TORONTO — The Travel Agent Next Door is putting a bow on 2024 – and what a year it’s been.

The host agency celebrated its 10th anniversary in style with a successful conference in Jordan in June, numerous roadshow events in the fall, and last night’s VIP Supplier event.

TTAND’s top supplier partners come out in droves for the annual get-together, once again held at the Fairmont Royal York. It’s a fun night with plenty of laughs and camaraderie, plus of course an update from TTAND’s founder and CEO, Flemming Friisdahl, and the rest of the TTAND team.

Travelweek connected with Friisdahl for an interview. Half a billion dollars in annual sales? New technologies? All this and more are in our Q&A …

TTAND founder and CEO, Flemming Friisdahl

Travelweek: TTAND marked its 10th anniversary in 2024 with plenty of celebrations and a conference in Jordan, all successful events and no doubt extremely time-consuming to execute too! Now that the confetti has settled, what is TTAND turning its attention to and prioritizing for 2025? 

Friisdahl: “We had one more party – our VIP event – a very festive evening capping the 10 months of celebrating our 10-year anniversary. At our roadshows across Canada we had 16 cakes, and because it’s bad luck not to eat some of the cake, I had 16 pieces of cake in 10 days, that’s a lot of cake!

“The main focus for the coming year 2025 is technology. We have built some amazing tools that we will be launching that will make The Travel Agent Next Door just that much different than our competitors. Not that our service doesn’t make us stand out. But the new itinerary program, that’s our own system, integrates with our accounting system, making it very easy to create an itinerary for your customer. Also new are our authorization and insurance waiver forms, all integrated into our accounting system. So a lot of exciting programs are coming out and that’s really what will keep us busy.”

Travelweek: At last year’s VIP Supplier event, TTAND mentioned projected sales of $400 million for 2023. Did TTAND hit that mark in 2023 and what other exciting stats can you share?

Friisdahl: “Our results for 2023 were just $400 million in sales and our sales for 2024, will be very close to – if not above – half a billion dollars in sales. And we look forward to a very successful 2025 where we expect to have sales around $570 million or so.

“By far in dollar value we have raised the ceilings for all host agencies in Canada and we’re so excited for our agent partners and this success and the amount of money that they’re earning, especially at 100% of the commission. It truly has been a win-win for everybody, including our suppliers, so three wins.”

TTAND’s Rhonda Stanley, Flemming Friisdahl, Brad Miron, Chris Senior, Nicole Gowe, Christine Ufniak and Jeff Element

Travelweek: Penny Martin retired from her role as VP Agent Experience this past summer. One of TTAND’s strengths has always been its people. Is there a new VP Agent Experience? Also what can you tell us about Jeff Element’s role as COO?

Friisdahl: “I was very excited for Penny to start the next stage in her life, and the very positive part about all of this is that Penny gave us almost a year’s notice allowing us a significant amount of time to plan for her departure. The answer is no, I don’t think we’ll ever have another VP Agent Experience, as there’s only one Penny Martin.

“However Jeff has done an amazing job as COO, and with Penny’s support for three to four months as he learned part of her role. The transition has been very smooth and of course we still lean on Penny for certain things as she is now a travel agent with The Travel Agent Next Door.

“Jeff’s main role will be operations and he now has the accounting department, marketing, training, support and ticketing reporting into him so pretty much the entire Toronto and India office except for a few areas. He’s coming up to his first year with the company and he’s done an amazing job, continuing to grow our organization to be the best that we can be.”

Travelweek: Like just about everyone else, has TTAND seen bookings plateau in 2024 as demand for travel normalizes? 

Friisdahl: “Sales in our Q3 and Q4 have slowed down a little bit, however we’re still up double digits and I believe that 2025 will be our largest earnings year ever. But to be honest, every year has been our largest year ever except for, of course, our two COVID years.

“I can only believe that with our marketing program, the training that we can provide to our partner agents and the tools available to our partner agents from the websites, to self marketing, to the new tools I mentioned, we will continue to see growth for those partner agents and new agents as they continue to join.”

Travelweek: How many agents does TTAND now have across Canada?  

Friisdahl: “The Travel Agent Next Door is made up of two types of agents: primary and associate agents. Both groups are extremely important to our organization and how we function. We fully support the primary agents and we still continue to have a ratio of approximately one support member for every 10 primary agents, giving us the best ratio in Canada. We have a little over 70 support staff presently working for the organization full-time. In total the organization has 1,450 agent partners, being split fairly equally between primary agents and associate agents.”

Heather Kearns, Leisure Groups BDM, World of Hyatt – Canada (left) with Roxanne Jeffries, Accounts Receivable Coordinator, TTAND

Travelweek: Any other news you’d like to share?

Friisdahl: “I think the main thing that’s going to make 2025 an amazing year for our organization has to do with the technology that we will be launching in the coming months. There’s a tremendous amount of work that has gone into creating programs that are unique to the Canadian travel industry and meeting the needs of the Canadian travel industry for the foreseeable future.

“As we continue to embrace programs like AI and technology that makes it easier for travel professionals to present professional documentation, I personally believe strongly that these are the kind of things that will make our partner agents stand above all other travel agents within the industry in Canada.

“We will also be launching our own fully customized, built for independent contractors, booking engines for ITC products. We are very excited about this new tool as it really will offer unique features for our agent partners.

“Also we recently launched not only a cruise booking engine but also a river cruise booking engine for our agent partners on their website – again, a first in Canada for independent home based agents.”

Robin Mednick with Pencils for Kids, TTAND’s charitable partner