Jamie Biesiada
It has been a strong year for WorldVia Travel Network, with overall growth up 30-plus percent, according to CEO Jason Block.
There are "pockets of slower growth," he said, but the network is performing strongly, as are many individual advisors.
"I think the challenge that many advisors face, and not just within WorldVia but across the industry, is what segments do I focus on?" he said. "Am I attached to a space in the market that is growing strongly and that I have competitive advantage, that I have something unique to offer, that I can predictably grow year over year over year?"
This year, one of those areas has proven to be group cruising. Block pointed to that as an area of particular growth for the network, which is fresh off its World25 conference, held last month in Richardson, Texas.
WorldVia Travel Network is WorldVia Travel Group's host agency. Block started WorldVia Travel Group in 2014 and bought a Travel Leaders retail branch with seven locations in 2015. That year, the company also bought two corporate TMCs. In 2018, it purchased Travel Quest, the host agency that would become WorldVia Travel Network. That is one of its primary business lines today; its corporate business is Safe Harbors Business Travel.
In addition to strong segments like group cruising, WorldVia Travel Network is also experiencing a lot of activity this fall.
Fall booking trends
The first week of October, Block said, "was one of our highest invoicing weeks of the year, and that's kind of rare. You wouldn't really expect to see that in October."
Quite a bit of those bookings are for 2025 departures, also a surprise, he said. Last-minute travelers are largely headed to Europe.
Next year is looking solid. Block said the network has a similar growth rate going into 2026 as it did going into 2025, with particular strength in Europe and Asia.
"I'm always cautiously optimistic, but there does not yet seem to be any signs of real headwinds from the face of things like tariffs or any of that," he said.
Introducing WorldVia Academy
WorldVia Travel Network made several announcements at the World25 conference, including the introduction of the WorldVia Academy.
The academy collects the thousands of pieces of education and training that WorldVia has for its advisors, Block said. They are now highly searchable, and the Academy introduces things like learning tracks and playlists.
It also introduced a series of events called forums that zero in on categories like FIT, cruise and groups.
AI adoption and expansion
WorldVia, Block said, was an early adopter of generative AI. It came out with its first AI product, a content generator, around two months after the late-2023 launch of ChatGPT.
That product evolved into the AI-powered AIVIA.
"It does everything that our content creator product did, but a whole lot more," Block said. "The whole idea was, we want to create a workspace where advisors can use AI as a business partner."
About 20% of AIVIA uses are still centered around content creation, he said, but advisors can also use it for things like business planning, itinerary creation and marketing planning. It incorporates internal information and third-party supplier information.
The first generation of AIVIA was introduced a few months ago. Now, WorldVia is in development for its next phases, coming out later this year.
Block promised "a whole other level of integration into other workflows" as well as agentic capabilities, meaning it can do tasks proactively on behalf of advisors.
While it is developing further iterations of AI tech, Block said that's being done cautiously with guardrails in place.
"Every advisor knows they work across 87 different tabs at all times," Block said. "Our vision for that product is to consolidate those tabs."