The job of a CEO is never easy, says Lee Smolinski. As chairman and CEO of Oasis Travel Network, he needs to always have his eye on the trends and watch for signs of weakness in the market. And while he hasn’t seen those yet, he advises a cautious approach for 2025.

“I’m always nervous,” he says. “Business has been so good that I wonder when it is going to stop. And I see some warning signs out there. Interest rates are high. I worry about the global economy. I look at the glass as half full. But that keeps me on my toes. It’s important to run our businesses in a pragmatic and conservative manner and makes sure we operate conservatively.”

For now, he says, his best advice for travel advisors is to increase their focus on selling third-party travel insurance—a product he believes is important to customers in the current environment and where “profits are very high.”

For this year, the Oasis headquarter team is spending more time than ever reaching out to its travel advisors, with one-on-one conversations to walk them through the choices of preferred suppliers and help them choose the ones that best fit their needs and those of their customers.

On the social media front, business development manager Chelsea Martinez reports “a big up-tick in LinkedIn advertising” among top-performing travel advisors. To grow your presence, “consistency is key,” she says. “Staying active is the most important part. Lean into what you know, and stay on-brand.”

Overall, Oasis ended 2024 with close to $260 million in sales, up from $225 million in 2023. Where about half its sales traditionally have been in cruise and half in land, in 2024 cruise jumped to about two-thirds. So this year the goal is to grow the number of preferred land suppliers; to that end, they just added Sandals to the roster.

Neither a traditional host nor a consortium, Oasis is a membership organization, with more than 1,000 travel agency members. Membership fees and commission splits are on a sliding scale; the top tier of advisors, those who earn more than $100,000 in commission, of which 75% is from cruise and travel insurance suppliers, pay virtually no fees.

For 2025, meanwhile, “we’re still seeing a lot of strength, and we think we will maintain that,” Smolinski says. “Travel is a great industry, and I’d recommend it to anyone as a career choice. It’s not easy, you have to work hard, but you can make significant amounts of money and the perks are incredible.”