By: Meredith Calloway

Co-Founder and Chief Visionary Officer, Gifted Travel Network 

For the first five years as a travel advisor, I hid a shameful secret. While spending 40+ hours weekly building and operating my business, I wasn't generating a profit. As a former Wall Street analyst, I was embarrassed that I couldn't grow my revenues faster than my expenses. Year after year, I would be lucky to break even. While I loved what I did, not being able to pay myself a salary felt... icky. Ten plus years and hundreds of coaching clients later, I now know how common this "accidental hobbyist" situation is for the majority of travel advisors.

What is Average?

According to Host Agency Reviews' 2024 Hosted Travel Advisor Report, the average travel advisor with 3–5 years of experience earned $43,859 in 2023. While $44K annually with 3 to 5 years under one’s belt might sound respectable, it doesn't factor in operating expenses, which typically range between $25K and $50K, depending on your situation and level of investment. Once you net out operating expenses (which DON’T include your salary), you’re lucky if you break even.  If you entered this business to make a career out of your passion for travel and need to contribute significantly to your household income - or if you're the sole provider - average simply won't cut it.

Fortunately, at Gifted Travel Network, we've cracked the code on achieving far-from-average income results, enabling our advisors to break free from industry norms. Our Far from Average Formula transforms "accidental hobbyists" into thriving business owners.

Over 15 years of coaching travel advisors on monetizing their passion, we've observed a consistent pattern in the entrepreneurial journey. There are four phases to this journey, and the vast majority of advisors don't make it past phase 2 - the break-even phase. Validating our observations, the 2024 Hosted Travel Advisor Report shows the overall average annual sales was $517,797 with an overall average annual income of $52,636. Both metrics place the average advisor squarely in phase 2 of the travel business journey.

Just like you can’t skip the first few miles when running a marathon, phases 1 and 2 are important, necessary, and can be enjoyable.  But if you want to meaningfully contribute to your household income or fully support yourself with your travel business, you must move beyond phase 2 and reach phases 3 or 4. Why are so many travel advisors getting stuck in phase 2? No one is addressing this challenge - no one except GTN has developed a plan to overcome it.

The Far from Average Formula

While the first five years of my travel entrepreneurial journey generated basically no profit, it lit a fire in me to find a viable path forward.  I became obsessed with figuring out how to monetize a passion for travel.  Today, over 20 years and thousands of coaching clients later, we at GTN have simplified the path and whittled it down to three critical steps.  In this article, we will explore the first step in our Far from Average Formula.  If you would like to learn about the full formula, check out this episode of the Travel Business Unpacked Podcast:

Step 1: Focus on Higher Transactions

Given the one-to-one service model of a travel advisor, there are only so many hours in a day, creating a natural limit to how much you can work. While conventional wisdom suggests that earning more money requires finding more clients and booking more travel, that's working harder instead of smarter.

The smarter approach is increasing the transaction size of your bookings. At Gifted Travel Network, our philosophy is that leaning into luxury is the most viable way to increase transaction sizes. When you focus on luxury, your transaction values won't just double—they'll increase by 5 to 10 times. Moreover, the luxury travel market is booming and projected to grow even stronger.  With a small fraction of all travel advisors strategically focusing on selling luxury travel, the opportunity to move into this arena is huge.

In a side-by-side comparison, "Any Budget Betty" represents what happens when advisors don't strategically focus on luxury. The average transaction size hovers around $5K. After factoring in commission retention, service fees, and a manageable book of business (100 bookings per year), Betty will generate an average annual income of $50,000—closely matching the industry average of $52,636 reported in the 2024 Hosted Advisor Report.

By contrast, "Luxury Lucy" focuses exclusively on luxury travel, achieving an average transaction size of $40K—eight times larger than Betty's. Because of this strategic focus, Lucy can work LESS—taking half as many bookings—while still earning an average annual income of $250,000, five times more than Betty.

If you're skeptical about these figures, consider that the average commissions earned by members of GTN's Top Producers Club was $237,000 in 2023 and $278,000 in 2024, comparable to Luxury Lucy's $240,000 in commissions. Lucy's additional $20,000 income comes from service fees, which aren't included in our commission data.

Laying out the numbers this way, one can see that selling luxury travel isn’t just fun, cool and sexy, it’s also logical.  It just makes sense.

Now What?

If leaning into luxury now appears to be the most viable path to reaching your next level of success you will need to arm yourself with the right resources, guidance and support.  All of these can be covered with the right host agency partner.  When choosing one, here are the must have things to be wholly supported in transitioning into selling luxury travel:

 - Member of a Luxury Focused Consortia

 - Access to Hotel Elite Programs

 - Invites to Attend Luxury Focused training events

 - Ability to Retain 90% or More of Your Commissions as Sales Grow

 - Access to Business Coaching and in-Depth Guidance on Branding, Client Attraction, Operations, VIP Service Delivery and More

 - On Demand Engagement with a Collaborative Community of Travel Wisdom

Break Through to Success

While many advisors remain stuck in Phase 1 or 2, those who layer in luxury and implement the Far from Average Formula unlock the potential to reach Phase 4 and beyond - building a thriving, profitable career rather than just a side hustle or hobby.

At Gifted Travel Network, we don't just talk about success—we help travel entrepreneurs achieve it. We fully support the luxury travel advisor with our Virtuoso membership, access to almost all of the luxury hotel elite programs, invitations to luxury focused events that we share with members of our network, ability to retain 90-100% of commissions (depending on sales threshold), full access to award winning professional development and business coaching and our incredible collaborative community that we have spent years cultivating.  We further support our advisors in following and implementing all 3 steps of the far from average formula, no matter where they are in their journey.  For those new to the industry (or those who have not been able to break through $200K in sales in a calendar year), our Travel MBA program is architected to guide them down the far from average formula path, supported with expert guidance, coaching, mentoring and peer support, to ultimately arrive at a destination that is 5 to 10Xs the industry average.  For experienced advisors, our Travel Business University program is available to all and is the perfect companion to walking the far from average path.

If you're ready to crush the odds and build a thriving travel business, whether you are an experienced advisor wanting to transition into selling luxury travel or are new to the industry, Gifted Travel Network is a great home for you.

New to the Industry?  Apply for Travel MBA today. 

Experienced Advisor?  Chat with GTN today

Listen to the full Travel Business Unpacked podcast.