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TRAVELSAVERS and NEST offer exclusive innovations

TRAVELSAVERS and NEST enhance advisor competitiveness with AI tools, lead-gen campaigns, digital storefronts, and revamped education through the KORE program. ORLANDO, FLA. – In today's crowded travel marketplace, TRAVELSAVERS and NEST are providing their affiliated advisors with state-of-the-art technology, novel lead-generation programs and marketing initiatives to enhance their competitive edge. The networks shared the latest updates on their innovations at the Travel Market conference, being held June 4 to 7 at Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Resort in Orlando. 'We've been producing innovative technology that helps advisors sell more and work smarter for our entire 55-year history,' said Nicole Mazza, Chief Marketing Officer, TRAVELSAVERS and NEST. 'Our technology team continues to bring out forward-looking tools that give our advisors the advantage they need to stay ahead in an industry that's always evolving.' AI Connect Powered by Toby Through our collaboration, advisors can seamlessly access and promote exclusive offers with AI Connect Powered by Toby, making it easier to enhance their marketing efforts and streamline their workflow. This partnership ensures that AI Connect Powered by Toby provides valuable tools while offering special benefits tailored to advisors' needs. As subscriptions grow each month, so does the opportunity for advisors to leverage cutting-edge AI to save time and create polished, professional content. AI Connect helps advisors tap into the $28+-billion opportunity that generative AI represents for the travel industry. Exclusive partner offers are sent directly into the platform, so advisors build blog posts, social media captions and landing pages faster using real-time promotions. AI Connect recently debuted a Destination Arrival Guide, featuring more than 600 professionally written destination briefs, which are updated regularly. With the Generate with Toby feature, advisors can create guides tailored to client preferences, interests and travel styles. Coming soon: translation and newsletter tools for multilingual and multi-format content. Lead-Generation Initiatives Digital campaigns have been the cornerstone of the TRAVELSAVERS and NEST lead-generation strategy since their introduction two years ago. Video and social media ads attract consumers looking for travel expertise, who are then driven to network websites. These ads in Meta have delivered nearly 3.5 million impressions and more than 78,000 clicks to sites, producing quality leads for advisors. These campaigns meet the growing appetite among travelers for immersive experiences, building connections with key market segments such as guided vacations, adventure travel, romance travel and new-to-cruise customers. Another initiative driving leads to advisors is enhanced agency profiles. Travelers can search for and select an advisor who's a fit for their preferences based on location, specialties, destination expertise, languages spoken as well as accolades and certifications. Since their debut last fall, 78 percent of advisor profiles have been updated, highlighting their strengths to consumers on a valuable marketing platform. Profiles appear on the TRAVELSAVERS U.S. and Affluent Traveler Collection consumer websites, as well as two new sites: TRAVELSAVERS Canada and Your Vacation Specialists, which features NEST advisors. OnlineXpress Digital Storefronts TRAVELSAVERS and NEST agencies are the only networks with a website creation and hosting program purposely built for our advisors, OnlineXpress. With this unique advantage, they can invite customers and prospects to experience their engaging digital storefronts. Agencies in the U.S. and Canada use OnlineXpress to polish their online presence and market to consumers. The program has shown remarkable growth this year over the same time in 2024, with 3,500 leads generated, 725,000 pageviews (up 82 percent) and 1.7 million emails (up 20 percent). Technology Innovations The industry-leading tripXpress booking platform now offers a feature solely available to TRAVELSAVERS and NEST advisors. They can deep-link directly to tripXpress from their webpages, blog posts or social media. The link will take consumers directly into the booking process and automatically attribute the booking to the advisor. Another tripXpress innovation coming soon will provide advisors with an all-in-one dashboard for marketing tools and insights. The dashboard will consolidate data and list management for direct mail, email and OnlineXpress. Advisors will be able to order direct mail and emails through the dashboard and manage preferences, including targeting clients. TRAVELSAVERS and NEST have also introduced a custom-branded URL at the agency or advisor level that will stay the same for every marketing campaign. Advisors can easily drive consumers to this single link for promotions, showcasing offers through the link in their email signature and on social profiles. 'Our advisors tell us they need new ways to find clients and market to existing ones,' said Mazza. 'At the same time, they tell us they're in overdrive managing their businesses and don't have spare hours to waste on complex platforms. That's why we're dedicated to creating easy-to-use tools to send business to advisors and give them back time within their day.' KORE Education Enrichment The KORE program – launched in 2021 to train the next generation of professional travel advisors – is undergoing a major revision. The refreshed curriculum will update topics, create shorter modules, add more interaction through exercises and gamification, and build a community of learners through the web-based platform. Agencies will also be able to create customized KORE versions for their advisors. KORE equips new consultants with the essential skills and real-world knowledge to be successful travel professionals and business owners. It provides learners with a thorough, self-paced online curriculum. KORE is the sole advisor education program that offers mentoring with an agency owner or manager, as well as a placement service to match candidates with leading agencies.