is the Travel Leaders’ consumer facing Agent Profiler. Found on TravelLeaders.com, the search engine features nearly 20,000 advisor profiles that prospective travelers can search to find an advisor that fits their needs.

“Last year we generated over 300,000 leads through Agent Profiler, which equates to about 800 million in sales that was given to you free of charge.”

On average, 25% of all leads turn into new bookings with the average booking from a lead on Agent Profiler coming in at $10,655 – up 65% from just two years ago, chief partner marketing officer for Internova Travel Group (TLN’s parent company) Stephen McGillivray said at a media briefing. During the briefing, McGillivray presented enhancements to the tool’s SuperAgent program, giving advisors who achieve certain milestones the opportunity to appear higher up in search results.

The SuperAgent program – available to advisors who invest time to build up their profiles – already gives these members increased visibility, but with the addition of Gold and Diamond tiers, advisors who consistently follow up with leads and share data with TLN will gain access to even more opportunities.

Metrics TLN is asking advisor to share include dashboard completion, response time, and conversion rates. In return, Gold and Diamond SuperAgents will be featured higher up and more prominently in search results.

Another update to Agent Profiler that is still in the works is beefing up its connectivity to multiple third-party CRMs. So far, ClientBase, AgentMate, and Vacation CRM (new) are integrated but coming soon are Tres, Tess, and Planiteasy among others.

With the integration, leads from Agent Profiler are automatically pushed into the advisor’s CRM, eliminating the need for manual entry. The integration also gives advisors the option to opt in to have their existing clients marketing to automatically through TLN’s personalized direct mail and email campaigns.

One Year Later: Social Share Pro & SNAP Air Bookings

At last year’s EDGE conference, TLN introduced two tools: Social Share Pro and SNAP. This year, TLN offered updates on the two programs.

Social Share Pro, which launched last year, is an automated social media platform that advisors can opt in to, to allow Travel Leaders Network to share social media posts on their behalf. Since its launch, 2,200 agencies or advisors have opted in to Social Share Pro resulting in more than 500+ of content pushed out to four million consumers, equaling 150 million impressions.

Starting immediately, Social Share Pro is now also available to Canadian advisors and agencies.

“We know that unique original content is critical to the success in social media, so most of the posts that we publish come from our own original content, pictures, and video,” said Brian Hegarty, vice president of marketing for Travel Leaders Network. “In fact, we see a 40% improvement in posts that use original or user generated content compared to posts that use brand or stock content.”

Like Social Share Pro, SNAP, a search and booking platform for air, hotel, and car, launched last year and just opened (as of mid-May) to the Canada piece of Travel Leaders Network. Since its launch, SNAP has achieved a 15% adoption rate among TLN members and has paid $800,000 in air commissions.  And as of the end of June, air bookings in 2025 are triple what they were for all of 2024.

“Air has been ignored for a long time and it’s a huge opportunity,” said TLN COO Lindsay Pearlman. “Unless you’re in a drive market, people have to get on airplanes to get to their destination and it doesn’t make sense for an advisor who is trying to build that relationship and loyalty to take a key component of that trip and farm it out to someone else.”

He added that when an advisor books the air for a customer, cancellation rates drop by 39%.

We asked Lovell why that. He explained that sometimes when travelers are left to find air on their own after booking their trip, they often wait to book air and then either can’t find any or they can’t find anything that fits their budget. As a result, they cancel the entire trip.

When an advisor does the air, they either do it right away or they stay on top of the client about getting air booked sooner rather than later.