Why Is Travel Marketing Representation Stuck in 1995?

Summary:

This article is a call to the travel industry, particularly suppliers and representation agencies, to evolve the way we engage, market, and communicate to both trade and our travellers.

Drawing on my experience as a travel agent in the 1990s and decades of traveller behaviour research, I outline why the current travel trade rep model is outdated and how modern travellers and advisors have already moved on.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• How traveller expectations and emotional decision-making have changed

• Why travel advisors are more influential (and measurable) than social media influencers

• The pressure advisors face with supplier email overload.

• Why traditional representation models (rep representing 10 brands on sales call, roadshows, PDFs, unsegmented email blasts) are failing

• How to use traveller research, AI, segmentation, and storytelling to connect with today’s travellers

• What actions must travel suppliers take now to drive real bookings through trusted advisor relationships?

If you’re a supplier or travel trade marketing representative still working like it’s 1993, this article is your reality check.

Your Brand Deserves Modern, Efficient Travel Marketing Representation.

Back when Brochure Flow ruled the day

In the early 1990s, I began my career as a travel agent with Qantas at the Qantas Retail Travel Centre in Collins Street, Melbourne.

We sent faxes, teletype messages, and typed itineraries for our clients.

Sales reps came into the office to deliver briefings, often accompanied by muffins and assorted treats, in the mornings at 8:30 am, before the office opened to the public at 9:00 am.

We waited for courier deliveries from a company called Brochure Flow, which supplied the flyers and hot deals that helped us sell the world to Australians dreaming of Europe, Bali, or the USA.

Then the fax machine came along, and we would receive reel after reel of faxes every day. Hundreds.

The system worked. At the time.

Now, 300 emails a week replace the fax reels, directly sent to your travel advisor's inbox to be deleted and ignored.

It's lazy marketing that ignores the evolution of the travel and tourism industry, both trade and our travellers.

But today, I can’t help but ask the uncomfortable question: why does so much of the travel representation industry in Australia still operate as if nothing has changed?

Because the truth is, everything has changed.

The traveller has changed.

The travel advisor has changed - they specialise, coach their clients, and source the best travel products and experiences for them.

And yet, supplier representation? It’s still acting like we’re waiting for brochures to arrive by van.

But it's far worse. The flyers are arriving by email, assaulting hard-working travel advisors across the globe.

The traveller is more emotionally complex and digitally active than ever

We now have overwhelming research on how modern travellers behave.

We know the traveller customer journey starts long before the booking in the emotional space of dreaming, craving, and envisioning.

We know that today’s high-value travellers are digitally independent.

They spend hundreds of hours every year Googling and watching YouTube videos in a perpetual state of travel research.

They aren’t asking “What’s available?” They’re asking, "Why is this river cruise better than all the other river cruises that have the same itinerary", “What will this feel like? Who will I become on this trip?”

They are not passive recipients of offers. They are emotionally and experientially driven.

They seek local connection. Personal transformation. Cultural meaning. Belonging.

Travel advisors are evolving fast and impressively.

One of the biggest misconceptions floating around in supplier circles is that advisors are stuck, old-fashioned, or slow to change. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Today’s travel advisors are entrepreneurs. Many have developed finely tuned niches. They are deeply specialised in luxury cruising, wellness travel, multigenerational planning, or transformational solo journeys.

They operate smart, lean, and often remote businesses. They are investing in content marketing, AI, and strategic partnerships to stay ahead of the traveller curve.

I’m so impressed, in fact, that I’ve decided to return to my roots and take on a side hustle as a travel advisor myself, with solo travel as my favourite niche.

And it’s not just me who sees the value.

Travellers themselves, especially those we speak to in our research, are placing more trust than ever in real, human advisors. They believe in the profession. They believe in the people behind the recommendations. A great travel advisor is worth their weight in gold.

Travellers don’t want automation.

They want expertise, first-hand and personal experience from their advisors, and they expect them to be out and about looking for the next hot travel destination, cruise, hotel or touring option.

And they want someone who will truly understand how they want to feel when they travel.

Travel Advisors receive 300 to 400 emails a week From Suppliers. Are we serious?

