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Travel agency groups—including consortia, hosts and franchisors—continued to demonstrate their power and influence in the agent sphere during the past year and each grew in terms of members and services.

All of them are key to agencies’ and individual agents’ ability to compete and thrive in a harsh competitive environment, with relentless challenges to both their businesses and travel itself.

In fact, it could be argued that agencies and individual agents alike wouldn’t be able to survive without the support and services of these groups.

You’ll notice each group below earned an A. That’s because each has a different culture, a different set of specific services (although in the broadest sense they all provide sales and marketing, technology and  training) and a different roster of agents which means we’re not judging apples to apples here.

The bottom line then: All of them turned in an extraordinary performance in 2015.

Virtuoso:  A

Virtuoso had a record-breaking year in 2015. “Consumers are coming back to travel advisors in increasing numbers, and our network growth demonstrates that,” said David Kolner, senior vice president of global member partnerships.

This year Virtuoso’s travel advisor community grew 26 percent to 11,429 advisors. The consortium now has agency members in 34 countries and six continents. 2015 marked its expansion into Asia, the Middle East and Africa, along with further growth in Europe. Sales also grew: in 2015 sales rose to $15.5 billion in annual travel revenues.

Virtuoso also added new suppliers around the world to its portfolio of 1,700 preferred partners. Examples of its new partners in 2015: Shangri-La’s Le Touessrok Resort & Spa in Mauritius and Il Sereno, Lago di Como along Italy’s Lake Como, Uniworld, G Adventures, tourism boards in Thailand and Turkey, and on-site destination management companies in Hawaii, Canada and South Africa.

On the technology front, Virtuoso continued to advance. Perhaps most significantly, it created a single integrated technology platform in virtuoso.com for its audiences, migrating all content from Virtuoso Composer to virtuoso.com. (Advisor access to Composer will cease on Jan. 8).

It also launched Virtuoso Incubator, a program designed to help developers of travel technology tools gain insight into what agents and agencies need. Interest in the program was so strong that Virtuoso capped the number of participants at 10, said Kolner.

Virtuoso Travel Week, the consortium’s annual event, registered another record-breaking year in 2015. The new attendance record: 4,842 people from 90 countries, a nine percent hike over 2014. And it laid the groundwork for two new series of events to debut early in 2016.

“Virtuoso member agencies have told us they want more in-person opportunities to engage with the network closer to home. We’re delivering on that with two new events in 2016,” said Kolner. “We’re hosting 22 Virtuoso Travel Week Tours throughout the year to bring networking opportunities, training and information to our member agencies worldwide.

“As well, Virtuoso Forum is a new global event, happening in New York and Southern California in early 2016,” he said. The event will feature three days of external speakers, inspiration and tools to help agencies grow their businesses.

Travel Leaders: A

The largest travel agency franchisor in North America, Travel Leaders Group has more than 1,000 full-service franchised locations and encompasses nearly one-third of all travel agents. It generated sales of about $20 billion in 2014.

This year education continued to be a major focus for the group, which introduced two new specialist programs, Destination Wedding and Honeymoon Specialists and  Active and Adventure Specialist. In conjunction with the Active and Adventure Specialist program, it also entered into an exclusive partnership with the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) to enable Travel Leaders to offer members numerous education and experiential opportunities as well as unique marketing programs. 

Travel Leaders continued to refine its lead generation program, Agent Profiler. “That will more than double the number of high-quality, profitable leisure leads to our members to over 50,000,” said Roger Block, president, Travel Leaders Franchise Group, adding that members enjoy a closing rate nearing 30 percent.

The group’s new agent-level marketing initiative, introduced this year, serves to drive customers back to their personal travel agents versus, more generically, back to the agency, a development designed to capitalize on individual agents’ personalized specialties and expertise.

On the corporate side, Travel Leaders launched www.travelleadersbusiness.com with a complete redesign of all content and updated navigation. It also unveiled its new Outsourced Corporate Sales and Marketing initiative, a lead and sales outsourcing program for members. 

That provides two options for members: the first to handle all corporate travel prospecting by Travel Leaders’ dedicated marketing and sales headquarters team; the second enables that team to supplement the member agency’s existing efforts.  The idea is that by outsourcing some, or all of their efforts, members can focus on what they do best, delivering customized travel solutions for existing and new clients. The majority of Travel Leaders agencies focused on corporate travel have already signed up for the program.

Travel Leaders is also dedicated to playing a role in the industry at large. Block has served on ASTA’s board of directors for the past four years. He was one of the co-founders of the Corporate Advisory Committee of ASTA, and has persuaded several members of Travel Leaders to serve as chapter officers or to run for the national board of directors of ASTA.

Ensemble:  A

“2015 has been an extraordinary year for Ensemble Travel Group, and not just from a sales perspective. The tools and programs we’ve launched this year have been among our most aggressive to date in delivering clear points of differentiation for our members, regardless of their business model and size and scope of their agency,” said Libbie Rice, co-president of Ensemble Travel Group.

