Travel Advisor Mentorship, Training Programs on the Rise

The profession of travel advisor is rising in both popularity and esteem, and thus, so are training and mentorship programs to ensure that candidates are well-equipped to handle this multi-faceted, fun-yet-intensive job. 

Whether you are fresh blood in the industry or a seasoned veteran, there is always something new to learn and new ways to grow your business or make it run more efficiently. Mentorship, training, or the two combined can give you a boost if business has been slower than you’d like, or you feel you’re falling behind on industry trends. 

Here are a few examples of travel advisor training and mentorship opportunities that are helping usher the profession into the next generation. These programs are designed not only to recruit new travel advisors but to help existing ones thrive. 

Brownell Academy 
Established in 2006, Brownell Travel’s mentoring program is an industry leader, especially when it comes to the luxury travel market. Brownell Academy often attracts professionals from other fields, such as law and business, to make a career change that allows them more flexibility and enjoyment. The program is selective, and a mentee’s enrollment means they will remain at Brownell and take it on as their host agency when they complete it. 

“We have three attorneys who said, ‘I’m done – I need joy, I need fun, I need something to do,’ and they’ve got an incredible sphere of influence because they’ve been working with peers like themselves who have been way too busy and are desperate for and crave travel, but don’t know where to begin or how to do it,” said Kerry Dyer, Brownell’s chief development officer. “It’s not a side hustle. It’s not something that they’re doing in between another job or another gig or tennis games. It is full-time, full year commitment.” 

Though the program requires participants to go without a steady paycheck for the first year, the payoff is great, as many Brownell graduates have gone on to have booming travel businesses, with the average Brownell agent producing about $2 million in sales. 

“You’ll sell, but it’s not going to be [about] how much money you make in year one,” said Troy Haas, Brownell’s president and CEO. “It’s laying the foundation, so you then have a robust business going forward.” 

Brownell has both a mentorship program for those who are new to the travel industry and a hosting program for advisors who would like to switch to Brownell as their agency. In both programs, participants learn business savvy, marketing strategies, and technical skills to build their business, with a hand-holding mentor to guide them through the process. 

Venture (Travel Edge Network) 
For those who want to sell luxury travel but can’t commit to a program like Brownell’s, Travel Edge Network has just recently launched its Venture program, an entry-level course for new advisors. The host agency also launched Venture+ for more advanced travel advisors looking for continuing education. 

Nadiya Makarenko, senior vice president of Travel Edge, noted that there is “an overall industry shortage at a time when travel is booming, and more people are turning to travel professionals than ever before.” 

“There is tremendous opportunity to support travel advisors at different stages of their careers from those who may be new to the industry or those who have some experience but are looking to take that passion to the next level but need and want the tools and resources to grow their business,” she said. “As industry leaders, we believe it is incumbent upon us to attract fresh talent to the industry and provide them with comprehensive training and education to be successful.” 

The Venture mentorship programs include basic training on Travel Edge’s ADX (Agent Digital Experience) platform, tips on how to be more efficient in selling travel, extensive training on partnership, and more. 

KORE (American Marketing Group) 
American Marketing Group (AMG), which owns NEST and Travel Savers, launched its training program, KORE, to its members in November 2021. About a year later, KORE debuted to the public – anyone who either wants to become a travel advisor or wants to level up their business as an agent can now participate. 

Steven Phillips, AMG’s senior director of education and training, called KORE a “beginning-to-end career path solution.” If the student is not part of an agency, they have the opportunity to be assigned a mentor who is well-established in the industry, although mentorship is not required to participate. At the end of the program, KORE offers job placement at an array of different agencies looking for new recruits. 

“We have hundreds of agencies looking to take on new people and looking for new-to-industry candidates,” Phillips said, noting that many of those agencies simply need the training resources for new employees or ICs. “Our goal is to be an industry-leading education brand.”   

The digital, self-paced training course is 16 modules and takes an average of 135 hours to complete. Specific to the travel industry, the program teaches students how to run their own business. Module topics include selling travel, travel industry players, booking air, accommodations, tours, cruises, and other transportation, professionalism, technology, marketing, fraud protection, and more. 

KORE initially launched in the United States and now has two different versions: one for U.S. travel advisors and one for Canadian advisors, which it launched just this month. Overall, Phillips noted, running a travel agency is “different from any other business,” and KORE tackles that head-on to ensure that future travel advisors have the tools to be successful. 

ASTA Mentorship Program 
Earlier this year, the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA) launched a 6-month mentorship program for its members that pairs mentees and mentors to work on specific goals that a travel advisor mentee has for their business. 

“We’ve seen an uptick of new entrants coming into the industry,” said Alvin Adriano, ASTA’s director of industry affairs. “There’s a lot of nuances and things about our industry that make it unique that you just can’t learn in a webinar, that you have to have that shared transfer of knowledge between one person to another. We felt that for our industry to thrive, we have to create a platform for people to connect.” 

ASTA has lots of educational resources for members to take advantage of on their website, which Adriano recommends they use to help them as well. But for more specific conversations and goal-setting, the mentorship program gives advisors a structured setting to help them grow. The program has a committee that introduces mentors to their mentees and ensure that the monthly sessions run smoothly. 

Mentorship sessions are mentee-driven, depending on their needs and what they want to achieve. Topics that have been discussed range from resolving conflict and building a culture of learning within an agency to social media marketing and how to get more sales. The program’s next cohort will begin in April, with applications for mentors and mentees due in the beginning of February.