September is an excellent time to reset your business for
the coming year, and so we asked top luxury travel advisors to share their
strategies that have worked most effectively recently.
The common thread among all the pieces of advice we
received? Be nimble with your mindset, step back and look holistically at your
clients’ true needs and as always, have empathy when engaging with other
humans.
Back to the Basics
Catherine Addé, an independent affiliate with TravelStore,
says one of her top current strategies was born of local and personal
emergencies in 2025, which brought her back to using “old school” communication
methods.
In January 2025, California suffered devastating fires in
Eaton and Palisades, wiping out entire neighborhoods, and in the case of
Altadena, practically an entire city.
“Since the Eaton fire came within 30 feet of my own back
door, it was the scariest time ever,” Addé tells TravelPulse. “Our house
survived, and we lived in a hotel for a week. However, many friends, colleagues
and my clients lost everything. Many clients who did not lose their homes still
had to move out while toxins were removed,” she recalls.
During that time, Addé began picking up the phone to touch
base with those who were struggling, simply to ask how they were doing.
“I admit at first I was hesitant,” she says. “I really
didn’t want them to think I was ‘soliciting.’ However, so many said it was nice
to hear from me and asked where I’m going for MY vacation, which likely jogged
their memory to say, ‘Oh, yes, I was meaning to ask you about… (fill in the
blank).’
Since then, Addé has made it a habit to check in with all
her clients by phone—and not just those suffering from any form of
devastation—to say hello.
The strategy is working as 2026 winds down. Many of her
clients are in “let’s get out of dodge mode,” in part because there is so much
loud construction going on with rebuilding efforts. “I know they’re glad to see
and hear this activity of their neighborhoods rising from the ashes,
literally!” she says.
As a result, Addé is getting requests for closer-to-home
domestic trips. “They’re asking about overnight stays at lovely places such as
Alisal Ranch or at spa/wellness retreats,” she says.
Bringing Suppliers into Client Conversations
Paula McCarty of Travel Smart with Paula, an affiliate of
Montecito Village Travel, says that she’s been engaging with her luxury clients
lately by involving them in supplier discussions much earlier than ever before.
“With AI everywhere and highly inquisitive people wanting to
take an even more active role in planning their luxury vacations, orchestrating
a conference call between me, the supplier, and the client has proven to
be very effective,” McCarty tells TravelPulse.
She does, however, insist on some basic rules before pulling
everyone together. No financial discussions should occur on the call; those
should remain between the advisor and the client, McCarty says. A tight agenda
should also be put in place ahead of time so no one’s time is wasted. “This is
not intended to be a brainstorming session,” she says.
Another rule? “The supplier must be briefed in advance
and willing to participate. Not all DMCs and tour operators will agree to this,
but the ones that do have proven invaluable in securing my business while
satisfying the client’s need to participate in crafting their trip, says
McCarty.
Lastly, it’s important to work with a highly experienced
supplier representative. “You need someone who can provide specific
recommendations that enhance, not undo, what you, the travel advisor have
designed,” says McCarty. “They need to verbally support me and my expertise yet
offer their expertise as an additional benefit of working through me and
not booking directly.”
McCarty says that this active participation with clients and
suppliers has worked well, especially when the client is working with high
five-figure and six-figure budgets. “It’s extremely effective in keeping
clients engaged and satisfied, not only for the current trip, but for future
trips,” she adds.
Using Social Media to the Max
Donna Wolfe, an independent travel advisor with Frosch by
Chase Travel, has been attending social media workshops this year but really
recharged her social media strategy after spending a week with a professional
influencer she met on a Cunard social media fam hosted by Northstar Travel
Group (which owns TravelPulse).
“She kindly showed me many different apps to create higher
quality content and lots of tricks and tips to increase my engagement,” says
Wolfe. “With each of my posts, the quality and engagement increases. What’s
most surprising is when I receive a telephone call or an email from a ‘new
client’ they have found me through my social media; either Google, Facebook,
Instagram, YouTube, or Yelp (the algorithms all link into each other for SEO
purposes).”
The best part, says Wolfe? “They are all luxury clients!
What does that mean? Luxury travelers look at socials to guide them in their
travel decisions.”
A great example of how this all comes together was when, a
few years ago, the assistant for a producer who shoots his Netflix show in
Atlanta found Wolfe on Yelp. Wolfe booked the producer on a five-month stay at
the top luxury hotel in Atlanta.
It didn’t end there.
“Every season I book the same top suite for him during his
shooting schedule. I also book his personal travels,” says Wolfe, who says that
this year he’s on a cruise in one of Explora Journeys’ top suites with pre- and
post-stays in luxury hotels in multiple countries in Europe. Later in the year
he’s taking an ultra-luxury African safari.
“This is 100 percent attributable to my social media
presence,” says Wolfe. “It just takes a bit of time, mentorship and kindness
and I pay it forward [by helping] other travel advisors who are interested in
improving the quality of their social presence.”
Starting with an Interest, Not a Place
Roman Chiporukha of Roman & Erica has flipped the script
in how his agency thinks about vacation planning.
“One of the biggest shifts we’ve made over the last few
years is to stop thinking about travel purely in terms of destinations and
start thinking about it as a platform for ideas, access and curiosity,” he
tells TravelPulse. “Rather than beginning with ‘what should someone do in
Japan, Africa or the Arctic?’ we increasingly start with what the person likes
and what fascinates them. Who could they meet that they would never normally
encounter? What could we expose them to that might actually change their perspective?”
Because there is more travel information available today
than at any point in history, simply knowing the ‘best’ places are becoming
less valuable, he says. “We think the future of luxury travel is actually much
more human: it's about relationships, curiosity and understanding someone
deeply enough to connect them with people, places and ideas they wouldn’t have
found on their own.”
For this reason, the Roman & Erica team is willing to
invest time in traveling on fams so they can build strong relationships and
have a full breadth of knowledge of a destination when they need it.
“We spend an enormous amount of time traveling, exploring
and building relationships even when there isn't an immediate client attached
to it,” says Chiporukha. “For example, we were just invited by Burgess to a
very intimate yacht preview in Antigua this December. We’ll go not because
someone has asked us to charter one of those yachts today, but because seeing
them firsthand, meeting the people behind them and understanding the experience
ourselves means that six months or three years from now, when the right client
comes along, we aren't researching something for them we already know about,”
he says.
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