Lea Diele, CTIE, vice president of education for Travel Leaders Network, was named the 2024 recipient of The Travel Institute’s Educational Excellence Award. This annual award recognizes organizations and individuals demonstrating a significant, ongoing commitment to providing comprehensive education for travel professionals Read the rest of this entry »

Travel Leaders Network advisors will soon be getting a travel-oriented version of  Artificial Intelligence, thanks to a new collaboration with Travel Research Online (TRO).

Travel Leaders’ parent company, Internova Travel Group, is a “big believer that Artificial Intelligence can be helpful when creating marketing materials and can improve efficiencies for members so they can concentrate on selling and serving clients,” Internova’s chief partner marketing officer Stephen McGillivray said in a press release announcing the partnership.

While nothing will ever replace the human expertise of travel advisors, AI can streamline work and help advisors run their agencies, McGillivray said. “We’re always looking for ways to innovate, and this tool does exactly that.”

An industry first, Travel Research Online’s “TobyAI” is a revolutionary artificial intelligence engine TRO designed specifically to support travel advisors. It allows travel advisors to easily craft itineraries, draft bios for agent profiles, compose letters and emails for clients, create engaging social media posts, and generate travel images through DALL-E 3.

“TobyAI is my new best friend,” said Debbie Sebastian, a Travel Leaders Network member who has been beta-testing the product. “TobyAI can take care of tedious tasks and frees me up to spend time on building my business. As a travel advisor, it is my role to build rapport with clients, understand their unique preferences, and provide thoughtful recommendations.”

Using TobyAI enables travel advisors to spend more quality time with clients and access resources to create custom travel experiences, she said.

While TobyAI rolls out across the 5,700 Travel Leaders travel agency locations across the United States and Canada in the next few weeks, Voyager Social, the TRO division behind Toby, trained three Large Language Models supporting the artificial intelligence resident in the system in the travel industry. TRO’s artificial intelligence engineering team is headed by Ryan Earls.

TRO president Richard Earls says the company is already working to expand its capabilities and integrate new features that will further streamline the travel advisors’ daily workflow.

Watch for updates on the technology and the people behind it here on TRO.

There was a lot of news—and a record number of travel advisors and suppliers sharing tips on how to sell land vacations—at the Avoya Land Forum in Mexico last week. Some of the numbers bordered on astounding. The biggest growth was Cindy Roller’s 216% year-to-date; the top seller, Andrew Wells, booked $1.7 million in land alone; and the top land rookie, Ana Serpa, sold $167,000 in her first nine months in business. The largest sale of the year was Carri Kersten’s $63,000 Delta vacation; the largest group was Annamaria Livdal’s, at $100,000.

There were four interesting takeaways from the Travel Leaders Network press conference in New York last week, but this one really caught my eye: An air booking system, already in beta testing at new TLN member Avoya Travel, that holds the promise of increasing airline commissions and making it possible to build and price your own resort packages.

Also on the agenda were membership numbers that keep on growing, a new cruise booking tool, and more education around potentially profitable niches.