If ever there were two more different paths to success, they are those chosen by the top-selling advisors who won awards at American Marketing Group’s annual conference this year. One is a man and one is a woman, one is a home-based NEST advisor and one is a brick-and mortar TravelSavers advisor, one is so far outside that he doesn’t even know there’s a box while the other is a more traditional travel advisor. (Photo above: AMG travel advisor award winners, including Kyle Stewart, third from left.)

Like many of the new breed of travel advisor, Kyle Stewart had no background whatsoever in selling trave. Indeed, he says his job does not entail selling to clients at all. But he brought an open mind, a focus on retaining great employees and an understanding of the luxury market, as well as a book of millions of existing customers interested in travel.

Meanwhile, at Altair Travel in St. Louis, Angie Markway, a second-generation president of her agency, has been working in the business her mom started with two friends 45 years ago. They’ve been in the same office for 17 years, selling everything to everyone, from FITs to air to groups to incentives.

A New Breed of Advisor: Apparently there’s more than one winning formula in the travel industry. Stewart’s non-traditional path to success began four years ago. A blogger with millions of followers a month on LiveandLetsFly.com, he was looking to partner with an agency to add a booking link when the pandemic hit. He couldn’t find one that seemed to fit, so he took the leap and started his own. In just two years he was the top-selling travel advisor and held on to the top spot this year as well.

In some ways Stewart’s growth path follows the traditional formula. He focuses on luxury only; while declining to cite his agency’s total sales, he says he sell “millions” in Antarctica expeditions alone and has doubled his sales each year for the past three. To do that, he hires knowledgeable Pied Pipers who lead unique—and high priced—expeditions.

“I don’t actually sell travel, my team does,” Stewart says. “So what makes us different as an agency is that we know what our client wants because we’ve been there or want the same thing.” Each of his staff members has visited an average of 71 countries on 3.4 continents and almost everyone speaks a second language. “So when a client comes to us we generally have a good idea of what they want before they say it,” he says.

To maintain that growth rate, he hopes to triple his staff from 13 to 39. Opening during the pandemic gave him the luxury of making mistakes in a small way. The the two biggest, he acknowledges, were spending too long using travel-industry-specific technology and not staffing up quickly enough.

“Initially we tried to align with the existing technology and practices for travel advisors that had been here used for the past three decades—they didn't really fit our business model, but we followed the path that was already laid,” Stewart says. “But some of the CRM stuff is pretty dated. There are better general solutions on the market if you go outside of travel. So eventually we just looked for the best solution, not necessarily the best travel solution.”

And like many, Stewart miscalculated just how quickly travel would come roaring back. As a relative newcomer, “it’s really hard to tell what’s an uptick blip and what’s hockey stick growth, what’s sustainable and what’s not,” he says. “So we hired too late, and probably didn’t take advantage of everything we could have because we didn’t have those positions filled. But the hardest thing is to hire someone and weave them into the fabric of the business only to find out it was temporary.”

Stewart’s secret to growth is being an advisors’ agency. “Our key is to hire folks who already are successful, inside the industry or out, and make this a more financially rewarding career for them,” he says. “We incentivize the advisor, not necessarily the consumer—and so my job is exclusively to get better commission deals for our advisors and great deals for our clients. Then our advisors provide world-leading customer service, take calls in the middle of the night, do all the things luxury clients want them to do and don’t mind paying for.”

Stewart’s tip for others hoping to grow their business is to focus on those luxury clients. “I don’t want 1,000 customers spending $1,000,” he says. “I’d rather have 50 spending $20,000 each. Contemporary customers are spending a lot of what they have available to spend on each trip—but someone who spends $10,000 has more in their vacation fund, and the work isn’t any harder.”

“There’s no room for amateurs in luxury,” Stewart says. ‘So pick just a couple of products to train a new advisor on but start with something they already identify with. We think it’s a losing path to put them on 150 lunch and learns. So instead, try to find what they and their friends and family are interested in and what kind of products. Get them passionate about a product or a destination, and from there let them expand and drill down.”

Going Traditional in St. Louis: One could say that Angie Markway, owner of Altair Travel & Cruises in St. Louis, also has a presence in the travel industry—a pretty big one. She and her daughter Haylye Lux are part of the fabric of the St. Louis community. In fact, in September she was named a St. Louis headliner by the Post Dispatch and a member of A-list of St. Louis magazine. She’s also a top seller at TravelSavers.

Markway attributes her success to her staff of “wonderful, experienced agents,” including a couple of Pied Pipers who accompany regular groups. But she does sell as well. She is the face that meets and greets customers at events in the office, where the “living room” holds 50 people for regular events. She’s also the voice of the radio show she inherited from her mom, which broadcasts every Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. (drive time) on The Big 550 AM talk radio.

Markway has been booking incentive trips for local businesses, and since “St. Louis loves its sports” her agency has been hosting an annual St. Louis Cardinals cruise for the past 25 years. This year she added a St. Louis Blues cruise with the hockey team. “With all those group trips and the radio advertising, we really have a following of people who have become friends and wait to hear where the next trip is headed,” she says.

These days roughly 30 percent of her overall sales are from groups—but Altair Travel is a full-service agency, included an air ticketing department of four full-time staffers who book air and three ICs who sell, plus 10 more advisors and support staff, and about 35 independent contractors.

The offer of full-time employment with benefits in a brick-and-mortar office has been helping attract new advisors, and Markway hired four last year. While it’s hard in the beginning to find time to train them, she says, it helps that they can shadow experienced workers in the office and ask any questions they might have, she says.

Markway’s one big change this year was hiring a full-time marketing expert in the office to take over putting together fliers and posting on social media. That frees up everyone else to do what they do best.

For more information, visit www.jointhenest.com or www.travelsavers.com.