From without and within, Travel Leaders sees consolidation as right move

Travel Leaders Group (No. 9 on Travel Weekly’s 2016 Power List) described last week’s move to consolidate three of its brands into a single entity as an attempt to eliminate intracompany competition and external brand confusion.

Travel Leaders Associates, Results Travel and Vacation.com are to be known as Travel Leaders Network, and will offer both consortium and franchise solutions to agencies.

“All three brands operated independently in the marketplace,” said John Lovell, who has been with the company’s various incarnations since 2002 and president of Vacation.com since 2011. “But at some times, quite honestly, we did find ourselves competing against each other, and I think, from a resource standpoint, that is not the best thing to do. We drove a lot of confusion in the marketplace, I believe, and it’s a good way for us to really bring clarity to the organization from … Travel Leaders Group on down.”

Aside from the name change, associates (franchisees) and members of Travel Leaders Network will not see many changes until next year.

In 2017, though, they will benefit from increased access to technologies that were previously brand-specific, such as the Agent Profiler lead-generation tool as well as marketing initiatives and an “overlapping” convention where associates’ last conference day will be the first for members from the rest of Travel Leaders Network.

Roger Block, president of Travel Leaders Franchise Group, will become president of Travel Leaders Network. He will report to Lovell, whose title will be president of Travel Leaders Network and Leisure Group.

According to Travel Leaders Group, the network will have nearly 7,000 locations in the U.S. and Canada, more than $17 billion in annual sales volume and more than 35,000 travel agents.

Joanie Ogg, co-founder of Ogg Marketing Group, said of the move, “It is fascinating to see the consolidation of distribution channels into what will now be a very powerful force to reckon with. Their move to gather all brands under one all-encompassing umbrella is bold and timely.”

According to Lovell, the framework for the consolidation has been in place for several years, making 2016 the ideal time to announce the network.

“We’ve done a lot behind the scenes over the last two years of integrating some departments — marketing, for example, our finance team, our technology team — and this is just … the next step in the evolution of getting us to where we wanted to be,” he said.

With the consolidation, Travel Leaders Group will abandon its Vacation.com brand, which Lovell said has become a well-known moniker in the travel agency distribution channel and among suppliers.

“Supplier partners recognized the organization because of its size, its scale,” he said. “That’s really where the brand identity resided, was within the members and our supplier partners.”

He believes members will be well-served by its new name, Travel Leaders Network.

“Leaders is a very, very powerful word,” Lovell said. “It means a lot to us organizationally … and that’s the way we want to talk to [members and affiliates], as being a leader in the industry.”

The name change is a welcome one for Jason Olson, owner of True Vacation Travel in Redding, Calif., and a Vacation.com member.

“In this day and age, where typically you have the retail agencies and the dot-coms pitted against each other, there seems to be — for lack of better words — brand confusion that we are calling ourselves a dot-com when by and large we’re all retail stores,” Olson said.

Adopting the Travel Leaders moniker is also a positive thing in Olson’s eyes.

“Given the choice between Vacation.com and Travel Leaders anything, Travel Leaders, I think, is a far better branding game,” he said. “And it is something that is also palatable publicly as a consumer-facing brand, as well.”

Steve Loucks, Travel Leaders Group’s chief communications officer, pointed out that the company has been building its business-to-consumer brand for years, “so there is a lot of brand equity in a lot of markets across the country.”

The consolidation will also bring efficiencies in marketing, according to Stephen McGillivray, chief marketing officer for Travel Leaders Group.

For example, today, two consumer magazines are published: Postcards, for Travel Leaders, and Destination Vacation for Vacation.com.

“That means two publishers, two printers,” McGillivray said. “Tomorrow, we’ll have one magazine.”

The money that is saved can be used to, for example, produce more magazines for associates and members to have in their offices, he said.

As for supplier relationships, Lovell said they will be consolidated and one individual will oversee that process. He said he does not predict “radical changes” with any of the agreements.

Lovell also said he does not see more consolidation in Travel Leaders Group’s future, as Travel Leaders Network’s sister companies, including Nexion, Protravel International and Tzell Travel Group, all operate under different business models.

“It’s our job to make sure that we stay ahead of an evolving landscape,” Lovell said.

“It radically has changed just in the last three years, and it will continue to change,” he said. “Because of what we’ve done and announced … I think we become a much more nimble organization that can react to that change and bring to bear for our affiliates and our associates much more programs and services that will impact their business not only today, but well into the future.”

Correction: In 2017, Travel Leaders Group will have more than $17 billion in annual sales volume. The number was incorrectly reported as $17 million in a previous version of this article.