It’s hardly surprising that 10 travel advisors who all began their careers within the past two years have navigated very different paths.

One has stopped selling travel, with a demanding day job requiring more time. Another has shifted from selling contemporary cruises to luxury river cruises, necessitating adjustments to her marketing and host agency. One continues to cultivate trips born of a Facebook group designed to foster connections and friendships.

Their stories — and those of the seven other advisors who took part in a Travel Weekly project designed to track the newest of sellers — are all different, but offer some common threads.

For one, the industry does not lack resources or training. In fact, some find the options overwhelming. They take advantage of their own networks to mine for clients. And they share the bond common to most in the industry: a love of travel. 

They mirror the larger travel industry when it comes to charging some type of fee: half do, similar to the findings of Travel Weekly’s 2024 Travel Industry Survey in which 44% of respondents said they levy service fees. 

This report marks the first update on the Class of 2024, a group of 10 advisors Travel Weekly identified last May with the help of four industry groups (ASTA, the Travel Institute, Host Agency Reviews and FindaHostTravel-Agency.com). Each advisor had started selling travel within the past two years, the earliest in April 2023.

One year ago, we asked them why they wanted to sell travel and what goals they had set for their businesses. They embarked on their careers when they were needed; the industry had been experiencing the highest levels of consumer demand for travel advisors in recent history. 

But they still had to compete with a notable increase in new agents since the pandemic. The 2024 Travel Industry Survey found that more than one in three advisors (35%) had been selling travel for five years or less; of those, 20% had been selling travel for two years or less. In 2022, only 9% of advisors had been selling travel for two years or less, and 19% reported doing so for five years or less.

This week, we’ll delve into updates from the advisors on how business is going, what’s changed and what’s next for them. There will be subsequent updates in 2027 and 2029.

Next week, we’ll tap expert industry educators to talk about some of the most common pitfalls newer sellers face and how to navigate a travel advising career.

FROM FACEBOOK TO IRL

It all started with a Facebook group.

In June 2023, Scott Walker moved to Fort Lauderdale. He didn’t have friends in the area, so he started a Facebook group, HH Social Club, to arrange local happy hour get-togethers.

It turns out, Walker wasn’t alone. Today, that first group and several others — one focused on travel — have more than 14,000 members, and Walker runs four international trips each year that consist almost entirely of group members.

Last year, he escorted groups to the Dominican Republic, Greece and Iceland and on a Caribbean cruise. This year, he took a group on a ski trip to France and plans to lead groups to Italy and Portugal.

He’s adding his first domestic trips to the mix, including Nashville, New York and to Sphere in Las Vegas.

“It’s endless,” he said. “It’s been working for me.”

A MISSION IN DIVERSITY

When Anthony Roberts Jr., of Louisville, Ky., decided to become a travel advisor, he jumped in intending to increase diversity in the industry. 

Those efforts have already met with success: Last fall, he was awarded Nexion Travel Group’s Everyone Is In Award for his commitment to advancing minorities in travel through his work with minority subagents and an intern.

Roberts primarily sells cruises (Virgin Voyages in particular), often to solo travelers who are traveling internationally for the first time. He is also completing a course on active and adventure travel.

In the past year, he’s brought on four sub-ICs who focus on areas he doesn’t sell much, like Asia and Africa.

“Right now is a year of sustainability and growth — how do I scale up a little bit more, making sure that they have the tools and the knowledge they need in order for the agency to grow continuously and succeed,” Roberts said.

LEANING INTO LAND

Brenda Pearson, of Wabasha, Minn., learns by doing.

So she’s spent the past year on the road, from a river cruise to an African safari, to escorting a group of 17 to Scotland and Ireland. Pearson also fit in a fam trip to Spain, then went to Antarctica. She kicked off 2025 with a networking cruise and the ASTA River Cruise Expo.

Those experiences have paid off. As of March, she had done $301,000 in sales, with a goal of $750,000 by the end of the year.

“What I know and love is the river cruising, the expedition cruising,” said Pearson, who’s now working to break into more land sales. That includes capitalizing on the trend she sees of Minnesotans headed to the Caribbean in the winter.

Many of her travel clients are also customers of her two other businesses: the Turning Waters Bed, Breakfast and Brewery and Hoppy Girl Brewing.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

The past year has been all about networking for Pittsburgh resident Steve Lubinski.

He’s been to events with his host agency, Travel Planners International, and the Family Travel Association. He’s taken a number of trips, both personal and for business. Once Lubinski’s local ASTA chapter found out he’s a CPA by training, they made him the treasurer.

“I feel like I’ve been internally focused on building relationships within the industry, which has been super easy to do because everybody is very friendly and everybody’s super supportive,” he said.

