World of Luxury recently attended the annual meeting of Montecito Village Travel/Your Travel Center at the Montage Palmetto Bluff in South Carolina. While there, we drew together a small group of luxury travel advisors (all affiliates of Montecito Village Travel) to learn about their views on current luxury trends, as well as the challenges and opportunities they see for 2026 and beyond.
In attendance were Stephen Adair, Now and Zen Travel; Moani and Ben Baumfalk, Nova Vacations; Karyn Carroll, The Hello Agency; Elaine San Juan, Accents on Travel; Cheska Tariga , Society of Travel; Stefanie Van Aken, RSMLVTravel and Judi Walker, Alliance Travel Partners. Robin Sanchez, president of Montecito Village Travel/Your Travel Center also joined the discussion.
In this portion of the conversation, we discussed affluent traveler trends and where advisors are seeing additional revenue growth.
Ruthanne Terrero, World of Travel: What are the trends you are seeing with your luxury clients?
Stephen Adair, Now and Zen Travel: I've had three safari travel bookings in the last couple of months. That's kind of new for me.
Luxury cruising is still a very big part of my business and continues to grow. My clients are also starting to go to Japan and beyond. A lot of Asia requests are popping up for me.
Stefanie Van Aken, RSMLVTravel: I do a lot of luxury travel and the trend that I see a lot of is multi-gen. Grandparents are wanting to go to places that they haven't been yet and are taking their kids and grandkids with them. That's been a trend for the last couple of years for me.
I'm starting to get a lot of clients in their thirties. They are moving away from more formal luxury. They really want—if they're spending a lot of time and money— to be in a place that makes them feel like they're really in it; they're not just going to a big box hotel or branded hotel.
Ruthanne Terrero: Are you working especially to market to younger clients] or are just they're coming to you naturally?
Stephanie VanAken: Their parents, who are my clients, are sending them to me. I’ve started to book honeymoons, which I hadn't really done before and those clients refer me to their friends who are all getting married. Now it's like they're in that circuit.
I am 50, so I didn’t know if I was cool enough to work with these 30-year-olds. I didn’t know where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do, but they really direct you.
I've had them tell me they want to travel within two weeks and that they don't want to go anywhere that anybody's ever been. That’s the other trend too. They want the honor of coming home and saying they’ve been somewhere that their friends haven’t been.
Karyn Carroll, The Hello Agency: I've been selling travel for just over three years. I'm fairly new, but I've jumped in, and I would say the bulk of my business is Europe and luxury cruises.
I'm seeing a lot of land-and-sea types of experiences in Europe. People who want to travel for a couple weeks and do cruise trip and then a land trip.
They also want authentic experiences, as Stephanie said. They want to meet the locals; they want to stay at more boutique-style hotels. They want to spend part of their trip in a less-known town or city and to really feel like they're in the destination.
Ben Baumfalk, Nova Vacations We have two sister agencies, Nova Vacations and Luma Travel Company. My wife, Moani does most of the selling and mentoring of our new advisors and I handle the technology and background administrative stuff.
Moani Baumfalk, Nova Vacations: I'm seeing a lot of multi-gen trips right now, but not just four or five nights, they’re extending to one week or two or three weeks. People are taking longer trips with their families and have higher budgets.
I'm also seeing a lot of younger generation travelers using travel advisors. A lot of my clientele has the budget, but they don't really know how to dissect all the information. So, they come to us to help them make the decision.
I've been seeing a lot of more immersive experiences, such as farm-to-table cooking classes with the family. As everybody has said, clients want a more culturally immersive feeling from a destination, so we are digging into that.
Robin Sanchez, president of Montecito Village Travel/Your Travel Center : My role really is to support all our advisors, and we are working with lot more newer and unique DMCs. We are making sure that we vet them and we're here to handle any issues that might come up.
And then we have all the luxury relationships with cruise lines. River cruising is becoming even more popular than it was and we're really seeing growth in our hotel relationships. We've created two new hotel programs in the last two years that benefit our advisors and their clients with higher commissions and more exclusive items being added to their programming. Our team is here to support them for anything that they need.
Technology is the elephant in the room. We're handling that a little bit differently. We're not diving into all the shiny new pennies. We're really taking our time and investing in the programs that we have to make them better and ultimately to provide the tools our advisors need.
I was an advisor for many years, so I know some of the pain points. I want to see things go from start to finish all in one place instead of having to pick and choose and fragmenting it all together. There are some pretty exciting things coming in the future.
Cheska Tariga , Society of Travel: I just started with Montecito last year, but I've been in business for three years. I'm seeing a lot of growth in adventure and transformative travel. Mainly clients are trying to go to different places where they can really experience an adventure and a different culture.
Right now, I'm opening my market to women in their forties; professionals who don't have the time to plan their own travel and maybe get them on a group trip to Spain or to France to do a lot of activities and go on a food tour together. So that's where I'm seeing the growth of my business. For me, that's a nice place to be in.
Judi Walker, Alliance Travel Partners: I've been with Montecito 20 years, and I was in travel 10 years prior to that. I deal with a lot with the high-net-worth clients. A third of our business is in high-end cruising. For those who have been reluctant to do I we're looking at expedition cruising, which provides the adventure aspect. It's not just cruising, it’s experiential.
It's been wonderful to see that the Boomers and the Millennials who have been saying, “I don't want to be at the cruise, but this is an immersive learning experience. So that's been good.
The biggest challenges are the things we can't control, like governmental issues and what happened in Mexico, it's just blowing everything up. High-net-worth clients are extremely sensitive to government input. Our clients have their own jets or planes, and they have security teams. It's a huge issue when there is uncertainty in the world.
If you're a CEO of a company and you've got government contracts, then there are issues that need to be they're addressing. But it certainly influences the way we interact with them; we’re offering security reassurance and talking with the GMs, making sure that clients feel safe when they travel because high-net-worth clients are particularly skittish.
Elaine San Juan, Accents on Travel: I joined Montecito in 2017, and I’ve been in the industry for more than 51 years. With my luxury clientele I'm seeing that they're not taking one vacation. They're now taking two or three vacations a year. Some of them are feeling, “I'm going to be running out of time, and I want to do it now.”
My other clientele is taking longer cruises; they’re going on 30-to-40-day cruises and then taking another shorter vacation later. They are doing river cruises with experiential land vacations.
I have a lot of friend groups that are all traveling together and they have like 20 to 30 people going together.
I’ve found that the key to successfully booking small friend groups is simply asking clients whether anyone else is traveling with them or might want to join. Many of my groups originally started with just two people calling in. Once they show interest, I ask a few qualifying questions about how many others they think might join. From there, I block group space and create a marketing flyer to help them invite their family and friends. When I block a group most times, they get a better price and or amenities.
This approach leads to additional revenue because of the additional bookings—, but also from air, pre/post stays, and travel insurance that naturally follow.