The travel advisor profession just had the kind of year most industries only get in a fever dream, and the numbers from Luxury Travel Advisor's annual State of the Travel Advisor survey, presented at this year's ULTRA Summit, show exactly what that growth looks like from the inside.
A whopping 310,000 travel advisors were working in the U.S. in 2025, up from 190,000 a year earlier, according to ASTA. LinkedIn profiles identifying as travel advisors grew 50% in three years, enough for Bloomberg to rank it the fifth-fastest-growing profession in the country. Industry revenue is projected to hit $134 billion this year, up 17% since 2023. At Fora alone, 97% of the host agency's 15,000 advisors are new to travel entirely.
The advisors answering our survey, though, are anything but new. Nearly half — 47% — have been in the business for more than 20 years, and 56% are over the age of 60. The people driving luxury travel's biggest sales year are the ones who outlasted the OTA era, the Great Recession, and a pandemic that was supposed to be the "death" of the travel advisor. This industry is still here humming along quite nicely, if we do say so.
Every headline this year has been about the lawyers and bankers rushing into travel advising, and that wave is real, but the survey shows who is actually holding up the ceiling. More than half the advisors selling at the top of this market are over 60. The profession has both a talent boom and a succession question.
The money backs up the optimism. Nearly 42% of surveyed advisors sell between $1 million and $5 million annually, and another 5% sell above that. Three-quarters expect this year's sales to surpass last year's, and 77% expect the luxury market to keep climbing over the next 12 months. Cruise is the fastest-growing trend in advisors' businesses at 65%, followed by family travel, exotic and emerging destinations, adventure, and luxury villa rentals. Europe remains the destination juggernaut at 90% (showing those "it's hot, and there's no air conditioning!" summer grievances didn't make an impact in booking behavior), with Africa's 40% showing a proof point among the surge in safari interest.
Respondents reported planning a $500,000 Egypt journey for 23 travelers, a $100,000 Ireland honeymoon, and — when war broke out in Iran — a mid-planning pivot from Egypt and Jordan to South Africa that no booking engine on earth could have pulled off.
All of that success is exacting a price. More than a third of advisors report working over 50 hours a week, and 25% say they seriously considered leaving the profession in the past year. Travel disruptions, client expectations of round-the-clock availability, and supplier service failures landing on the advisor's desk topped the list of stressors. Advisors are pushing back: half have set defined working hours with clients, and 46% have fired or declined clients outright. Only 27%, however, managed a fully offline vacation.
The loyalty program reckoning may be the year's clearest business opportunity. Nearly three-quarters of advisors say clients are voicing frustration with hotel and airline loyalty programs over devalued points, harder-to-reach status, and vanishing perks — and 43% have already picked up clients who used to book direct.
The big brands spent two decades training travelers to be loyal to a points balance, and then they devalued the points. Travelers still want somebody in their corner, and the survey shows they are deciding that somebody is a person rather than a program. That is a structural shift in how loyalty works in this industry, and advisors are the beneficiaries.
New to this year's survey is a hard look at the feedback loop — or lack of one — between advisors and the owners and asset managers who control luxury hotel real estate. When a client has a poor hotel experience, 81% of advisors take it to the property directly, but 9% tell no one and simply stop booking the hotel. Meanwhile, 30% of advisors say a brand, owner, or asset manager has never proactively asked for their feedback, even though 72% say an ownership or management change affects the guest experience they can promise clients. Asked whether they would join structured feedback sessions with hotel investors and asset managers, 43% said yes and another 42% said maybe, depending on format.
Owners and asset managers are making nine-figure decisions about luxury assets while a free focus group of professionals books into those hotels every week. The capital markets side of this industry obsesses over RevPAR and exit multiples, and the people who can explain why a property is quietly losing its best guests have never been invited into the room. Closing that loop is the cheapest due diligence in hospitality.
Advisors, for their part, are heading into 2027 with confidence. Some 79% already use AI in their businesses, and 57% believe the technology will make good advisors more valuable rather than replace them.
One respondent put the mood more succinctly than any chart could: “AI makes too many mistakes. My career is secure!”
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