Master Key: EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about being a travel advisor
Professional Travel Advising 101
Travel Agents 101: Everything you ever wanted to know about luxury travel advisors
I grew up in a family that used a travel agent. I was fascinated with our near seamless trips, glossy branded luggage tags, and detailed itineraries in which we were whisked around in private transfers and stayed in incredible hotels in Ireland or New Zealand.
When I pitched the idea of a travel agency that sat within Inspirato, I stayed late in the office creating the business case behind it, running the numbers like I was back in graduate school. Inspirato had what every single luxury advisor wanted – a dedicated membership group who loved to travel. They just weren’t capturing that travel spend outside of the small group experiences I ran and the homes members stayed in. I called the concept ‘Bespoke.’
The executive team was hesitant. “Aren’t travel agents kind of…extinct?” They asked. “How much will this cost to launch?” “How will you vet suppliers?” “Can you handle the volume without hiring anyone?” I showed my staffing model, and explained what DMCs (destination management companies) were. I proposed that we could sell $1M in travel bookings in the first year without hiring additional people. They gave me green light, and just like that, I built my first travel agency.
I knew the group travel world intimately after running small group trips and chartered cruises for 8 years between my time Exclusive Resorts and Inspirato. Beyond that, I had a lot to learn about the travel agency world. Today, I own a travel agency, Alpenglow Travel, that is quickly rising through the ranks of Coastline’s “Top Talent.”
This week’s Master Key is your MBA-level introduction to the world of luxury travel planning. If you’ve ever wanted to know how a travel advisor works, or if you’re interested in becoming one, consider this your luxury travel planning 101 overview.
The Industry’s Comeback
If the term “travel agent” conjures images of a lady in her 70’s named Maude hammering away at a keyboard in DOS code to book your flight while smoking a cigarette at her kitchen table, you aren’t alone. With the advent of OTA’s (online travel agencies) such as Booking.com and Expedia in the early 2000’s, major publications sounded the death knell for travel advisors, postulating that they would go the way of the Dodo bird. However, as with most things that enter the mass market, there has been a backlash to plethora of fake reviews and the sheer, unnavigable volume of information out there.
Newly minted millionaires are traveling like never before, and they want a trusted advisor to help them wade through the fluff and give them actual advice.
The travel agent industry has had one of the more remarkable comebacks in recent business history. After a 40% collapse in global bookings in 2020 during the pandemic, agencies recovered fast and blew past their previous highs. U.S. travel agency gross bookings surged 102% in 2022, followed by another 28% gain in 2023, reaching $109.7 billion, a record at the time.[1] Agency sales rose an additional 9% in both 2024 and 2025, with leisure travel accounting for 65% of that growth.[1] The overall travel industry recovered to about 136% of 2019 sales by mid-2024. Travel agencies, as a category, tracked at more than double that pace.[2]
