Luxury travel advisors may have access to hundreds of supplier programs, but most actively use only a handful. In a survey taken ahead of last month's Travel Pivots gathering in Phoenix, 89 percent of advisors said the sprawl of booking channels, each with its own rates, perks, and requirements, ranks among the hardest parts of the job.
Organizers of the fifth edition of the by-invitation-only event, which drew about 50 advisors, hoteliers, and cruise and airline professionals to the Arizona Biltmore, built the agenda for the first time around that survey and asked the room to draft working standards in five areas where advisors and suppliers most often talk past each other: partnership expectations, loyalty programs, advisor quality, AI, and duty of care.
The event was founded in 2022 by Suzanne Shalaby after the pandemic disrupted careers and companies across travel. At the time she worked at Jumeirah and is now a director of business development for Park Hyatt's Americas region, but the event is not affiliated with the hotel brands.
"I just felt that some sort of exchange among colleagues, advisors, suppliers — other than the normal traditional trade shows that we all do, needed to happen in a more organic and intimate way," Shalaby said in a video call with Luxury Travel Advisor.
The Setup
Previous editions, by Shalaby's own account, produced discussion but little follow-through.
"In the past we didn't really establish a framework or a plan of action on how we're going to strategically move forward on all of the things that we talked about," she said. "I wanted this year to be different."
This year she brought in Brian King, CEO of the Modiv Group, a luxury travel strategy and intelligence consultancy, to design and facilitate the program. King's team reviewed past editions and surveyed advisors and suppliers separately ahead of the event to identify the tensions each group considered most important.
"We continue to say that relationships are at the core of our business, but are we really understanding what the other side is dealing with?" said Lindsey Graff, a director of leisure sales at Preferred Hotels & Resorts and a member of the event's planning committee.
The survey results shaped five discussion areas, under this Travel Pivots edition's title "Luxury Under Pressure: The Partnership Standard":
- The Reciprocity Gap: what partnership really means between advisors and suppliers
- The Program Problem: unpacking the complexities of the rewards and loyalty ecosystem
- The Quality Divide: "how to reward high producers without abandoning professional development" for newer entrants
- AI and the Right Line: where the boundaries are between AI and human service
- Geopolitical Reality and Duty of Care: the industry's responsibilities to travelers
In place of a stage, Modiv set an eight-seat "center table" in the middle of the room. Advisors and suppliers opened each topic under predetermined rules, with King keeping time balanced between the two sides, while everyone at the surrounding tables recorded possible standards, next steps, and other ideas. Each of the five sessions ran about 90 minutes.
King is open about his opinion of the more familiar conference format.
"I wish we could kill panels," he said. "I think that they're overly scripted and polished."
"It wasn't you get to come and just have a conversation," he added. "It was you need to come, you need to listen, and you need to add your voice. Then we're going to construct a framework at the table that is the beginning of how we move this forward."
What the Room Found
According to King and roughly a dozen participants who sent comments to Luxury Travel Advisor via email, the reciprocity discussion exposed how casually the industry uses the word "partnership" without clarifying or communicating expectations.
Advisors may expect client recognition, reliable benefits, and protection from direct-booking interference. Suppliers may expect product knowledge, communication, and measurable support. Both sides acknowledged they can overpromise, and poor data often leaves suppliers unable to distinguish between different forms of advisor value.
The preferred-program discussion revealed a different strain. Advisors may technically have access to hundreds of brands and programs, King said, but actively use only a select few.
The quality session addressed the industry's low barrier to entry and its uneven educational and mentorship structures. One point of agreement was the limits of judging advisor value purely by production numbers.
The AI session explored the limits of automation and where human judgment remains essential. But it was the final session, on geopolitical realities and duty of care, that produced King's strongest reaction.
Luxury advisors field questions about political instability and safety all the time, yet many lack training for extreme crisis situations. Corporate travel has established systems for traveler tracking, alerts, and crisis response. Luxury travel often relies on insurance, supplier contacts, or individual judgment, and attendees acknowledged that the number of hands touching a single itinerary raises unresolved questions about liability and risk.
"The host agency of the future must have a strong systematic approach to managing duty of care for their travelers," King said. "This is an emerging space and an emerging topic that needs to get discussed a lot more."
On the Horizon
Outputs remain preliminary, and the Modiv Group is in an active evaluation phase.
Mickey Weill, vice president of advisor and partner engagement at Global Travel Collection, has attended all five editions and was candid about how preliminary the outputs are.
"We came out with early frameworks...None of them are finished," he said via email. "They're first drafts of standards this industry has avoided writing down for years."
For Weill, the quality discussion stood out most.
"It forced the room to confront both the low barrier to entry and the danger of treating production as the only measure of professional value," he said.
"Advisors and suppliers were both honest about what isn't working, and I left realizing we share many of the same frustrations," Heather Keller, founder of Perfect Landing Travel, said via email. "We just need to be more willing to talk about them and actually do something differently — which is definitely our biggest challenge!"
"The biggest lesson for me was that while technology, loyalty programs, and consumer behaviors continue to evolve, long-term success still comes down to trust, authentic relationships, and a shared commitment to delivering exceptional travel experiences," Rebecca McArthur, director of sales for the Caribbean & LATAM region for Marriott International, said via email.
What solutions come from the fifth edition of Travel Pivots remains to be seen. What it did show is that experienced professionals are willing to stop treating these subjects as private complaints and start treating them as shared industry work.
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