DALLAS -- David Shull, CEO and co-founder of agency technology company Tern, won the 2024 ASTA Entrepreneur of the Year award at the ASTA Travel Advisor Conference at the Hilton Anatole here.
The award, which was established in 2015 by the Dan and Gloria Bohan Foundation, annually awards $10,000 to businesses that demonstrate entrepreneurial spirit.
Each year at ASTA's conference, three finalists get three minutes to present their business in front of a live audience, which votes to choose the winner.
Tern bills itself as an all-in-one platform for travel advisors, offering things like commission tracking, AI features, a CRM tool and itinerary creation. It launched a cruise tool last fall.
Tern's team, including Shull, has a background in building technology platforms. They didn't come from travel.
Two years ago at the ASTA conference San Francisco, they attended to talk to as many advisors as possible to learn about agent-facing technology, Shull said. They learned that technology was leaving advisors feeling overwhelmed.
Tern was their solution, an "all-in-one system" for advisors.
"I could bore you for the next hour with all the features that Tern has, but one of the key beliefs that we have is that a long list of features isn't actually what matters," Shull said. "It's how those features come together to create a workflow that feels magical for you and your clients."
Thousands of individual advisors have adopted the platform, Shull said. An agency product is forthcoming in June.
Asked what Tern would do if it won the $10,000, Shull said the team is particularly proud of the AI features it has built, but that technology comes at an expense. He said AI features would be free for every user through the end of July.
Tern was up against two others for the award: Richard Earls of Arqiteqt Software and his TobyAI solution for agencies, and Lisa Watson's agent platform FyndTravel.