Six months into her new role as Travel Leaders Network’s senior director of luxury lifestyle marketing, Eva Damato is still acclimating to the agency side of the industry (having spent about a decade on the supplier side) but has set clear ambitions: creating more luxury sellers and driving sales for Travel Leaders Network (TLN) and its Luxury Leaders Alliance (LLA).
Luxury Travel Advisor is on-site this week in Las Vegas for the network’s EDGE 2025 conference, hosted at Caesars Palace. Prior to the launch of the conference, TLN hosted its third Luxury Forum, available only to members of its LLA and the network’s preferred luxury suppliers. Launched just over five years ago, the Luxury Leaders Alliance (one of three such “alliances” at TLN, in addition to the Independent Advisor Network and the Honeymoons and Destination Weddings alliance, the first of the trio), now comprises 478 individual travel advisors, representing the top 1 percent of TLN’s sellers. This group averages $2.2 million in luxury sales annually; with their sales split up by about 31 percent via tours, 30 percent cruising, 23 percent hotels and 16 percent DMCs (or, in-destination partners, as TLN calls them).
Driving Luxury Sales Growth
We caught up with Damato to see how she’s handling the transition into the role, what her first impressions have been regarding working on the advisor side and what she has planned for luxury travel advisors at TLN.
Noting that the transition has been “relatively easy” thanks to the “great team” she has supporting her, Damato tells Luxury Travel Advisor, “I love this side (of the industry) because being a part of a consortia, not only do I get to work with my advisors and help them just as I've done in the past … but I get to work with the suppliers now, too. So, [there are] many faces and brands that I know I now get to learn more about, and I get to dive in deeper with them. And if they're a great fit for the Luxury Forum or the Luxury Leaders Alliance, we want to meet them and know who they are.”
She added: “As a supplier, I knew how important it was to meet with these advisors. So, now I get to look at it from the perspective of what they need and to grow the [Luxury Leaders Alliance] program further.” Specifically, “we're adding more team members, more programming, more resources into the alliances as a whole,” she says.
As part of the growth, Damato also wants to ensure that the existing 478 LLA members—and any new members—are held to the proper standard. So, currently, TLN is working on a reapplication process to vet the LLA’s members and applicants. In addition, TLN is creating new marketing and social media opportunities for its LLA members, including new toolkits within Social Share Pro that increase the cadence of luxury content TLN is pushing out to its advisors.
Creating new and elevating the Luxury Leaders Alliance’s—and Travel Leaders Network’s—existing events is another top priority for Damato since she knows firsthand how much competition there is among consortia and the overall events industry when it comes of providing a valuable experience for the suppliers. “They want to go to those (shows) that are really valuable for your business and that the relationships that you're making are actually going to take off and really help and support your niche,” says Damato. “Looking at how the LLA works and how our events work, we want to make sure we deliver on that.”
A Huge Opportunity
The LLA is also about making Travel Leaders Network, which Damato calls “gigantic,” feel a little bit smaller. The network currently comprised 5,700 agencies and 60,000 total advisors. The LLA, by allowing individual advisors to join (and not agencies as a whole) gives those members a place “to come together, learn, collaborate [and] meet with suppliers.”
Damato adds: “Even if the agency might not focus on luxury, how do you know that there's not an advisor there that focuses on luxury? If you are looking at 60,000 advisors and not thinking that any sell luxury, then that's a huge missed opportunity. So, ultimately, this really empowers division of advisors at an advisor level … so they have like-minded peers that they know and they can help each other develop their businesses, even if they're from different agencies.”
Given there are 60,000 advisors in TLN and just under 500 advisors in the LLA, there’s plenty of room for growth. Among the current qualifications for the LLA is $1 million in annual luxury sales. Referring to the $2.2 million average of existing members, Damato says there’s room to even increase the standards for membership while still having room to grow. That way, it wouldn’t be growth for the sake of growth, “quantity over quality.” Given the scope of the advisors’ businesses, there’s opportunity to increase the LLA quantitatively as well as (and equally importantly) qualitatively.
The Role of "Luxury" in Travel
Damato began her travel career at The Breakers Palm Beach, “slinging keys to the valets,” eventually joining the reservations team. She remained at the hotel for five-plus years before taking on a new role at The Palm Beaches. After a few years in various roles with the DMO, she took to the cruise industry, serving as senior director of national and strategic accounts for Seabourn. Two and a half years later, and she joined TLN, representing advisors for the first time in her travel industry career. With experience across all sectors of the industry—hotels, destinations, cruise lines, and now travel agency consortia—we asked Damato what has changed about “luxury” in her time across the various roles.
She explained: “Luxury continues to get more impactful and more authentic and more genuine. And there's also new brands that have developed, and their sole purpose is really connecting their guests to their destinations, making sure that they know an area. And I think that luxury travel consistently raises the bar for what we can do in these places.”
Not only does luxury continue to evolve for the client, but it continues to provide strong business opportunities for the advisors. "The future looks good for us because despite a volatile marketplace, we do see our luxury leads up 5 percent," said Damato. "We continue to see the luxury market remain stable, compared to our contemporary markets. And when we look at destinations in the luxury space, we see an increasing demand, even among the record-high pricing."
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