Currently, the average travel advisor in Australia receives between 300 and 400 emails from suppliers every week.

That is not a typo. That is their inbox.

And here’s what those emails typically include: unsegmented product announcements, generic newsletters, irrelevant offers, or one-size-fits-all updates from reps who are representing ten brands at once.

This isn’t communication. It’s noise.

And it’s exhausting.

If an advisor misses something important, it’s not because they’re disengaged; rather, it's because they're not fully engaged. It’s because we’ve buried the gold under an avalanche of digital junk.

In the process, we are not just damaging our relationships. We are eroding trust, clarity, and mental bandwidth.

Suppliers and Travel Brands need to do more than send a PDF.

There’s something else suppliers and brands urgently need to understand.

You must send your travel advisors on familiarisations, not just when it suits you, not just as a sales incentive, but as a core part of your strategy.

Because I can tell you from personal experience, I will sell what I have personally experienced. And so will every professional advisor I know.

But today’s advisors are not just sellers. They are content creators. They are storytellers. They are trusted voices in their clients’ lives.

In many ways, they are your most effective and credible influencers, producing independent content based on real experiences that resonate with travellers.

And even better - they have the ability to book your travel product or experience directly at the end.

At the Travel Marketing Machine, this is exactly what we support our advisors to do. We work with them to create blogs, videos, email content, and social posts that reflect their honest, expert views on the products and places they’ve encountered.

And that’s exactly what travellers are looking for.

They want independent advice.

They expect their advisor to be on the ground, sourcing new experiences, new brands, and new perspectives, rather than just regurgitating what’s in a sales PDF or copying and pasting their host agency's ready-made social media template.

This is coming through loud and clear in our traveller research. Modern travellers follow humans, not logos. They want someone to tell them, “I’ve been there. This is what it really feels like. This is what matters. And this is why it would be a great experience for you".

And here's the other thing we’re not talking about enough: influence.

Influencers on social media may have a broad reach, but travel advisors have something far more powerful, direct, and verbal influence at the moment of decision-making.

An advisor isn’t just recommending something in a feed.

They’re sitting across the table, or speaking on a Zoom call, with a client who trusts them deeply.

That influence is high-intent, highly personalised, and far more likely to convert into a real, trackable booking.

This is where the real value is.

An increasing number of advisors are creating content in a similar way to influencers. However, the difference is that their influence doesn’t end with the double tap. It ends with a credit card.

That’s measurable.

That’s trackable.

And that’s exactly the kind of influence suppliers should be doubling down on.

If you’re still prioritising influencer campaigns over travel advisor engagement, you’re overlooking the people who are already delivering the outcomes you're trying to buy.

Travel Representation is still playing by the old rules

Let’s discuss the representative model in Australia.

The dominant practices are still:

• Roadshows

• Sales calls

• Brochures

• Group/Mass Agent Famils

• Email blasts

• Multi-brand juggling

Representation is still treated as a channel for pushing product to the trade, not a strategic arm of traveller-first brand building.

The focus remains overwhelmingly B2B, despite the B2C landscape being where inspiration, decision-making, and brand alignment actually occur.

And the worst part? Many reps are still relying on the same tools and tactics they used in 1995, only now, they’ve swapped paper flyers for emails and PDFs.

This is not a strategy. It’s inertia.

Generative AI, segmentation, and the question we’re not asking

With all the modern tools at our fingertips, like behavioural segmentation, marketing automation, customer journeys, generative AI, GEO content personalisation, search listening, conversational AI the question becomes:

Why are we still marketing this way?

Why are we flooding advisors with unfiltered product updates instead of giving them intelligent, journey-aligned content they can use to inspire their clients?

Why are we still sending mass emails when we could be delivering value through precision content streams tailored to traveller types, life stages, and emotional motivations and interests?

Why are we training representatives to carry a suitcase of brochures when we should be teaching them to utilise data, AI, and storytelling to enhance brand meaning and visibility in both trade and consumer channels?

And the biggest question of all: If we know that today’s traveller is entirely different from the 1990s, why hasn’t our representation strategy evolved with them?

