With almost $2 million in sales within the first year of his travel business, Rick Ables feels like he “has the Avoya system down”—and he’s ready to move on.
His career in travel started when he was sitting in the hospital with a child on chemo. During that time he talked with a nurse about travel, and then about selling travel, and then about how the nurse was selling travel on the side through Avoya Travel. He was hooked.
For the past year, the proud owner of Nimble Travel LLC in Lindon, Utah, has been building his business almost entirely through four key suppliers—AmaWaterways, Oceania, Collette, and Globus/Avalon—and mostly with Avoya leads, on which he earns the standard 30% Avoya commission.
Now it’s time to grow, he says. He has brought on two sisters and his parents. Last week, he opened a call center with two staffers that will make outbound calls to affinity groups who might be interested in cruising and promote his business on social media.
“I come from the business world, and I’m very comfortable speaking to people about how to put together a group to build closer relationships with their clients,” he says. The call center will be reaching out to wineries, associations, pickleball companies, book clubs, garden clubs, “pretty much any business that has a fair amount of clients and wants closer relationships with them. We’ve identified 70 industries that we think it would work for.”
Indeed, he’s the kind of travel advisor a host agency like Avoya doesn’t want to lose—and, despite the millions of dollars Avoya spends on technology and marketing and generating leads, that 30% commission split has not been working as well as it once did.
Just in time for Ables’ vision, though, Avoya Travel last week announced a major shift in its business plan—and reached out to embrace business brought in by travel advisors themselves.
After building a business focused on bringing in customers and generating leads, third-generation Avoya co-owners Jeff and Mike Anderson have acknowledged the need to give travel advisors with their own customers a bigger piece of the pie.
So, at its Million Dollar Expo in Seattle, the one thing more exciting than the weeklong Alaska cruise to come was the announcement of the Elite 100 program. The new program offers top agents 100% commission for bookings on preferred suppliers by customers they bring in themselves, rather than the current 80%, in return for a monthly fee of about $100. (The program defines top producers as those who have earned $50,000 in commission from customer travel in the past 12 months.)
Recent research has shown that the industry has changed, Jeff Anderson said at a press conference announcing the program, and “we haven’t changed our compensation plan for 15 years.” In today’s market, “most independent advisors aren’t looking for everything we offer, and there’s a bit of a misconception that you only went to Avoya because they offered leads. That’s pretty cool; I think we’ve by far had the best program in terms of that. But if somebody thought that’s all we were about, then we’ve missed an opportunity. We needed to change up our message, so the industry knows we’re as much of a host as everyone else.”
Of the 90 agencies that joined Avoya in August, more than 80 are brand new to travel, Anderson said; “that’s where the vast majority of our network comes from. There’s nothing more important than bringing great people into this business, and the more we sell the better it is for everyone.”
The model has been working, one could argue. Among the 60 or so attendees at the Expo were 10 travel advisors who each have sold over $1 million worth of travel in the very first year of business, largely thanks to Avoya leads.
Still, though, Avoya doesn’t want to lose its very best experienced advisors as they build their own client bases, and it needs a competitive commission split to do that.
To further help grow the business, Avoya has brought on Phil Capelli, well-known by travel advisors from Insight Vacations and Signature Travel, as chief sales officer.
At Seize the Seas Travel in Parkland, FL, owner David Locke says he is “really good at consultative selling on the phone, so we outsourced our marketing to Avoya.” He personally sold more than $3 million so far this year, 80% of it through Avoya leads, and with three independent agents, his agency is on target to sell $10 million.
Still, he may have to rethink the way he does business—and focus more on bringing in new customers—with the 100% split. “We’re good at closing sales, but we’re not so good at prospecting. It’s always been easier to sell three Avoya customers at 30% commission than to find one of my own. And our business is growing every year.”
But Anderson acknowledged that while “nobody has technology as advanced as Avoya,” the commission split doesn’t sizzle as much as it once did.
“We’ve been going the all-inclusive route and I think that’s actually confused a lot of people,” he said, as “a massive amount of our business” is not from Avoya leads. The new model is more like the Apple iPhone, where you can buy the base model and then add various bundles on top “in order to earn more here at Avoya than you can earn anywhere else. Our fee structure will be very competitive to make this an intriguing opportunity, so we can open our doors and our arms and be a better opportunity for the home-based agents out there.”
The program likely also will work well for Alex Lopez of Next Level Travel LLC in Austin, TX. Coming from the automotive industry—and trained there by the best on how to sell—Lopez was looking for a better work-life balance, and a product that he really believes in. “Avoya’s lead program was a huge incentive for me,” he says. “I was confident that if I could get someone on the phone, I could make the sale.” He focuses mainly on Virgin Voyages, a brand he loves and is passionate about—and has sold over $1 million total in his first year. Now his wife is joining the company and will focus on destination weddings.
For sure it will work for Richard May, who sold $1 million in his first 190 days with Avoya—not a nickel of it through an Avoya lead. He was brought in to Avoya by his friend and former cruise line co-worker Cheerie Dorris, owner of Cheerie Travel in Springfield, OR, and brought a book of business with him. He’s just the kind of travel advisor Avoya needs to retain, and he was not likely to stay forever at a 80% commission split.
In the end, though, the commission is just a piece of the reason these travel advisors are part of the Avoya—and the broader travel industry—family.
“It sure is fun; I’m having a blast, traveling the world, seeing new places and new foods, and then getting paid to do it—and also helping businesses increase their standing. It just doesn’t get better,” Ables says. “I go to bed every night excited to get up in the morning.”
After all, that’s the kind of travel advisor Avoya, its end customers, and the travel industry as a whole really need.
Cheryl’s 40-year career in journalism is bookended by roles in the travel industry, including Executive Editor of Business Travel News in the 1990s, and recently, Editor in Chief of Travel Market Report and admin of Cheryl Rosen’s Group for Travel Professionals, a news and support group on Facebook. As an independent contractor since retiring from the 9-to-5 to travel more, she has written regular articles about the life and business of travel agents for Luxury Travel Advisor, Travel Agent, and Insider Travel Report. She also writes and edits for professional publications in the financial services, business, and technology sectors.