Ensemble introduced three strategic initiatives this year to support its members’ air, cruise, and land vacation products, as well as a new membership level.

Those initiatives are: Aviate, a unique, user-friendly global air ticketing platform that allows agency control of the PNR, in addition to several other benefits; Ensemble Guaranteed Hosted Cruise Departure Program & Elite Excursions, a series of more than 20 confirmed hosted sailings (beginning spring 2016), complemented by  extraordinary shore events in select ports of call, and MyTripRoute, a private-label web-based tool powered by Umapped that helps members create and share proposals, itineraries and travel alerts with clients.

Its new Affiliate Division is a non-shareholder membership option created to fill an under-served need in the market: primarily small, niche or mid-size travel organizations.

The Ensemble-member relationship is a strong one with multiple signs of success in 2015, including widespread support of its preferred partners, said Rice. Ensemble volume with preferred suppliers grew as share shift was visible based on percentage of preferred vs non-referred bookings.

Rice added that 2014 was a record year in terms of profit-sharing payouts for many members based on their sale of preferred suppliers. “We’re expecting 2015 to be on par with last year,” she said.

In 2015, Ensemble expanded its preferred partner network, primarily in the luxury, experiential and adventure product segments. On the cruise front, new partners included Fathom, Blount Small Ship Adventures and Un-Cruise Adventures.

More than ten specialty, On Location, and tourism/destination partners such as Andalucia Tourismo, JTB Luxury Escapes and Coeur des Iles came on board in the land category. In addition, nearly 125 luxury hotel properties were added to the Ensemble Hotel and Resort Collection while a new alliance with WestJet – done in conjunction with the rollout of Ensemble’s new air booking platform – boosts Ensemble’s air partnerships to 27.

More than 40 new member agency locations joined in 2015, with a nearly even split between U.S. and Canada members. Ensemble now has a total of about 850 members.

Signature:  A

This year the Signature Travel Network launched a celebration of Signature’s 60th anniversary during its annual Sales Meeting & Trade Show in Las Vegas in November. The celebration will continue into 2016, said Alex Sharpe, Signature president and CEO. The annual Sales Meeting hosted 1,350 members and 860 supplier partners from around the world.
Signature added eleven new member agencies in 2015, for a total of 206 members and 474 locations. It also welcomed its first two members in the South Pacific: Quay Travel in Auckland, New Zealand, and Platinum Travel Corporation in Sydney, Australia.

“Our network continues to enjoy one of the highest retention rates in the industry, which we are very proud of," said Kimberly Waters, vice president of national sales and member services.

On the preferred supplier front, Signature added four cruise lines, three tour operators, three destination specialists, nine tourism board partners, three airline partners and 91 hotels and resorts. The network registered substantial increases in its preferred cruise, tour, land and hotel programs which are responsible for double-digit sales growth in 2016 and 2017 bookings.

And the network’s total travel sales reached $7 billion, a new milestone for Signature.

New enhancements to its state-of-the-art technology platform were also introduced this year along with a new suite of services related to Signature’s customer list and database management, and a new series of Signature Educational Journeys to worldwide destinations.

The network was once again first to market in North America, releasing its 2016 Hotel & Resorts Program directory the first week of December.

CruiseOne:  A

CruiseOne and Cruises Inc. each grew more than 10 percent in 2015 with CruiseOne reaching a milestone of 1,000 franchisees.

The biggest new development for the group was its launch of the additional brand, Dream Vacations. “We decided to launch Dream Vacations as the result of seeing an increase in our land-based travel sales, and to change the perception that we only sell cruise vacations,” said Debbie Fiorino, senior vice president of CruiseOne/Dream Vacations and Cruises Inc. “Dream Vacations has a focus on all vacation experiences – whether they are on land or at sea.” The new brand will officially launch next April.

CruiseOne also modernized its existing Intranet — the Business Center. The new Business Center is mobile-friendly and has facilitated the way franchisees/agents and Headquarters connect with each other. It also developed a group registration tool that enables franchisees to create and customize professional group event websites that showcase amenity options. The websites are geared to making it easier to market to groups and to simplify the booking process.

The group also modernized its MyCruise Control Shopping Path reservation system, which now enables franchisees/agents to quote multiple sailings and categories, as well as provide even more information on the sailings, to their clients, all in one email. The emails are customizable.

Among the group’s marketing initiatives in 2015, were innovative promotions focused on engagement including Mystery Money, a rebranding of the traditional shipboard credit and #DoYouWantToBuildASandcastle, an integrated marketing campaign which leveraged current events and combined video marketing, public relations, social media and philanthropy.

“In 2015, we were laser-focused on enhancing engagement with our franchisees and agents,” said Fiorino.

With that in mind, the group launched MeetUps, informal meetings at coffee shops, diners or other community venues where members of the corporate headquarters team meet up with a small group of local franchisees/agents. Seventeen were hosted this year for 150 franchisees/agents.  In addition, CruiseOne this year hosted five regional trainings throughout the U.S. with more than 400 participants. 

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