Headquarter Happenings: Roller Coaster of a Year for Nexion Travel Advisors

So far this year, 2026 is shaping up to be a roller coaster of a year for sales, Nexion Travel president Jackie Friedman told media during a briefing at this year’s CoNexion conference in Austin, Tex. The host agency remains up year-over-year for just about all of its supplier partners, but there have been dips.

“We’re definitely seeing that our upper premium and luxury business is a little stronger than our contemporary business,” said Jackie Friedman, president of Nexion Travel Group. “In most cases, we are up with most of our partners, but with some not as much as we might normally be in a year-over-year basis.”

This is particularly true on the cruise side, Friedman added, with one surprise difference.

While premium and luxury cruise sales are seeing bigger percentage growth, than contemporary, Nexion’s performance when it comes to the short cruise market is up.

“One of the things that’s really interesting this year is that our performance in the short cruise market is better than its traditionally been in the past,” she said.

She attributed this to cruise lines putting newer, better – and more expensive – product into short cruising.

“People can make real money with some of the three- and four-night cruises, where typically in the past, some advisors shied away from selling those.”

As usual, she added, river and expedition continue to be strong. FIT bookings are also growing year-over-year.

What is down is some of the fun and sun product, particularly in Mexico and Jamaica.

“There’s softness there, it’s down but single digits,” Friedman said.

Overall, however, she emphasized Nexion is “looking very well-positioned for 2027 in terms of the early business on the books.”

A Growing Network

Another trend that Friedman said she’s noticed this year has been on the recruitment side of the business.

Of the 90 to 130 new advisors that join Nexion every month, a larger percentage than in previous years are experienced advisors looking for a new home.

“We’ve always had a number of new to the industry, that hasn’t changed. Bu we’re actually seeing more experienced advisors looking to move to Nexion. Some of them may be an affiliate. Some of them may be with different host agencies. But we’re seeing more experience advisors coming on this year than we’ve seen the previous two years,” she said.

Currently, Nexion’s membership stands at about 6,700 advisors across the U.S. and Canada.

“I’m very optimistic about not only where we are this year, but we continue to grow, bringing on the right advisors.”

New Early-Career & Business Owner Programs, Support

Friedman did admit that there is churn in a typical year, though the host is bringing on more advisors each year than its losing.

Many of the advisors Nexion loses in a year are who she refers to as “fail to launch” advisors.

“Some of them may underestimate what it takes to get started in this industry. They underestimate how long it might take for them to have the earnings that they need to do this full time.”

Later in a one-on-one with TMR, she added: “We definitely see after a year or so that some of them may think this isn’t what they thought.”

To help address this and possibly reduce the churn of these early career advisors – and support advisors who need help as business owners – Nexion has expanded its business development team with two additional BDMs. With the larger team comes more programs designed to support members at all stages of their career.

“If I could say one challenge that I think all of us host agencies have is engaging the unengaged,” she said.

For advisors just joining Nexion there are two programs, Compass Coaching (previously NEXstart), which is a new-to-industry training program. The all-new six-month long NEXPath is coaching for advisors who are new to Nexion but not new to the industry and features bi-weekly meetings, sessions, check-ins, and more with a dedicated business development manager.

To ensure that the business development managers are offering the most robust coaching possible, all BDMs will go through training provided by the International Coaching Federation (ICF).

“That’s going to really differentiate us from other coaching programs that are out there, where they don’t actually have formal coaching skills. We want our team to have formal coaching skills,” said Heather Kindred, CTIE, senior vice president of business development, marketing, and partner relations for Nexion.

Finally, Nexion has also introduced the Business Growth Club, a yearlong invitation-only cohort of 38 business owners who will meet throughout the year for strategic planning, expert coaching, peer collaboration and accountability. Participants have all achieved Nexion’s Circle, Summit or Pinnacle of Excellence status. At the end of the year, a new cohort of 38 owners will begin anew. It is the first time Nexion has ever assembled a cohort of this kind.

New Levels of Recognition

Another way in which Nexion has elevated its member support is with expanded recognition categories. This comes as Nexion has seen an 82% increase in the number of members reaching top production levels over the past reporting period from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026.

“Some of our top advisors did more than ten times the volume needed to achieve Circle of Excellence,” Friedman said. “Salespeople love recognition… We thought it was important to have everyone be able to reach for the next level. There would be nothing better than five years from now needing yet another level because people have outgrown what we have now.”

The four levels of Excellence are now:

• Gateway to Excellence, $35,000 to $54,000 in commissions on preferred supplier partner sales of land and cruise– 246 winners in 2026.
• Circle of Excellence, $550,000 to $99,999 – 229 winners in 2026
• [New] Summit of Excellence, $100,000 to $149,000 – 92 winners in 2026
• [New] Pinnacle of Excellence, $150,000 and over – 69 winners in 2026

Nexion also added a multi-advisor agency level of recognition.

“We have really successful agency owners that are seeing their personal sales decrease a little because they’re spending more of their time building teams, which is a good thing. We wanted to give opportunities to them,” Friedman explained.

The agency Excellence award comes in three categories: small (3 to 5 advisors, minimum of $300,000 in preferred supplier commission), medium (6 to 10 advisors, minimum $400,000), and large (11 or more advisors, minimum $500,000).