TORONTO — With 2025 well underway, many travel companies are wondering how to top a record-breaker like 2024.
If you’re Travel Leaders Network, you keep a steady hand on the tiller, leverage your dominant size and resources to maximize ROI for your members, and just keep on growing.
As John Lovell, President, Travel Leaders Network noted at yesterday’s TLN news conference, there were lots of high watermarks last year, and TLN is more than ready to meet and exceed them this year.
Year over year in 2024, Travel Leaders Network’s total sales were up 17%, with land up 9.7%, and cruise up 25.1%.
“2024 was a very, very good year for us. Retention was at an all-time record high. We also set records on the recruitment side,” said Lovell.
“We also had an excellent year in terms of growth and revenue,” he added. “Where it stops, no one knows. We’d already reached 2019’s pre-pandemic numbers coming out of 2022 and heading into 2023. We do things well, and ultimately it’s the consumer that’s driving the growth with this distribution channel. And we know that the consumer is looking for the confirmation, validation and affirmation that comes from working with a travel advisor.”
In recent weeks Canadian travellers have had good reason to feel a bit anxious about vacationing in 2025, what with a possible economic hit due to tariffs, not to mention a general sense of ‘anywhere but the U.S.’ when it comes to travel plans. Lovell’s take summed up the hopes of many at yesterday’s conference, and across the country: “Cooler heads need to prevail, and I think they will.”
BIG NEWS FOR WEB-BASED BOOKING TOOL ‘SNAP’
There was plenty more headline news from the TLN update, hosted by Lovell and his team including Christine James, VP, Canada, Travel Leaders Network and Lindsay Pearlman, Chief Operating Officer, Travel Leaders Network, plus Stephen McGillivray, Travel Leaders Group’s Chief Marketing Officer, and Cory Voss, VP, Product & Solutions.
The biggest take-home for Canadian members is the just-announced new functionality for SNAP, TLN’s web-based booking tool.
Already available to members here with hotel and car rental capability, SNAP will soon offer air bookings to Canadian members as well, something this market has been eagerly anticipating ever since SNAP rolled out in the U.S.
Not only that, but Air Canada has just been added as a network partner for SNAP.
“We already have the hotel and car for SNAP in Canada, and starting March 17 we will be beta-testing the air component in Canada, with Air Canada as a partner. It’s huge news,” said Pearlman.
The web-based booking tool combines GDS content, NDC content and everything else that agents need at their fingertips.
To get into SNAP, there’s no login needed; agents just click through TLN’s Agent Universe. “If can use Google, you can use SNAP,” said Pearlman.
He joked that “airlines have done an incredible job of terrifying [travel advisors] when it comes to booking air. Consolidators have taken advantage of this. But our stats show that if an advisor makes a booking that includes air, the cancellation rate drops 39%.”
Bottom line is, SNAP aims to make air bookings, well, a snap. “We thought, why don’t we remove all the angst agents have about NDC and put it all into one easy-to-use system,” said Pearlman. “We’ve simplified NDC. We’re not waiting for the airlines to do it.”
When SNAP was launched in the U.S., “the uptake was well beyond what we expected,” he added.
Also notable: with SNAP, there are no debit memos. “We’ll take the risk,” said Pearlman.
Along with SNAP, Canadian members will also be hearing more about EmpowerCruise, a program designed to enhance member commission earnings when booking cruise suppliers. Agencies leverage this program when they’re not earning the highest possible commission with specific cruise lines.
To help travel advisors get familiar with SNAP, EmpowerCruise and more, TLN Canada’s field team has almost doubled and now includes Lauren Spinks, Felix Brito, Alberto Mekler, Erica Papley, Fabian Guimaraens and Mariana Pastor.
“They’re experts in SNAP and Empower Cruise,” said Pearlman. “They’ll go to an agency and hand-hold until the travel advisors are comfortable doing it on their own.”
CANADIAN REVENUE BASE UP 50%
Travel Leaders Network has some 6,000 agencies in North America. “Big, small, hosts, independent, luxury, family, corporate, we have them all. We always say, if you’re in the business of selling travel to the consumer, we’re the place you should come to,” said Lovell.
