By MAST Travel Network President Andrew Davis.
It's easy to believe you've seen it all in
this industry.
For decades, I stood on the supplier side of
the travel business, certain I had a clear picture of what it takes to sell
travel for a living. Most recently, I led national accounts for Holland America
Line, spending my days in rooms with travel advisors, listening to what they
needed, negotiating what we could offer, believing I understood their business.
By then I'd sold nearly everything there was to sell in this industry.
Then, earlier this year, I stepped into a new
seat: President and COO of MAST Travel Network, a consortium built to support
independent travel advisors. I've spent the months since discovering how much I
still had left to learn.
I don't say that to sound humble. I'd sat
across the table from advisors for years. I'd built real relationships. I'd
even spent a brief stretch on the agency side myself. I assumed all of that
amounted to understanding. It didn't, not fully. Being inside a consortium now,
immersed in the advisor's side of the business, listening to what actually
matters to our members, has revealed things I never would have guessed as a
supplier.
First: how much of an advisor's work is
invisible. The administration. The marketing they fund and run themselves. The
hours spent talking a client through a cancellation, a passport delay, a bad
connection at 11 p.m. None of it shows up in a booking report. Suppliers see
the sale. We hear the horror stories, but we rarely witness what it actually
took to close that sale and back it with real service.
Next: how differently "support"
lands depending on which side of the table you sit. What suppliers call service
(the portals, the check-ins, the marketing co-op programs) advisors often
experience as one more task to manage. The intent isn't wrong. But the burden
of carrying it out falls somewhere suppliers don't always account for.
The piece that's changed my thinking most:
trust is the actual product. Commission structures matter—marketing dollars
matter. But what keeps an advisor loyal to a host or a consortium has far more
to do with whether they feel supported when things go sideways than with
anything captured in a spreadsheet.
All of this has reshaped how I approach my
job. I've come to think of it less as distributing supplier programs and more
as advocating for advisors within an industry that, however well-intentioned,
doesn't always make their work easy.
I'm still learning this side of the table,
and I expect that education to continue for some time. So here's what I'd offer
anyone still sitting where I used to sit: spend real time on the other side.
Sit with an advisor to learn their business, not just to make a sale. Watch
what "support" costs in time and attention before deciding what to
offer next.
And to the advisors reading this: the
invitation runs both ways. Watch the tradeoffs made on the supplier's side,
too. Neither of us holds the full picture alone.
The more we understand each other's work, not
just each other's outcomes, the better this industry serves the traveler who
deserves the best of both.
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