Avanti Destinations has been building custom travel since 1981, from Europe and North Africa to Cambodia and Colombia. And, like so many industry players, Avanti had a very prosperous 2023, with more passengers booked, longer trips crafted and higher trip values reported.
As a tour operator that works exclusively with travel advisors, Avanti is always looking to the agent community for what to do next, and how to further support them in their work. We spoke with Paul Barry, CEO of Avanti Destinations, about recent changes and updates to Avanti’s offerings — including the addition of the South Pacific to its portfolio.
Among some of the recent changes at Avanti is the addition of a new call center in England, opened in December 2023. How does this office help Avanti, and therefore advisors?
Yes, we have two offices in Europe now: one in Manchester, England (the newer one), and one in Barcelona, Spain. The Manchester office is a call center that supports and works in conjunction with our Portland c all center. In Manchester, they’re answering phone calls and responding to emails at very early hours, and that allows our Portland office to not get behind in the morning. Advisors needed us at very early hours, but it’s hard to get people to get to work at 6 a.m. in Portland. So, now we’re all connected — Manchester takes the early calls, then Portland opens, and paired together, they make sure that hold times are very low.
Our Barcelona operational office deals with disconnected flights, drivers who make mistakes, if someone gets lost and so on. Our team on Europe time deals with everything that does and can happen. That office has been open for five years, and it has over a dozen people in it now.
Quality of service is why people use travel advisors in the first place — and why travel advisors rely on a good tour operator.
Paul Barry, CEO of Avanti Destinations
Credit: 2024 Avanti DestinationsIn other Avanti news, the company has added Australia, New Zealand and Fiji (or the South Pacific) to its portfolio. How did this come about?
I wasn’t very knowledgeable about that part of the world, so just before the pandemic, I began to research it. We looked to open it then, because our surveys showed that advisors thought this was the No. 1 thing we should do. It’s a perfect FIT market, I learned. And the trips are very long, because it’s a relatively long way away; the average length of stay is 17 days, the data shows. So, the trips come with a reasonably high price tag and therefore good commission.
The quality of the offerings in Australia has grown in the last 10 years, as well. Experiential tourism is up, and they’ve embraced their natural tourism and Aboriginal tourism, offering things that likely didn’t exist 10 years ago. And it’s just a stand-alone, unique destination — and the same goes for New Zealand.
And how has initial demand been?
Demand has been extremely good — we rapidly exceeded $1 million in paid bookings since we launched in September. And our staff has embraced it. We’ve hired close to 100 people in the last 18 months, and I always ask about their favorite trip of all time, and what’s on their bucket list — usually Australia/New Zealand is in the top three. That’s where the market is. People want to experience this destination.
Europe has always been the leader in terms of Avanti sales. Assuming this is still true, what destinations are trending there, and elsewhere?
Europe has accounted for more than 80% of bookings since Avanti was founded. Within that, Italy is our No. 1 selling country, and Portugal is the country that saw the greatest growth in bookings in 2023.
Non-Europe 2023 bookings were about half of what they were in 2019; they are slowly coming back. In Asia, Japan was the standout success last year — at one point, we were sold out for a few months, and we expect it to be at capacity again this year. We also see Thailand and Vietnam coming back. We encourage advisors to book clients early for popular destinations.
Avanti has new products in Belize, which is home to the world’s second-largest barrier reef.
Credit: 2024 Duarte/stock.adobe.comHow about beyond those countries? Are any patterns emerging?
Central and South America is not anywhere near the pre-pandemic bookings level, but it is slowly building. I believe this is because FIT travelers are so focused on Europe, and also a bit anxious about the political trouble reported in Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina, and are delaying traveling there. We’ve recently partnered with the tourist offices of Panama and Belize on campaigns to educate advisors about FIT options in those countries. Those are two very stable countries, as is Costa Rica — which is our best seller in Central America. Travel to Israel, Jordan and Egypt have been severely impacted by the conflict. But bookings to Morocco have been doing well.
And there’s been growth in Avanti’s Belize portfolio.
Right. We’ve added two new customizable vacations, nine new hotels and resorts and seven new tours and experiences. Avanti has also partnered with the Belize Tourism Board to create a new, 32-page e-brochure for advisors to share with their clients. “Belize: Where Adventure Meets Paradise,” is available on Avanti’s advisor portal. Belize consistently ranks among our top sellers in Latin America. The combination of palm-fringed beaches, calm Caribbean waters protected by the second-largest living barrier reef in the world, ancient Mayan temples in the rainforest, soft adventure activities such as ziplining and cave tubing and fascinating ethnic groups like the Garifuna make Belize a warm-weather getaway with something for every kind of FIT client.
It’s more efficient for advisors to focus on finding, inspiring and selling clients, and let someone else take care of the nuts and bolts of booking.
Can you also tell us a bit more about how Avanti aims to aid advisors in their work?
Travel advisors now include many independent contractors, and agency employees who work remotely. This means the workday has expanded, starting earlier and ending late in the evening. Because of this, we have expanded advisors’ access to Avanti’s trained travel consultants, whether by email or by phone, and we’ve made major enhancements to our advisor portal, making it easier for advisors to come up with inspirational itineraries on their own (which can be refined with our help).
The result is that the number of incoming calls has decreased, while inquiries and bookings continue to climb. More work is done electronically, which is a great time-saver. Opening a sales service center in the U.K. means that we now have made ourselves available 12 hours per day for advisors’ calls, and 20 hours a day for electronic communications.
That’s an incredible support system. Is there anything else you’d like to share with advisor readers?
A development [we see] is that newer, younger advisors tend to focus more on selling and finding new clients, and less on getting to know destinations, products or how to do the bookings themselves.
In the old paradigm, advisors spent a good deal of time booking individual products, such as air, European rail (which has also gotten more complex) and hotels. The newer advisors I listened to during our South Pacific roadshow events this past fall simply don't want to book air, for example. Fewer than half of the advisors we polled in September and October want to sell air. It’s too complex — each airline has their own rules, and given how often flights are delayed and canceled, advisors are more than happy to turn over that chore of dealing with the airlines to reliable tour operators. Avanti’s air desk pros know each airline’s rules and can very efficiently trouble-shoot for your clients.
Quality of service is why people use travel advisors in the first place — and why travel advisors rely on a good tour operator. It’s more efficient for advisors to focus on finding, inspiring and selling clients, and let someone else take care of the nuts and bolts of booking.
