TravelManagers‘ senior executives will participate at the upcoming Signature Travel Network annual conference in Las Vegas for the first time after forging ties with the luxury travel consortia earlier this year.
Chief Operating Office, Grant Campbell and Operations Manager, Troy Coelho will head to the four-day event, joining over 2,400 delegates from travel brands around the globe at the meet-up.
This will be the first opportunity that Campbell and Coelho will have to get together in person with Signature’s network of travel advisors, independent contractors, managers, agency owners and supplier partners since a partnership was formalised at the beginning of 2022. Senior management attendance from the Australian home-based outfit was exclusively foreshadowed by LATTE in February.
“Signature is a community of leading travel agencies and supplier partners which currently generates US$8 billion in annual sales. Their focus is on the luxury travel segment, making them a great asset to many of our personal travel managers (PTMs) given the huge surge in demand we have seen since the reopening of Australia’s international borders,” Campbell said.
The TravelManagers official said the key purpose of the conference is to network with and learn from Signature Travel Network partners, strengthening existing supplier relationships and developing new alliances. The pair will participate in a series of appointment sessions, educational workshops and the trade show.
As well as its extensive collection of luxury products and experiences, Campbell says Signature Travel Network shares many of the same values as TravelManagers: “appropriately, both Signature’s annual owners’ meeting and TravelManagers’ annual national conference even shared the same theme: ‘Together’,” he noted.
Campbell says the pandemic does not appear to have slowed Signature Travel Network’s rate of growth, with 39 travel brands having joined the network since the last conference took place in 2019.
“They achieved this by doubling down on member support, methodically growing their preferred partnership portfolio to ensure that members had access to the products their clients would need,” Campbell explained.
“They focused on finding like-minded agencies, knowing that the unity of the Signature community has always been their greatest strength.”
“We’re excited to have become part of that community, and we’ve been really impressed by how well Signature’s members and preferred partners have worked together to grow their respective businesses over the past three years,” Campbell observes. “Many of them have already surpassed their pre-pandemic sales levels, while preferred land partner sales for 2022 are up more than 26 percent compared with 2019.”
After three years of pandemic, Campbell says he is anticipating a celebratory mood at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas when the conference gets underway on 8 November.
“Despite all the challenges our industry has experienced through the course of the pandemic, it’s reassuring to know that Signature members have risen to the occasion and exceeding expectations: TravelManagers is excited to be part of the next stage in their journey,” Campbell concluded.
Lead image: The Venetian Resort Las Vegas, location of Signature Travel Network’s 2022 annual conference | Source: Facebook.