“Nowhere else can a supplier go and touch almost 40% of the distribution channel with one voice,” Lovell added.
Looking at Canadian membership specifically, Pearlman noted that TLN’s Canadian revenue base has grown by some 50%. “This is our third year in a row with significant growth,” he added. “The more we grow, the more we can invest back into the business.”
In 2024, preferred supplier sales in Canada hit $23.2 million, and total agency sales in Canada were $128.4 million. Year to date actual sales for Canadian members (as of Feb. 1, 2025) totalled $6.9 million.
One metric out of Canada that TLN is very, very happy with are cruise sales from this market, hitting $213 million in 2024, up 30% from $164 million in 2023.
Meanwhile attendance at TLN’s Canadian events hit all-time highs. According to James, 1,744 members across Canada attended 2024’s three Regionals (Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary in October 2024), the 22 Mixers and the annual EDGE conference. Some 519 supplier partners attended as well. “That’s unprecedented, we’ve never had numbers like that,” said James.
Advance registration numbers for 2025’s events are already strong, she noted. More than 200 Canadian members have already registered for EDGE in Las Vegas, taking place June 9 – 12, 2025.
James added that Caroline Belgrave’s return to Travel Leaders Network, in the new role of Business Solutions Manager for Western Canada, has been a bright light amid the sadness following the December 2024 passing of Sue Urie, who joined TLN in 2006. “Caroline has hit the ground running, and we’re really pleased about that,” said James.
AGENT PROFILER UPDATE: “WE NEED MORE CANADIAN PROFILES”
One key message from all the TLN team members yesterday was that Canadian members are urged to get onboard with creating their profiles and bios for TLN’s Agent Profiler.
It’s a message that’s been hammered home for years, and while many Canadian members have profiles, “there’s still lots of opportunity in that area for growth,” said Pearlman.
As reported last year, Travel Leaders Group, LLC at long last won the right to use the Travel Leaders trademark in Canada, a major victory for the company that capped a six-year legal battle. The site flipped to TravelLeaders.com in this market in July 2024. Agent Profiler, the lead generation platform that TravelLeaders.com is built around, now has 18,364 published agent profiles. Of those, about 1,200 are for Canadian members.
“We need the Canadian retailers that belong to our network to build more profiles,” said McGillivray. TLN has the resources to help members create their profiles quickly and easily, and as McGillivray noted, one out of four leads close with Agent Profiler.
Last year’s Agent Profiler stats for Canada included 11,500 leads, 2,875 bookings, $30.5 million network sales and $4.5 million in commissions earned.
“We saw $110 million in commissions [in total, across North America] last year. That’s about $18,000 average across our 6,000 members,” said McGillivray.
‘SUPER AGENT’ 2.0 ON THE WAY
TLN’s ‘Super Agent’ concept, a go-to way for members to highlight their specialties and expertise even more on Agent Profiler, is all about encouraging agents to include more high quality content in their profile, said TLN’s CIO Voss.
To qualify as a Super Agent on Agent Profiler, members must meet the following criteria: 15 customer reviews; 3 additional bios (4 total); 1 photo album; 1 travel story; and 1 map.
As Voss noted: “This was always step 1. Now for step 2 we’re introducing a couple of additional tiers.”
The three tiers will be SuperAgent, SuperAgent Gold (achieve 1 – 2 performance metrics) and SuperAgent Diamond (achieve all 3 performance metrics). More details will be available in the coming months, with a big press on the new tiers at EDGE in Las Vegas.
The 3 performance metrics are: close rate, response time, and rating & review quality. Members will have access to a dashboard to log the info. As McGillivray put it, “We put millions of dollars into these tools, and the leads are free. We’re asking, ‘We sent you a lead, the consumer picked you, what happened?’
Also coming for 2025, TLN is drilling down on CRM solutions and will also offer an update for Cruise Complete. “Cruise Complete was launched about two years ago. Adoption has never been greater, and there’s never been more bookings coming through this tool. We’re going to continue to push this program, enhance it,” said Voss.
