BRAMPTON, ON — Walk a mile in Christine James’ shoes and you’ll learn very quickly how to be a better travel advisor.

The fact that you’re doing it in gorgeous high heels is just an added bonus.

James, Vice President of TL Network Canada (and known for her enviable shoe collection), is a former travel advisor herself, starting out over 40 years ago at Eaton’s Travel. With her retail background, she knows all too well what an advisor needs in order to survive and thrive as long as she has in this industry, which is why she constantly encourages TL member advisors to take advantage of the company’s vast portfolio of resources. 

Christine James

She hammered home this message yesterday, Oct. 17, at the Toronto stop of Travel Leaders Network’s 2024 Canada Fall Regionals. According to James, this year’s Regionals are the company’s most successful in terms of turnout, both among suppliers and members. Across three events in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto, there were 160 suppliers, up from last year’s best-ever turnout of 150, and 575 registered members, up from last year’s 413. In Toronto alone, there were 72 suppliers and 260 registered members, up from last year’s 190. 

These numbers, added James, are in line with Travel Leaders’ significant growth this past year. The company welcomed 31 new members, bringing its total membership year to date to approximately 600; by the end of 2024, James anticipates this to grow to 625. In addition, the average sale has spiked to $10,000 per booking, up from $6,000 pre-Covid, an indication of luxury travel’s continued post-pandemic boom.

“I’m still seeing growth over 2023, which is amazing because 2023 was our best year ever. For all numbers historically, we’re still above in 2024,” said James. 

Travel Leaders Network’s 2024 Canada Fall Regionals, Toronto, at Pearson Convention Centre

Cruising is leading the charge, she added, making up 38% of TL Network Canada’s total business. “That’s just phenomenal for Canada because we don’t have any port cities in the U.S. so you don’t have any drive-cruise business. It just keeps growing and growing, especially river cruising. They can’t build enough ships and they can’t find enough rivers to sail,” added James. 

To support all this growth, Travel Leaders offers a suite of tools and resources for travel advisors, which James says gives the company a significant edge over its competitors. These include a cruise booking engine; the company’s popular lead generation tool, Agent Profiler; the Super Agent program, which designates advisors as ‘Super Agents’ after incorporating certain elements into their Agent Profile including five referrals; and SNAP (Simple Navigation Advisor Platform), which is currently available for car and hotel bookings, with air launching in Canada in Q1 2025. 

“Our secret sauce is not just one thing. Depending on the member or prospective member, we’re going to find something in our toolkit that’s going to be better than anybody else can offer them,” said James. “And because we’re so big and doing so many things so well, it’s really hard for a competitor that doesn’t have the depth and breadth of our organization and our parent company, Internova, to match our offerings.” 

Top suppliers hosting a Price Is Right-themed game show at the Toronto Regional event

AGENT PROFILER

Launched a few years ago as a lead generation tool for members, Agent Profiler allows consumers to find the ideal travel advisor for their needs by selecting a full range of travel specialties, destinations and other search options. Advisors create one or more profiles about themselves, which then rank high in Google searches; the close rate for advisors with Google searches is 25%.

Year to date, TL Network Canada has delivered 9,900 leads to its members in Canada who are on Agent Profiler. The total commissions to date that Agent Profile members have earned in Canada is $2.3 million – and that’s just for those who’ve reported their commissions, which is not mandatory.

Even better, Agent Profiler is completely free for members and incredibly easy to use. Not only are they given a template to create their profile, they have access to ‘Toby AI,’ Travel Leaders Network’s AI solution, as well as staff writers who can help write and generate content for them. 

“One of our advisors said that she published her profile and 10 days later, she got a lead for a group of 90 people to Costa Rica. Because she is originally from Costa Rica, she designated herself as Costa Rican, which is how the group found her,” said James. “I don’t know anybody else that’s providing that kind of lead opportunity to grow your business.”

IT’S A SNAP

First launched in the United States in April 2024, SNAP (Simple Navigation Advisor Platform), Travel Leaders Network’s new easy-to-use booking tool, is powered by Sabre and gives non-GDS users the ability to quickly and efficiently book their clients’ travel while at the same time earn greater opportunities. No specialized knowledge on how to use it is required, making it an ideal option for new-to-industry advisors and ICs (independent consultants) who lack formal training. With just a few clicks, advisors can book air, car and hotel for their clients.

The tool then launched in Canada in July 2, 2024 for hotel and car rental bookings only. According to James, the air component will launch in Q1 in 2025, making it even easier for TL members to grow their business and book flights for the clients, something that many advisors are reluctant to do nowadays out of fear of debit memos, low or zero commissions, and the headache of dealing with flight changes and cancellations.

“With SNAP, we’re minimizing that fear of air because it’s so user-friendly. Advisors go in, search, enter their outbound/return dates and it gives them all available fares and tells them which ones are commissionable, which ones are net. And then they have the ability at the end of the transaction to add a service fee,” said James. 

“Beyond that, after they issue the ticket, we do the quality control in the background so there’s no risk of a debit memo for them. And then, even more, if mid-trip there’s a flight cancellation or what not, we also have 24-hour service to support clients. This means a client can call in at any time using our 24-hour service, completely bypassing the need to call the airline, and the advisor can then retrieve that booking and service that client.”

Game on! The crowd guesses the price of tours offered by top suppliers