Hosted Travel Advisor Income Growth Tempers as Travel Market Closes in on a Full Recovery

Minneapolis, Aug 8, 2024 – Host Agency Reviews’ 2024 Travel Advisor Survey, conducted between April 15th and June 9th, polled over 2,300 travel advisors on their 2023 income, operations, demographics, and more. Preliminary data indicates a slowdown in income growth for hosted advisors compared to the previous year’s substantial gains.

On the heels of a massive 126% income surge between 2020 and 2021, income growth decelerated to 26% in 2022 and declined to a slight 2% increase in 2023. While overall average income ($48,124) is still 7% shy of 2019 numbers for hosted advisors, HAR's data are close to parity with ARC's growth numbers for international passenger trips, which recovered to 91% of 2019 levels in 2023 ¹.

Outpacing income growth, hosted advisors’ sales registered a modest 8% increase. Furthermore, 81% of hosted advisors reported a year-over-year sales increase in 2023 (14% reported “no sales increase” and 6% were “N/A or unsure”). 90%, reported their sales have recovered to 2019 pre-COVID numbers.

What does this growth look like on the ground for hosted advisors? Here's a summary of the preliminary income results for hosted advisors. ² 

• $60,583 was the average income for full-time experienced hosted advisors. ³  
• $650,032 was the average sales amount for full-time experienced hosted advisors.
• 8% of hosted advisors overall reported 1 million in sales or more.
• 24% was the average YOY income increase for hosted advisors as they dedicated more weekly work hours to their business.

While growth cooled in 2023, it was the full-time advisors who saw the largest income gains compared to their part-time peers, who tracked little to no income increase in 2023.

Regarding the stabilizing income for hosted advisors in 2023, HAR founder Steph Lee commented, “Regaining the losses from the pandemic has been a long time coming for the advisor community. We’re excited to see the continued growth from the agency distribution channel. The trends we’re seeing help cement the important role agencies will play in the U.S. travel ecosystem in the years to come.”

Through the end of the year, HAR will publish its annual series of travel advisor reports on three different advisor segments; hosted and independently-accredited travel advisors, as well as, employees. Reports will take deep dives into the current trends in advisor income and fees. Below you can sign up to receive notifications as more of HAR’s exclusive data is released.

This year, HAR forged partnerships with a diverse array of travel organizations to ensure a dynamic and representative cross-section of travel advisors reflected in the data. Survey partners included the Association of Black Travel Professionals (ABTP), American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA), BranchUp, Celebrity Cruises, Dugan's Travel, Gifted Travel Network, KHM Travel Group, MAST, Nexion Travel Group, Pickles Travel Netowork, Signature Travel Network, TaConnect, Travel Leaders Network, Travel Pulse, Uniglobe Travel Center, Virtuoso, and WorldVia-Travel Quest Network. 

Organizations interested in partnering on future surveys can email Hello@HostAgencyReviews.com. Individuals interested in receiving survey publication notices can sign up for updates below:

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Host Agency Reviews® is an independent website connecting travel agents to leading industry resources. With 250+ combined host, franchise, and consortium profiles and 5,250+ reviews, it's the largest directory for agents on the web. Founder and former host agency director, Steph Lee, started Host Agency Reviews in 2012 to provide critical support for travel professionals to start and grow their agencies. Since then, the HAR team has expanded the site to include a robust industry blog, a free weeklong travel agency startup program, the Travel Agent Chatter quarterly podcast, Friday 15 weekly Q&A,  and a 7 Day Setup Accelerator course for launching a travel agency. In 2020, HAR launched Host Week, a free annual event to recognize and amplify independent advisors and the hosts, franchises, and consortia that support them. Oh, and we like to have fun. Lots of fun. :)

Footnotes

1. Source: Accessed July 31, 2024 ↩
2. HAR’s data profiles hosted travel advisors who earned a minimum of $5,000 in commission in 2023. ↩
3. 3+ years of experience ↩