Disruption isn’t coming. It’s overdue.

The time for disrupting the travel representation model in Australia isn’t now. It was ten years ago.

But since it didn’t happen then, it must happen now.

We need to stop defending legacy systems that no longer serve the industry. We need to rebuild the way we connect suppliers, advisors, and travellers with relevance, intelligence, and emotional awareness.

We need representation at the Travel Marketing Machine:

• Starts with traveller behaviour, not sales targets

• Prioritises emotional content, not volume-driven messaging

• Supports and equips advisors with famils at a time that suits them, insightful, shareable storytelling from personal experiences, not spec sheets

• Uses AI to scale personalisation across journeys, not to replace human connection

• Operates as a strategic growth function, not a tactical box-tick

Because if our goal is to increase bookings, we need to meet the traveller at the moment they begin dreaming. Not just the moment the advisor opens their inbox.

This is why the Travel Marketing Machine exists

Our entire approach is built to serve the modern travel landscape. We use decades of traveller research, AI strategy, journey-stage alignment, and emotionally intelligent content to create representation for 2025, not 1995.

We honour advisors by giving them less noise and more clarity.

We serve travellers by creating meaning, not just marketing. We work with brands that are ready to grow, not just maintain.

If you’re a travel supplier saying “We should be getting more bookings”,

It’s time to ask a better question:

Are we still speaking to the market as it was? Or are we finally ready to meet the traveller as they are?

Why GEO and owned content matter more than ever

One of the biggest mistakes I see suppliers and travel brands making is continuing to sink budgets into the endless hole of paid digital media.

Ads may buy short bursts of attention, but they don’t build authority or long-term influence.

What matters now is owned content and owned assets.

Your blogs, advisor stories, email list, and research-backed articles. These are the assets that feed into Generative AI Optimisation (GEO).

They are the content types that will be surfaced in AI-driven searches and recommendations because they are trusted, original, and grounded in expertise.

This isn’t just theory. It’s measurable.

When brands invest in owned content shaped by traveller research, they are creating first-hand data that will continue to serve them in GEO-driven search for years to come.

Paid media disappears when the budget stops. Owned content keeps working for you.

FAQs: Modern Travel Marketing and Representation

Why do you say travel representation is stuck in the 1990s? Many supplier reps continue to use outdated strategies, such as brochure drops, generic email blasts, and in-person roadshows, without adopting modern content strategies, behavioural data, or AI-powered segmentation. The travel industry has changed, but many supplier tactics haven’t caught up.

What makes travel advisors more valuable than influencers? Travel advisors offer high-trust, high-intent influence at the exact moment a traveller is ready to book. Unlike influencers, advisors speak directly with clients and often close the sale. Their influence is measurable in bookings, not just reach or likes.

How many emails do travel advisors receive from suppliers? On average, between 300 and 400 emails per week. This volume is overwhelming, and most of it is unsegmented, repetitive, or irrelevant. It creates noise, not value, and leads to essential updates being lost.

What is GEO and how should the travel industry use it? GEO stands for Generative AI Optimisation. Just as SEO once shaped how we created content for Google search, GEO is about shaping how your brand appears within generative AI results.

SEO on its own is no longer viable. Generative AI search now powers the way travellers find information, build inspiration, and compare options. At the Travel Marketing Machine, we build GEO strategies grounded in traveller research. We use emotional decision-making insights to shape content that resonates and we structure it so it appears in generative search answers.

This means creating content that is emotional, research-backed, and staged for the traveller journey not just keyword-stuffed blog posts. GEO is how modern brands build relevance, visibility, and trust in the age of AI-driven search.

How can suppliers better support travel advisors?

• Invite them on familiarisations regularly at a time convenient to them, not just as rewards

• Equip them with emotionally intelligent content

• Treat them as creator-partners, not just sales channels

• Minimise email noise and focus on meaningful updates

• Use segmentation, automation, and storytelling to support their business growth

What’s the core message of this blog? The modern travel industry needs a new model for representation — one that centres on traveller emotions, advisor trust, strategic content, and intelligent technology. The old ways are holding us back. It’s time to align with how today’s travellers actually behave and buy.