All the while, Lubinski’s been selling trips to Disney and Universal while dabbling in all-inclusive resorts and cruise vacations, speaking to his goal of selling family travel.

Now he is focused on putting himself out there, both on social media and in person, with potential clients. “Staying top of mind just requires a whole lot of time and effort,” he said.

SWITCHING IT UP

Stacey Love, of St. Cloud, Fla., started as a travel advisor with Moms at Sea Travel, a Dream Vacations franchise born of a popular Facebook cruise group Love frequented. 

While she is thankful for all she learned under Moms at Sea, after some soul-searching she realized her passion is luxury and expedition travel, not contemporary cruises.

She affiliated with Dream Vacations franchisee Nai Lamb, who focuses on luxury expedition travel and affinity groups. Love has been busy taking various supplier training courses and partnered with a local wine bar she frequents, where she plans to promote a wine cruise with regular events there.

This year, her focus is on building a client list with her new areas of focus in mind. “It’s exciting to just make that jump and put your fear aside,” Love said.

SELLING ‘SOFT ADVENTURE’

“Fun. Exciting. Stressful.”

That’s how travel advisor Judi Lombardi, of Malden, Mass., described the past year of business, which has been fueled by word of mouth and referrals.

Lombardi is positioning herself solidly in the premium market, often working with older clients who haven’t traveled in a while. She’s also established herself in the honeymoon space, sending newlyweds around the world, including to East Africa, Thailand and Vietnam.

She likes to sell what she calls “soft adventure.” While a trip to Europe will include sightseeing and soaking up history, she’ll also add an activity like an e-bike tour to the mix. 

Lombardi is also making inroads in river cruising. Recently back from ASTA’s River Cruise Expo, she’s fielding some leads based on social media posts from the event.

“One of my favorite things that was the biggest surprise in this industry is how collaborative everybody is,” Lombardi said. “That is something that shocks me.”

AN AI ASSIST

Right now, Mark Lee, the owner of a Cruise Planners franchise in St. Petersburg, Fla., is planning five different group trips. The ocean cruises, river cruises and one land-based tour group range in size from five to 12. Lee said he earned the business thanks to a little luck and a lot of networking.

But, he admitted, booking groups “is a little overwhelming for a new advisor. Like, how do I move forward with all these?”

Instead of thinking, “I’ve got to do air for 12,” Lee said, he treats each traveler as an individual booking, which makes the task less daunting to him. 

He’s also employing AI daily, especially when it comes to schedule changes from suppliers, of which there are more than he expected. He pastes the documents into generative AI and then queries how the changes will affect his clients.

AN UNEXPECTED NICHE

Shannon Kruse, of Los Alamitos, Calif., has spent the past year booking travel for family and friends and is starting to enjoy business from referrals. 

But she still has her sights set on breaking into corporate incentive travel, which has been “more challenging than I thought it would have been,” Kruse said. She’s still putting herself out there to get a foot in the door of what she said she believes is a “huge opportunity.”

This past year, Kruse also found a new market: planning travel for her children’s sports teams and show choir.

“It’s kind of in between leisure and corporate, but that’s become a total unexpected sale that I had no way of forecasting,” she said.

It also opened a door to planning travel for other parents and coaches. “It’s just another marketing stream that I did not anticipate,” she said.

CRUISING TO MORE SALES

While a knee replacement slowed her down some, it didn’t stop Tara Brown, of Frisco, Texas, who made $145,000 in sales in her first year as an advisor. And she still took a number of trips: a family cruise to Alaska, a fam in Dublin, site inspections in Cancun and ASTA’s River Cruise Expo.

One of her biggest challenges has been managing client expectations for realistic budgets. She’s learned to use downtime to expand her expertise. 

“Like any business, there are ebbs and flows,” she said. “During slower periods, I focus on continuing education, attending supplier events and staying updated on industry trends. This ensures I provide the best service and expertise to my clients.”

Early on, Brown had flagged river cruising as a vertical she wanted to break into. The Expo helped spark client inquiries, she said, and she’ll be sailing with a group on a Uniworld Christmas market cruise in December.

TO-DO: TAP TEST

A full-time career in healthcare has interrupted Alissa Ashley-High’s pursuit of travel advising. The Shrewsbury, Mass., resident is a nurse working in healthcare administration. While she has completed the Travel Institute’s TripKit course, she wasn’t able to schedule the Travel Agent Proficiency test.

“It’s still on my to-do list, but since being a travel advisor was going to be a hobby with a future career potential, I needed to focus on my current path,” she said.

That path has been an increasingly busy one: Ashley-High has been traveling more and speaking at conferences while advocating for government healthcare reform.

Given her career, she values travel greatly and has learned to simply “take the trip,” because life holds so many uncertainties. Ashley-High plans to return to travel advising when time allows.