Tools like AgentProfiler help agents get more business

Travel Leaders Network wants its members to tell their stories because, simply put, that is going to get them more attention, more leads and more commissions.

That was a key message that the consortium’s top executives — John Lovell, CTC & President of Travel Leaders; Stephen McGillivray, Chief Marketing Officer, Travel Leaders Group; Cory Voss, Vice President, Product & Solutions, Travel Leaders Group; Christine James, Vice President Canada; and Lindsay Pearlman, Senior Vice President, Travel Leaders Network – brought with them during a mid-February stop in Toronto. 

Now it should come as no surprise that Travel Leaders Network has a way for its members to do exactly that through its Agent Profiler lead generation program where it brings in consumer leads and sends those leads to its members who have a profile posted on its Travelleaders.com website. 

However, Stephen McGillivray, Chief Marketing Officer, Travel Leaders Group, makes an effort to explain the reason driving the ramped-up push to get its members to complete a profile on Agent Profiler and post it on Travelleaders.com.

He told Travel Courier: “Last year, we were transitioning over to this domain, Travelleaders.com, [because] for the last several years, we did not own the name Travel Leaders up here in Canada. We finally secured it and in July [2024]… we flipped it” from the old domain name – Canadiantravelagents.ca which was previously its lead generation solution in Canada — to Travelleaders.com.

What the consumer will find there, Travel Leaders Group’s Chief Marketing Officer said are “18,000 stories, profiles about the advisor and what they’re good at, what they specialize in, and how long they’re been in the business – all the things you’d want to know, if you want to work with an advisor — and this is North America. Of that [18,000] about 1,200 are Canadian advisors.”

Right now, McGillivray told Travel Courier only about 5% of Canadian advisors have a profile on the Travelleaders.com and his message to them is: “We need the Canadian retailers that belong to our Network to build more profiles.”

And as Christine James, Vice President Canada, Travel Leaders Network, is quick to point out, this “is a free benefit” for members. 

McGillivray also noted the fact that when a Canadian consumer does a search – either a Google Search or a search on TravelLeaders.com – Canadian advisors will be displayed first. 

Now, Agent Profiler is not new, it has been around as a free benefit for members of the consortium for 10 years or more and Lyndsay Pearlman, Senior Vice President, Travel Leaders Network, says despite that “there’s a lot of opportunity” to grow Agent Profiler and Travelleaders.com in Canada. 

As for why members wouldn’t want to create and post a profile on the website, McGillivray said that it may simply be the case that “they already have enough business and don’t want anymore.”

And while Cory Voss, Vice President, Product & Solutions, Travel Leaders Group, recognizes that and has heard that along with other reasons, he observes that when “we’re pushing Agent Profiler to our network members and they say ‘I don’t have the time,’ well here’s the truth. If you’re not going to collect more leads that’s fine, but then there’s word of mouth. You’ve got existing clients that are telling their friends about their experience in working with you and if that friend calls you and they’re trying to work with you and they have a conversation with you, the logical next step is they’re going to Google you and if you don’t have a profile, they’re going to call somebody else.”

McGillivray adds that: “I can’t imagine someone who’s going to write a cheque for $10 grand for a vacation without Googling their advisor, if it’s a new advisor – just checking them out. So, to Cory’s point, that’s their online presence –having a profile built is an online business card. There’s value in it more than being on Travelleaders.com. It’s the validation for the consumer checking them out.”

John Lovell, CTC & President of Travel Leaders points out that Travelleaders.com was only launched in Canada in July 2024 and as the group promotes the name more and more, that will help it convince advisors in the Canadian market to post profiles on the website. 

And the numbers are certainly impressive, with McGillivray telling TC that the site has generated 300,000 leads, 68,000 bookings, $750 million in sales and $110 million in commissions in 2024.

“That’s what we’ve tracked. One out of four leads closed,” he said. 

For Lovell, it’s about what members can earn by participating. He said: “Last year in total, we calculated about $110 million in commissions. We’re 6,000 agencies — that’s $18,000 for each agency. Now we don’t have 6,000 agencies represented, so that number continues to go up, but I would hate to know that I’m leaving $18,000 on the table by not doing something.”

And Lovell added: “That’s the part of the story that is really impactful and it does work. It takes a little bit of effort to make a great profile, but if you do, you can really, really make yourself impactful and get the leads because it’s only going to help you at the end of the day.” 

As for James, she said that Canadian members “using Agent Profiler, are loving it. They’re reaping the benefits. They’re getting the bookings. They’re getting leads all the time – it is quite a success story.”

So, stay tuned, there’s more to come from Travel Leaders Network in an upcoming issue of our sister publication, Canadian Travel Press.