By Mike Foster/ If you’ve been in travel long enough, you’ve probably dreamed of the “perfect sale.” Mine? One delightful human who buys the same $10-million trip every year, loves every minute, and never needs me to leave a bottle of cheap wine in the room. At a 15% commission, I’m good with one sale a year. Easy, right?
Of course not. Real life is messier – and more interesting.
Even a “repeat everything” trip isn’t truly repeatable. Staff change. Policies change. Weather changes. Even beaches change. A favourite room becomes a renovation zone the week your clients arrive. Perfection in travel is a moving target because every trip is built by people, and people come with perspectives, constraints, and the occasional curveball.
If we’re honest, “perfect” depends on who’s speaking. A traveller’s perfect is seamless and great value. A hotel’s perfect is high ADR and loyalty. An airline’s perfect is direct sales and rich ancillaries. An advisor’s perfect is satisfied clients, fair compensation, and no 11:47 p.m. surprises. None of those are wrong. They just don’t always line up.
The problem with layers (and the direction of travel
Between a Canadian family of four and a resort in Mexico, there are often many layers: marketing, booking engines, advisors, agency owners and managers, consolidators, wholesalers, destination reps, hotel sales, on-property teams, transfer companies – the chain can stretch to a dozen touchpoints before the first piña colada lands on the table. Every layer can add value (but less and less). Every layer can also add friction, cost, delay, and a chance for wires to cross. Like the school game of “telephone,” the more relays, the muddier the message.
For decades, the slow drift has been toward fewer layers, faster information, and more direct lines between the people who want the thing and the people who deliver the thing. Sometimes that favours suppliers (airline direct distribution, loyalty ecosystems). Sometimes it favours advisors (niche experts with tight, on-the-ground partners bypassing generic packages).
What’s different now is speed. Tools are smarter. Clients are savvier. The party with the clearest data, the tightest relationships, and the best use of technology sets the tempo – and takes the healthiest margin. Fewer layers also means fewer hands wanting a slice of the revenue.
Where that leaves us (late 2025)
First, let’s drop the myth of that perfect sale. It’s a distraction. The work now is building a repeatable way to get closer to great for your clients and fair for your business. That happens when you understand the perspectives at the table – and the direction of momentum.
Perspective 1: The traveller
Travellers want less friction and more confidence. They’ll doom-scroll options all day, but when the stakes are high – family trips, complex routes, special occasions – they still crave a steady hand. They want answers fast, options that feel tailored, and someone who will act when plans wobble. They don’t care about our systems; they care that we pick up the phone and sort it.
Perspective 2: The service provider
Hotels, cruise lines, and airlines want profitable, loyal guests and better control over the customer relationship. They’re investing in direct channels, loyalty “retailing,” and richer bundles. They will absolutely partner with advisors who bring the right guests, set expectations well, and reduce on-property headaches. They have less patience for channels that add cost without adding quality.
Perspective 3: The advisor (that’s us)
We want sustainable income, smoother workflows, fewer after-hours fires – and to feel proud of the trips we design. The traditional generalist model (“sell everything that walks in”) has been workable, but it’s harder to stand out or control revenue when your name is on everything from a weekend Vegas hop to a six-country family adventure. It’s also hard to build confidence and add value when client knows more about a service or destination than the advisor does.
Perspective 4: Everyone else in the chain
Wholesalers, consolidators, agency owners, consortia, insurers, accountants, lawyers, payment providers, trade groups, regulators – each plays a role. Some roles will shrink. Some will grow. The ones that stick will be the ones that remove friction, protect consumers, and help advisors run real businesses.
Stop chasing perfect – start designing leverage
Here are three moves any advisor or owner can begin now that will compound into advantage by 2030:
1) Specialize where it counts
You don’t have to niche down to a single island tomorrow, but you do need a clear lane. “I sell everything” is hard to market and easy to replace. “I’m the go-to for family-friendly Caribbean” (or luxury rail, expedition cruising, milestone trips) is a story clients and suppliers remember. AI will amplify you – but only if you already know how the trip should “taste.” Be the chef; let the tools be your sous-chefs. While you can start broad now, you will need to narrow down more in the future as the pressure to know more about less directs your value.
2) Own more of the relationship—and the economics
Build a direct audience (email, socials, referrals). Charge fair fees for planning and concierge work. Forge tighter partnerships with on-the-ground providers so you deliver something distinctive and more dependable with less layers in between. Commissions will continue to exist, and fees will continue to grow, but fewer layers also mean less distribution cost. Costs that would normally go to marketing companies, suppliers, consolidators, and agency owner. That could favour the advisor with direct relationships.
3) Use technology as a force multiplier, not a gimmick
Adopt tools that shave hours off administration, surface better options faster, and keep you proactive (alerts, status, alternatives). If a tool doesn’t save time, reduce errors, or help you sell smarter, park it. By 2030, clients will expect you to respond quickly, anticipate disruptions, and personalize at scale – that’s the standard tech can enable while you deliver the human reassurance.
The 2026-2030 arc (what this series will do)
Over the next dozen or so articles, we’ll walk this path from multiple angles. We’ll take a candid snapshot of today’s advisor in 2025, then step into 2026 and 2030 with “day-in-the-life” pieces so you can picture the work, tools, and expectations up close.
We’ll climb into the owner’s chair and talk about building a boutique of specialists. We’ll look at the world through a hotelier’s and an airline’s eyes, and we’ll be blunt about where wholesalers and consolidators still add value, and where they don’t.
We’ll bring in the “sidelines” that matter – insurance, legal, payments, accounting – because you can’t run You Inc. without them. And we’ll finish with the guardrails: trade groups and regulators, and how to stay onside as the rules evolve.
From golden days to golden years
I’ve said for a while that we are entering the golden years of the travel advisor. There may be fewer of us – and we may do fewer purely transactional sales – but the work will be more valuable, more enjoyable, and more fairly rewarded. The future will favour those who reduce friction, deepen expertise, and pair technology with genuine human care.
My promise isn’t to predict every twist. It’s to help you think more clearly, act more deliberately, and build a business that’s lighter on friction and heavier on value. Perfection is a unicorn. But better – for your clients and for you – is right in front of us. Let’s go get it.
(After nearly 50-years in the Canadian travel industry, Mike Foster recently retired as the president of Nexion Travel Group Canada, having also served with ACTA, TICO, and other industry organizations, as well as teaching tourism at Fanshawe College, in London, Ont., during his distinguished career).
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